A  SECRET  CALLED  EMPTINESS

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this Tuesday after Epiphany  is, “A Secret Called Emptiness.”

To know I have a gauge on the dashboard of my soul – with the letters E and F – Empty or Full –  is to know one of the important secrets about life.

As we keep moving along the road of life –  sometimes we notice our life is running on empty.

What satisfies us? What fills our emptiness? What fills us up?

TODAY’S READINGS

Today’s readings trigger thoughts about emptiness.

In today’s first reading from the First Letter of John we hear that the person who is without love does not know God. They are empty – but they might not know it.

Then First John says that the opposite is also true: the person who loves God in his or her emptiness – knows God – or at least has glimpses of their hunger for God within.

The dying fire is dying for fuel.  The empty stomach is growling for food.

The Gospels teach us that Christianity points us to the cross with the almost naked – the empty nailed down handed Christ – on each  cross.

Each person who comes to church – arrives with an empty hungry heart – for communion with Christ. Each person comes up the aisle – to stop and to be fed with Christ the Bread of life – for Christ who with emptied bellied sounds  - the empty Christ – wanting to be filled with us in return – in communion – filled with love for us.

Today’s gospel from Mark 6 tells us about all this – when he tells us about a vast crowd of 5000 who are like sheep without a shepherd – who are hungry and empty – and Jesus tells his disciples to feed them.

They ask if Jesus wants them to buy 200 days’ wages worth of food to feed this hungry crowd?

Jesus asks them to find out what they already have.  Then with 5 loaves of bread and the 2 fish that they have, Jesus asks his disciples to break up the crowd into rows of 100 and 50 – and then break up the bread and feed these hungry caught fish. They do and all those empty stomachs are filled – and they have 12 wicker baskets of bread and fish left over.

Blessed are those who hunger – for they shall have their full.

Blessed are those who know they are empty – for they shall discover the need to beg in order to be full.

Blessed are those without love, as the first reading puts it – because then they can open up their empty hands – and become full with the bread of life.

EMPTINESS

The Hollywood screen writer, Ben Hecht, once described love as having “a hole in the heart.”

Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician and Christian spiritual writer said, “There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every one which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.”

When was the last time I felt empty?

Walk down any street – walk into any store or any mall  - and you can see that everyone of us is a beggar on the corners of life.

Then there all those  teenagers – and so many others -  with their cellphones filling their ears. The increase of cellphone sound signals for me that many people want  communion – holy communion – daily communion with others.

There are all the hungry people with their plastic bags – walking out of a hundred stores with their fill of stuff to fill their empty hearts.

As someone said: the rich feel so empty – because they want the poor to be filled with envy for them; but the poor know they are empty because they want the so much more – and on and on and on – the world turns.

CONCLUSION

The title of my homily was, “A Secret Called Emptiness.”

Only the person who knows their emptiness or almost emptiness – pulls into the rest area – to be filled.