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A Meditation for the First Sunday in Lent
by Fr. Cusick
2 Cor 6. 1-10     Psalm 90. 11-12     Matthew 4, 1-11
(CCC refers to the Catechism of the Catholic Church)
(used with the permission of Fr. Cusick from his website )
 
Brothers and Sisters in Christ, 

"The greatest hunger is the hunger for love." Mother Teresa says this often, and, after her  years of experience living among, feeding, clothing and caring for the poorest of the poor,  she is an expert on human needs.  Jesus Christ is that love incarnate for which every human being has been created. Every human being will satisfy their hunger for God only by seeking satisfaction in God. Jesus Christ is that bread, truly present among us: the Bread of  Life. "The bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world." And in this Bread  alone can our thirst for love be satisfied. 

The Catechism offers a meditation on our Lord's teaching in today's Gospel, and on the  petition of the Lord's Prayer for our "daily bread." 

This petition, with the responsibility it involves, also applies to another hunger from which  men are perishing: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but...by every word that proceeds  from the mouth of God,' (Deut 8:3; Mt 4:4) that is by the Word he speaks and the Spirit he  breathes forth. Christians must make every effort "to proclaim the good news to the poor."  There is a famine on earth, "not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the  words of the Lord." (Am 8:11) For this reason the specifically Christian sense of this  fourth petition concerns the Bread of Life: The Word of God accepted in faith, the Body of  Christ received in the Eucharist.(Jn 6:26-58) (CCC 2835) 

God is love, and we possess the love of God by possessing his life, receiving His Body  and Blood in the Communion of the Mass. "Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and  drink His blood, you have no life in you." With this gift we lack nothing in this world, for  infinite love is ours.