Father’s Notebook - August 27, 2019

Greetings all!

It is so good to be home! What a blessed retreat I had, and what an even more blessed celebration at my Mass of Installation last Saturday! Thank you to everyone who made the time to come out and celebrate, and thank you to all those who helped with the reception afterwards. I joked with the volunteers that night that we should have some kind of celebration/potluck dinner every month, to which they almost fainted.

It’s hard work to put together a large meal for a whole community. Sometimes now-a-days, it’s hard work to put on a meal for just one’s own family. I remember growing up, there was one time that was non-negotiable, and that was family dinner every night. No matter how much homework we had, no matter what we were out doing with friends, we had to get home to have dinner with the family. 

It was a unifying moment for our family every day. Each evening, my mom would cook a delicious family-style meal, some of us would set the table, others would clean up afterwards. And then we would gather around, pray and share in the meal together.

In some ways, we all worked together to help satisfy the same desire in each one of us: hunger. There’s a spiritual analogy here that one can also see. That in each of us, there is a deep hunger for God as well, and if we are able to work together and come together we will find spiritual food for that hunger.

No matter the person, no matter their belief or way of life, whether he/she knows it or not, one thing is the same: the deep hunger for God. As you go about your week, begin to notice that hunger in you, begin to pay attention to how you are or are not addressing that hunger, but more importantly see the hunger in the people around you. Then if you can, offer them a chance to receive the true food that satisfies the soul.

“Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” - John 6:54-56

You are in my prayers and I will offer a Mass for all who read this.

Pax Christ,
Fr. Khoi