“The last degree of love is when He gave Himself to us to be our Food;
because He gave Himself to be united with us in every way.”
St. Bernardine of Siena
(lemons to be / Julie Cook / 2018)
Sometimes I get busy.
I get distracted.
Some might even say that my distraction is more than that of “normal” people…
I simply call it brain multi-tasking…
Others may call it scattered or ADD or unfocused…
Whatever…
Yet it is in those moments, those days, those weeks, those chapters of life that
I seem to allow myself to become consumed.
I become consumed by the demands of a world that may or may not be good.
And as I am consumed…thinking that I am focused, going through the motions,
doing that stuff that needs doing…
I then become tired, irritable, out of sorts, short, curt, ill-tempered, mean,
hateful, mean-spirited, disrespectful, ungrateful, arrogant, self-serving…
You can see where this is going right?
It’s a journey going down into a dark hole.
Yet I continue to rationalize my busyness, my preoccupations, my activities, my doings
my demeanor, my unappealing self…
“Who has time for anything other than______???!!!” (fill in the blank)
as I hear my inner-self rationalizing an ever-increasing darkening journey…
Yet Saint Bernardine of Siena’s words have stopped me in my tracks this morning…
As I am pulled immediately and abruptly back into my own reality…
The one piece of the maddening puzzle that is missing…
That of loving nourishment…
Jesus gave himself as my food.
Food as in…
“This is my body…take and eat…
My sustenance,
my nourishment,
and the sustaining of my actual existence…
The host that feeds both my body and soul…
His very self which is to be consumed by me who is starving and yet who is totally
unaware of how malnourished I’ve allowed myself to actually become.
A food bound by a tie of immense and all-encompassing Love
Another dynamic saint once said,
“…I will not be a burden, for I want not what is yours, but you…
I will most gladly spend and be utterly spent for your sakes” (2 Corinthians 12:14).
There is danger that we see only the whirlwind of activity in the Bernardines of
faith—taking care of the sick, preaching, studying,
administering, always driving—and forget the source of their energy.
We should not say that Bernardine could have been a great contemplative if
he had had the chance.
He had the chance, every day, and he took it.
Franciscan Media
But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”
Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”
“My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.
John 4:32-34
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