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Are we, the people of the 21st century, hungry for God? Are you hungry for God?There doesn’t seem to be much talk or writing about this hunger today in the media, Catholic or secular. There wasn’t much talk or writing about it either back in 1971—at the end of that Vietnam War, Post-Vatican II, “Hippy”, Social Justice Era—when Catherine Doherty gave the talk to the MH staff that was made into this article.
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I must confess that I am a little bit “shook up.” I, a veteran of many years of lecturing and travelling, found that this last lecturing trip of March, 1971, has shaken me up.
” I, a veteran of many years of lecturing and travelling, found that this last lecturing trip of March, 1971, has shaken me up.
After giving close to sixteen lectures, maybe even more, I know that I have seen and touched a hunger for God. It was palpable. It was all around and about me. It clung to me and would not let me go.
For during the lecture trip I was led to one group and then whisked over to another group with some of the people from the previous one following me.
There would be a coffee break at one place or other, and then there would be questions. Intelligent questions. Simple questions. Direct questions. And questions that made you want to cry.
But when all the questions were added up, I could almost see hands reaching out to me in that tremendous hunger for God.
Then there would be other groups. There would be lunches. Suppers. And dinners. And more questions. And men and women crying out to God, Out of the depths I cry to Thee, O Lord, hear my voice! (Ps 130:1-2).
Perhaps I had better simply say that I talked from about 9 a.m. to almost midnight of any given day. And everywhere I was faced with this hunger for God.
I wonder if any of us really, honestly, have listened to our brothers’ and sisters’ hunger for God. A howl? I know hunger has a voice. It is a howling voice.
I used to scream myself in Russia when I was hungry with real physical hunger during our starvation time around 1919 and thereabouts. I came out of Russia then weighing 82 pounds. When that kind of hunger takes hold of you, you howl.
But the voice of man’s hunger for God is more shaking than his hunger for bread. It shakes you like a reed in the wind. There are moments when that hunger reaches out to your mind and heart—when you want to run away. But you don’t.
You might be tired, you might be exhausted. Your throat might be practically raw from speaking. You are sure that you can’t find another sentence to put together. … Yet, lo and behold, from somewhere the answer to that hunger comes out from your very insides.
You can see that something you said answered something. You can see it in their eyes, in the eyes of the audience.
The beating of those questioning voices, the hunger in them, was like a restless sea that hurls its endless surf against the beach.
Yes—such is the voice of man’s hunger for God! Or is it a whisper? Yes, it can also be a whisper. When it is a whisper, it is because the person is beyond speech. He might be almost dead. Sick people usually whisper. Men who almost lose hope whisper too.
Have you ever looked in the eyes of a person who has almost lost hope? They are completely different from those who have lost hope entirely.
There is that strange appeal in their eyes. You feel that you must put your mouth against their mouth to render First Aid. To resuscitate, to call them forth from some sort of a death, for they seem very close to it.
You get to be like a person who is ready to die for the other. You feel yourself collecting yourself to render this First Aid, to help to resuscitate this other, because you truly love him or her, and you love with that incredible love that Christ told us to love with:
Greater love has no man than he lays his life down for a friend, (Jn 15:13), and you are truly ready, if need be, to lay your life down—to bring hope back to the one who is almost hopeless.
At that moment you are shaken with another realization. You suddenly understand that you are but an instrument in God’s hands, a straw in his palm, which he is going to throw out to the one who is almost hopeless to hold on to, to grasp.
Who Are You? This is a moment of a blinding truth. This is the moment of true reality. This is the moment which I am unable to even try to explain. For the vividness of it is staggering.
For that is the moment when you realize who you are. That you are a creature and God is the Creator. That you are a “poor person,” totally and utterly dependent on God and suddenly you cling to him, for you know that if you do, you will become a corridor for God to walk through.
