In the Gospel of St. John Chapter 6, Jesus reflects on the profound hunger in the world and he presents himself as the food that will satisfy this profound hunger of the heart. Hunger exists at various levels in the world, including the spiritual and material levels. We are more familiar with the material hunger that is ravaging the poor countries of the world, but there is a deeper hunger that has far reaching consequences than mere physical hunger. In fact it has been observed that the shameful legacy of modern society whereby millions of people are starving in a world that is so richly endowed by God, is itself a symptom of the hunger that plagues humanity on a deeper and more profound level - the level of the heart, of the soul, and of the spirit. If this deeper and more profound hunger is identified and satisfied, if this emptiness inside men and women is filled up, then perhaps the outer dislocation shall in consequence be healed, and men and women would know how to share. If the void within is filled up and human beings are healed of selfishness, greed and avarice, then perhaps the embarrassment of millions going to bed hungry shall be taken away.
Individual men and women are today hungry. Entire societies are hungry. The entire world is hungry. In the midst of civil wars, violent clashes, and brutal killings, the world is hungry for peace. From Rwandato the Democratic Republic of Congo and from Bosnia to the Middle East, men and women are hungry for peace and are yearning for a true shepherd who will lead them to green pasture. Today's men and women are impatient with the unjust structures that oppress and impoverish them. There is growing resentment and anger where rich individuals crush the poor and powerful nations enslave the weak. There is widespread disenchantment with totalitarian regimes. Men and women in various societies want to achieve a measure of self-determination. They want to claim for themselves what the United Nations Charter calls the fundamental human rights. They are passionately seeking after the ideals of democracy, whereby sovereignty will reside in the people, and those who rule will only do so with the free consent of the people. People everywhere are hungry for true human solidarity, for peace and for prosperity. The existence of this awareness of the liberating force of truth in a land largely dominated by falsehood, creates in the minds of many citizens a painful longing for the truth that sets one free.
The world is hungry for love. On the level of social relationships, men and women lament the near absence of a real commitment to mutual promotion. They therefore long for true love, understanding, mercy and compassion. On the individual level there is widespread loneliness, the loneliness of the alienated. In the modern mass society, many individuals are lost in the anonymity of the crowd. They are cold and lonely, and are therefore hungry for warmth and companionship. Many men and women suffer alienation from God, from neighbour and even from the self. This alienation gives rise to a very distressful form of hunger, a longing for the non-existing unity, harmony and wholeness.
Our world is deeply wounded. The modern person is a chronically famished person. The world cries out for healing, for wholeness, for the food that lasts. Philosophers have propounded theories aimed at satisfying the hunger of the world only to be confounded by the profundity of the hunger. And scientists who set out to satisfy hunger often end up multiplying the dimensions of this ever present reality. It has become clear to many wise people that the solution to world hunger does not lie in revolutionary ideologies or sophisticated technologies. It will not come through the numerous cults and sects that are springing up everywhere and recruiting people in their thousands.
Human beings are ever searching for genuine guides - for sages, visionaries, mediums, prophets, dibias - somebody to analyse their dreams for them; somebody to diagnose the future for them; somebody to solve the puzzle of life for them; somebody to drive out the threatening danger in their lives, somebody to ward off insecurity. We see the restlessness of the human heart expressed in the proliferation of religious and quasi-religious cults and movements today - all promising ultimate fulfilment or salvation. Today there are thousands of religious, mystical and magical cults and confraternities, both open and secret, yet the hunger of the human family persists, because many of those who offer to show the way are blind guides, quacks and false prophets who cannot possibly lead the famished flock to green pasture.
St. Augustine, at the height of inspiration had asserted that the Lord has created us for himself, and our hearts will remain restless, until they rest in him. Is it any wonder therefore that at the threshold of the twenty-first century alienated humanity should be so seriously plagued by divorce, frustration, loneliness, depression, boredom, violent crime, civil unrest and war? Is it surprising that our generation has the highest rate of suicide in recorded human history? Is it surprising that in our day the phenomena of secret cults and drug abuse are sweeping through the institutions of higher learning like an epidemic, and engaging thousands of youths in a dance of death? Are these not symptoms of an overwhelming sense of futility? Are they not evidences of a widespread loss of meaning and hope in human existence? Can we not see nemesis at work in all these? Having lost their spiritual roots, are individual men and women, and indeed entire societies and generations not bound to starve, wither and collapse? The experience of the absence of God announces the imminence of his judgement, for according to Paul the divine judgement consists in the fact that God leaves the sinner and the world to themselves, that he "hands them over" to the consequences of their actions, since they knew God but refused to acknowledge Him as God (Romans 1:18-32).
When we as human being are alienated from the Source and Centre of our being, no amount of business prosperity and luxury can hide the abomination of desolation within us. The human soul remain the image of God, and the inner recesses of our conscience, where the image of God is branded in the very depths of our being, ceaselessly remind us that we are born for a higher freedom and for a far more spiritual fulfilment. Thus, the concrete situation in which we find ourselves, as beings created for a supernatural end, makes anguish inevitable. We cannot rest unless we rests in God.
The book of Genesis tells us that when Adam severed relationship with God through sin, all creatures rebelled against him, and he found himself surrounded not with supports, but with so many reasons for anxiety, insecurity and fear. He was not longer able to control even his own body which became to some extent the master of his soul. Following his rebellion, Adam lost his freedom; lost his freedom of choice, but his freedom from sin. He exchanged the spontaneity of a perfectly ordered nature elevated by the highest gifts of mystical grace, for the compulsions and anxieties and weaknesses of a will left to itself. It can be demonstrated today that though the status of religion is not particularly high in many people's awareness and practices, the religious theme is nevertheless not disappearing from human life. It is being repressed from consciousness. Its repression creates a void, an emptiness, although it is often not recognised that what is missing is in fact religion.
We maintain that the hunger of the world is not a merely social, economic or political problem. The existential vacuum in the modern society is not merely a sociological problem. It is a spiritual problem that manifests itself on the social, economic, political and cultural spheres of human existence. The hunger of the world is a theological problem that will not be solved, save by theological means. The void created by the loss of the life of God cannot be filled by any other entity. Only a return to God will satisfy the greatest yearning of the human heart and the human society.
