Do you eat spiritual junk food?
Somebody on the rectory staff bought a set of clear, easily seal-able containers for the kitchen. And then they stocked them with various junk foods, including one container of ‘Oreo Thins – Mint’. If you’ve never had them, my advice is this: don’t start. They are just the perfect amount of cookie and stuffing to be nearly irresistible. It is, I fear, the perfect junk food for me. And here is what I also know. If I head into the kitchen without a resolute purpose of just refilling my glass of water, or grabbing a few healthy carrots or apple slices or a handful of almonds, I will always walk away with the Mint Oreos Thins. Because I can now see them out of the corner of my eye, they beckon, like a Siren. Unless I train my mind to seek after the healthy things, my stomach and taste buds will always say: “OREOS.”
And, if that is true of my physical taste buds, I wonder how much more true is that about my spiritual life? I wonder how often I let my spiritual taste buds be co-opted by something that looks okay, but really won’t satisfy in the long run. Facebook or Instagram or Tinder or your social media platform of choice. The wine of the month club. The weekly 9 or 18 hole golf outing. The breakfast club with the ROMEO’s (Retired Old Men Eating Out). All of them are good things, perhaps even great things. But they are spiritual junk food if they never take me deeper into the reality of Christ, deeper into the reality of the communion we call church. They, like junk food, can clog the arteries of the heart, distract the taste buds of our souls and leave us, not only hungry for more, but dissatisfied because they promised something they could not fulfill.
Jesus says it this way in today’s gospel. “Do not work for food that perishes, but for food that endures unto eternal life…”
An obsessive amount of alone time, a lack of exercise, a lack of meaningful conversations and no quality prayer time leave the hungry soul aching for nourishment, desirous of connection and meaning. “Don’t work for junk food”, Jesus tells us. Rather, acknowledge both the hunger and the source that truly feeds that hunger.
And what is that source? As the dialogue continues, Jesus tells us: “I am the bread, the ‘manna’ that comes down from heaven. Manna literally means “What is it?” Jesus tells us he is the ‘what is it” that our souls hunger for, the connection for which our hearts thirsts. And we have a choice. We can either fill our souls with that which nourishes us, or we can feast on junk food and exist from meal to meal, never connected to those deepest hungers. IT TAKES A CONSCIOUS CHOICE. I can train my heart and habits to seek for that which is healthy, that which truly satisfies. But if I don’t, I will end up settling for spiritual junk food.
Doing that begins with mindfulness, doesn’t it? With an attentiveness to what is going on in my heart and life. In this bread of life discourse, we will hear a lot of back and forth between Jesus and the disciples/crowd. And mostly the crowd does not get it. But today, we hear the one line where the people of Jesus’ time got it right. “Sir, give us this bread always.” If I can train the taste buds of my soul to not settle for anything less than that, anything less than THE BREAD of LIFE, who is Jesus, then I think I am on the right track.
So, what if you made that thought the first thought of your day? What if that passage became your inner music, your one line mantra that you would repeat each time you encounter a new person? “Sir, give us this bread always.” What if you breathed that each time you shifted from one activity to another? What if you thought: “Lord, give me this bread of life within me as I play catch with my son? As I engage my daughter in a game? What if that were the first thought in your heart as you settle around the dinner table with your spouse and family? “Sir, give us this bread always!” Wouldn’t it open me/us up to the bread who is Jesus, present in each moment, each situation of my day?
Because here is what I know. Unless I am very intentional about my trips to the kitchen, I will always choose the Mint Oreo Thins. So, too, unless I train the taste buds of my soul, I will always settle for the equivalent of spiritual junk food. “Sir, give us [gesture to altar] THIS bread always.” Always… Let that be our only prayer and desire – to work for the food which endures unto eternal life.