Incredible as this might seem, you suddenly take a new look at yourself, whilst lecturing to the audience. Yes, you look at yourself and you look at God, who seems to be ready to walk through you, to help every man, woman and child in the audience.
Silently you cry out within yourself: “My God! This place is holy.” And in the middle of a lecture you bow to yourself so to speak because suddenly in a flash you suddenly realize that in deed and in truth, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit dwell within you.
It is They who now have come to answer the questions of man, and you stand before the audience, utterly dumb, though you continue speaking.
Yes, you continue speaking; the flow of your words continues as before. But you know now that you are dumb with a sort of beautiful dumbness, because God has now taken over.
For before your very eyes, you see people change and become full of hope, and only God can give that kind of hope!
In one city I was told that I had to brace myself because I was going to give a series of lectures there to youth. Youth, they said, who had lost the faith. Youth who were dreaming of violence. Youth who were angry.
I could only smile, for I knew that God was hungry to talk to that youth. He was. With those young people I discovered—or should I say—re-discovered, that if you really love people they don’t harass you or heckle you. No. They love you back.
I must admit that I really loved all those young people. I loved them. This time with a strange extraordinary love that like a tremendous wave passed through me through the whole series of lectures. I wanted to take everybody in my arms. I wanted to hold them. I wanted to tell them how much I loved them.
Evidently I didn’t have to. Somehow they knew it. How did they know? I don’t know, because I didn’t express it by word of mouth.
I just went quietly about the talk that they wanted me to give.
After one talk, a young man said to me, “I have lost my faith.” I smiled back at him and quietly said, “That is fine, but Faith has not lost you!” He looked at me with a smile and said, “Gee, can I write that down?” I said, “Sure, of course. Why not. It is a free gift.”
Some of them spoke of revolutions. One group wanted a bloody one. Right here and now. The other was for more education, more infiltration, and what have you.
I quoted from the Russian book, Great Lent: “One saint —and by saint here we mean very simply a man taking his faith seriously all the time—will do more for changing the world than a thousand revolutionaries. For a saint is the only true revolutionary in this world.”
It is not revolution that is going to change the world; it is the witness of one who believes in Christ and who lives the commandments of love. So what about becoming saints?
“My friends,” I went on, “Let’s face it! The voice of man’s hunger for God is heard across the world! Don’t deceive yourselves, man desperately needs spiritual leadership. Who is going to provide it? Will your bloody or unbloody revolution do that?
Or you will become a witness to Christ which means you live in such a way that your life would not make sense if God did not exist. By doing so you would assuage man’s hunger for God and bring peace into this world.”
It was quite a little speech, I knew, but what I don’t know is why it suddenly quietened this young audience and somehow or other brought peace in their midst.
Was I again a corridor in which God passed to bring his peace? I wouldn’t know; I simply was glad that it was so.
All across the land nuns and priests are selling their seminaries and convents due to lack of vocations.
But I wondered, “Why do they sell? Why don’t they open wide their magnificent convents, seminaries, so well-built and warm, to those who have no houses; who live in crowded ghettos; to the elderly who are not in nursing homes but nevertheless are very lonely?”
We have to stop compromising with the Gospel. We must work to implement, to incarnate it in all spheres of our home life.
I asked myself these questions: “Are we going to be Christians or are we just going to play at it? Did Christ ever say that you could follow him without risk? The man who had nowhere to lay his head, the Beggar-Man, the Spendthrift of Love, the One who died on a cross for you and me?
“Are we truly listening to the voice of that hunger for God? Listening to its howling? Listening to its whispers?” And I shouted out loudly, “Let us do something about it.”
After my shouting, both I and my audience remained very silent for quite a long time. It seemed as if we were praying together. I think we were.
Let each one of us examine our consciences. Yes, I, a veteran of many years of lecturing and travelling must confess that I was quite “shook up” from this last lecturing trip of mine. Wouldn’t you be too?
Excerpted and adapted from Restoration, May 1971
