I love food. Yes, I am a religious sister and we practice detachment from things that can be a distraction … but I just really enjoy food. One day when I was talking to my family, we realized we would typically chat about what food we ate at a family gathering or feast day, and how we had enjoyed it. We had to laugh at ourselves when we saw what we were doing.
As we have heard last week, Jesus has been speaking in the Gospel of John that He is the Bread of Life. I know so many are hungering to receive Him again in the Eucharist during these days when we are staying at home and cannot come together as a larger parish or just as a human family.
St. Peter speaks to people who have recently entered the Church through Baptism, “Crave as newborn babies pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow to salvation; since, indeed, you have tasted that the Lord is sweet,” 1 Peter 2:2-3. We are to crave spiritual milk that will taste sweet to us.
Fr. Thomas Dubay expounds on this Scripture, “Tasting the goodness of a thing can be done only by the experience of it through some sort of contact, the kind of contact that brings the thing tasted within the taster. Hence, when Peter speaks of the just man as tasting the sweetness of the Lord, he is implying an indwelling experience, a delight found in the Lord within.” [1]
He goes on to say later, “God has purchased this soul by His own Blood; it belongs to Him alone as His own delightful dwelling. His love for this soul must be inconceivable for He has paid an almost incredible price for it. It is His. Yet at the same time, and even more inconceivably, He is its possession. God belongs to man.” [2]
This means that there is a place within each of us that carries God’s own Presence. And while Jesus is present in a unique and substantial way in the Eucharist, He is really and substantially present within our souls in this mutual indwelling that Fr. Thomas speaks about. Let us press into this truth that in our Baptism, He gives us Himself to feast upon within our souls. Let us take 10-15 minutes (or more!) a day reading Scripture and quieting our thoughts to be present to the One within who is always present to us. He will never leave you; you belong to Him, and He belongs to you.
Sr. Sarah Rose Dent, T.O.R.
[1] The Indwelling of Divine Love: The Revelation of God’s Abiding Presence in the Human Heart. Thomas Dubay, S.M. Letter and Spirit, Volume 4, 2008. St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology.
[2] Ibid.
