18th SUNDAY OF THE YEAR
‘Work for food that endures to eternal life’ Jack Dempsey was one of the most famous and popular boxers in history. On July 4th 1919 he reached the pinnacle of his career when he defeated Jess Willard to become heavyweight champion of the world. The next morning when he awoke in his hotel room he had a strange sense of emptiness inside. When asked to explain this surprising feeling, he replied: ‘success didn’t taste the way I thought it would. I had won the world championship, so what’? Down through the ages people have discovered as Dempsey did, that worldly success, fame, adulation do not satisfy the deepest hungers of the human heart. Seeking satisfaction in the things of the world is like chasing the wind. Something more is needed, and in chapter six of St. John’s Gospel Jesus points the way. He is the Bread of Life and our hearts will always be restless until they rest in Him. Every longing that we try to satisfy apart from Him will fall short. Come to think of it the main difference between the greatest saint and the greatest sinner is where they go to satisfy the hungers of their hearts. The seventeenth century French philosopher Blaise Pascal expressed it better than most when he wrote: ‘There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each person which cannot be satisfied by any created thing, but only by God the Creator made known by Jesus Christ’.
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