Hunger is the great equalizer. A growling stomach makes no distinction between race, class, or social status. Both the wealthy man dining in a five-star restaurant and the beggar pleading for scraps on the street share the same fundamental need: food. Yet in today’s media-saturated world, the ever-present cooking shows, culinary blogs, vlogs, and round-the-clock delivery apps have turned food into a distraction, concealing the deeper hungers that truly afflict us.

Take, for instance, those living in poverty. Their hunger goes beyond food. They yearn for dignity, justice, and recognition of their humanity. However, some of them have come to use hunger as a means to perpetuate a cycle of dependency. Flaunting their victimhood, they join mass protests against economic inequality while neglecting, or even worsening, problems within their own families and communities that they have the power to address.

The wealthy and powerful also suffer from a more insidious hunger, born of an unceasing pursuit of satisfaction. Their unspoken motto is “Never enough.” Many suffer from anxiety, depression, chronic insecurity, and a suffocating sense of emptiness. As the saying goes, “Nature abhors a vacuum.” When that inner void grows, their baser instincts rush to fill it. As St. Thomas Aquinas wisely observed, “No man can live without pleasure. So if a person deprives himself of higher pleasures, he will go scavenging for the less wholesome kind.”

Even within the Church, another kind of hunger festers among devout believers. They may not be obsessed with food or wealth, but they are hungry for those “blessings” promised by televangelists and preachers, who peddle a distorted Gospel. With their seductive mantra—“Name it and claim it!”—they reduce God to a kind of cosmic vending machine, dispensing prosperity and healing in exchange for the right incantation. In doing so, they set their listeners up for spiritual disillusionment and disappointment.

Modern media and our consumer-driven culture exacerbate these hungers, presenting consumption as the cure for every craving. So we eat when we are stressed, binge when we are lonely, and wander from buffet to buffet when the à la carte menu bores us. These habits may satisfy us temporarily, but they leave us just as empty as before.

Yet no matter the form our hunger takes, Jesus offers a timeless truth: “Man shall not live by bread alone” (Matthew 4:4). We are not merely physical beings—we are spiritual as well. We crave meaning, connection, peace, and purpose. True fulfilment does not come from a full stomach, but from a relationship with the One who made us.

At the Last Supper, when Jesus broke the bread and said, “This is my body, given for you” (Matthew 26:26), He was doing more than instituting a ritual. He was extending an invitation to a relationship. The Eucharist is not just a symbolic act or a remembrance—it is participation in the life, love, and sacrifice of Christ.

In this light, it is more accurate to say, “I will experience Communion,” rather than “I will receive Communion,” as though the Eucharist were merely an object to be consumed. The Holy Eucharist is a transformative encounter. Each time the priest offers you the sacred host, saying, “The Body of Christ,” your “Amen” is more than an affirmation of belief. It is a pledge to become like Christ in the Eucharist—broken and poured out, freely and lovingly, for God and others.

On this Solemn Feast of Corpus Christi, the Gospel recounts the story of the apostles offering Jesus just five loaves and two fish. Yet, once blessed by Him, these were enough to feed five thousand people (Luke 9:11-17). Trusting in His power to multiply even the little we can give, let us become living eucharists in a world that hungers not only for food, but for spiritual nourishment.