THAT EMPTY FEELING

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily is, “That Empty Feeling.”

Every once and a while “That Empty Feeling” hits us.

It might be after a funeral and we’re driving or flying home. We’re quiet. We’re thinking, feeling, wondering and worrying about the unfinished business of life.

Or it might be after a vacation and all it did was rain – or it didn’t meet our expectations – or something went wrong within family dynamics.

It might be after a third job interview and we don’t get the job – and we told at least three people we were sure we were going to get it.

It might be our kid messes up or drops out of the family or school or a relationship – in which there is a kid and they aren’t married.

It might be a wedding we’re attending – and our marriage ended in disaster and divorce – and we just feel so all alone – and we tried dating a bunch of times – but nothing really worked – and we have the feeling, “I don’t want to be here” – and the music from a few dances – were two of our old songs – and they sound so sour or ugly or “Ugh!”

EFS
I’m saying everyone here has EFS at times. You probably never heard of EFS – especially because I made it up last night. It’s the Empty Feeling Syndrome. It’s specific – particular – unique – to each of us. We know the feeling when it’s us. When someone else is describing that they are going through this – we might say “Yeah, I know the feeling!” but they know and we know – we don’t know the particular stuff in each other’s inner room.

That empty feeling irritates us or itches us the most, when the other seems more interested in something else - like a piece of gossip or how good the coffee is – or that there are donuts in room such and such and hurry if you want to get one.

The title of my homily is, “That Empty Feeling.”

TODAY’S READINGS

Today’s first reading has the whole Israelite community grumbling against Moses and Aaron. That would do it. That might give us that the empty feeling syndrome.

They are whining and complaining, grumbling and griping, about being in the desert – far from home – nowhere near the so called, “Promised Land” that Moses promised. The food was horrible. Biblical scholars usually write that manna was some dried “goo” from the tamarisk tree – which the desert people to this day call “man hu”. Translation: “What is this?”

So food would do it – especially when we put together a meal and everyone is complaining about the food – or we picked the restaurant or it’s our restaurant.

Harsh words or a tough letter – like Paul’s words in today’s second reading could do it.

Being corrected – having someone unmask our motives – in public would do it – like Jesus does in today’s gospel.

THAT FILLED FEELING

Maybe a better way to get our hands on “That Empty Feeling” is to talk a bit about that filled feeling. When do we feel filled – or fulfilled?

25th and 50th Anniversaries certainly would do it.

Even a 37th wedding anniversary might do it. I’m sitting there last evening at a wedding reception – and the couple sitting to my left – better the gal two seats away to my left says over the empty chair that her husband just left to go to the bathroom or to get a beer – “Before you leave, would you give my husband and me a blessing? Two days from now is our 37 wedding anniversary.” I said “Sure.”

So after he returned – but before I left to come back home to work on this homily – I said to both of them, “Can I give you a wedding blessing?”

The wife, quickly explained to her husband why I asked that, and he goes, “Oh good – great!” Sitting there – they pressed into each other – side to side – and they were holding hands and I said a few words of blessing – and at a pause, he whispers, “Pray that we have 37 more years at least.” And that’s what I prayed for – that they have 37 more years at least.

They unhuddled and both had tears and as I got, up she got up and said, “I have to give you a hug!” And I got a nice hug and I gave the husband one as well.

I would think they were having a filled feeling evening – up from Virginia – at the wedding of a good friend’s daughter – and I assume they renewed their marriage vows to each other in church – perhaps because I said that would be one of the hopes of our couple getting married, Katie and John, that everyone here in church would renew their wedding vows and marriage as a result of being at this wedding.

I would think we feel filled seeing our kids on stage – in a football uniform – or ballerina tutu – or getting straight A’s – or seeing grandkids in similar situations in person or in pictures.

I would think we would get that filled feeling when we unload all those plastic crates and cardboard boxes of our kid – who is just starting college and we drive them to that college and she is on the 9th floor – and you can’t get the elevator when 700 kids are arriving at the same moment at that dorm building and we have to make the 14 stair trips up to the 9th floor to her room with her stuff – but we did it.

I would assume we get that filled feeling – sitting on a screened porch. It’s night. We’re on vacation. We sit there listening to a thousand insect orchestra in live surround sound. Or it’s night and we’re at a beach house and we can hear the ocean a block away. Wave after wave after wave is pounding the shore. The surf is hitting the sand – and nobody – nobody – nobody is on a cell phone or watching television – but all are enjoying each other - sharing old stories as well as the night and its sounds.

I would assume we get that filled feeling when we’re at Mass and the music is just right – and / or we’re going down the aisle behind a kid in a dad’s arms and the dad receives communion and the kid says, “I want some too daddy. I want some too.” And we say to ourselves, "What a wonderful distraction. What a wonderful moment!"

I would assume it would come from a second honeymoon – or a couple getting some space when the kids are away at summer camp – or when a couple are 23 years married and still holding hands or hugging or smooching – and the kids see them kissing – and the kids are wondering – how come our parents are different from other parents. And the parents – overhear their kids' wonderings – and they hold each other longer that night.

THAT FILLED FEELING – THAT EMPTY FEELING

We are not cars. We don’t have a gauge on our wrist that says, “Full \\\ /// Empty."

We know how much energy is in our tank!

We know when we’re running on empty. We know the empty echo of sin – the wanting to “escape” feeling when we just spent 10 minutes in a pack - meowing catty gossip – and it went too far – and we tore another person apart - and all afternoon we can't stand the aftertaste.

We also know when we’re full to the brim – when our tank has just been topped off with goodness. And goodness, when it spills over, can be explosive. Don’t we love a summer evening moment – walking with family or friends and we see an ice cream place and we get two scoops and the cone starts leaking – and we love the taste of lick – the taste of butter almond or rum raisin ice cream – and we try to lick our chin or fingers and we’re laughing with and at each other?

SUMMARY

That Empty Feeling – as well as it’s opposite, That Full Feeling, – is the theme that I thought of as I read today’s readings – especially today’s gospel. These 4 Sundays – every 3rd year, the year we use the Gospel of Mark for Sunday readings – we switch over to this 6th chapter of John for reflection.

It’s a wonderful chapter to read slowly. It is well developed. It has many nuances. It gets at this question of the human hunger and thirst for food, for meaning, for life. It gets at the question of being empty or being full.

It talks about food, but it obviously has Eucharistic overtones and undertones.

One of the things I hear when someone tells me they have an addiction – whether its food, drink, pornography, or what have you, it’s that they have a down deep empty feeling – and they want to feed it. They often say, “I feel there’s a hole here inside my soul.”

“Feed me. Feed me. Feed me.”

The difference between social drinking and addictive drinking is pain. I remember hearing a famous - as well as classic, Alcoholics Anonymous talk – on tape – by a guy named Clarence X – who said the one identifiable item in the stories of alcoholics is that we take booze as medicine.

Addicts will tell you there is never enough alcohol, never enough food, never enough sex, to medicate that pain, to fill up the hole that person feels is in their soul.

And the first step in AA and in 12 step programs is to admit I’m powerless over my addiction – but there is a power than can help – God – my higher power.

If you haven’t read Augustine’s Confessions for a while, dust it off, and hear him say all this a thousand times better than I said some of this. Hear his words, better his prayers, his confessions to God, “You have made us for yourself and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

So that’s why we are here in church, at this meeting, at this gathering place, at this Mass. That’s why we hunger for the bread of life. We want to be in communion with Christ and all his brothers and sisters here in his midst. Here we discover Christ more and more and he brings us more and more into communion with His Father and the Spirit of love between them and us. Amen.