As many of you know, I own a Pembroke Welsh Corgi, they are a beautiful breed of dog, with only two problems that I have encountered in these 10 years. The first is that they shed incessantly, messy but not deadly. The second problem is that they will, if allowed, eat incessantly, literally until they become so obese they die. As his master I control what he eats because he can't. He lacks the gifts of intellect and will God has given to us as human beings.
Reports now suggest that 1 in 3 children in the US are overweight or obese, and as of January 2009 the number of obese Americans actually exceeded those who are merely overweight. This usually gets addressed from either a physical or mental health perspective, but I would suggest that there is a spiritual component as well.
We try to fill the spiritual void in our life with food, when it is an anthropological fact that human beings are spirit and matter, body and soul; and only there is a void in us that can only be filled by God. We need to fill it with prayer, we need to fill it with the grace of the sacraments especially the Eucharist.
In today's gospel Jesus states as simple fact "whoever comes to me will never hunger." The problem is some people read this as a once in a lifetime event. The reality is that we have keep coming to him, keep asking "Give us this day our daily bread." Like the manna in the desert the people were required to go back day after day to be fed by God.
The next time we reach of the physical food we don't need stop, and ask yourself, "Would I be better of just taking a minute to pray for spiritual food?" Unlike the dog, we have the intellect to know the truth and the freedom to choose rightly.
