Hunger, Desire, and the Bread of Life
Hunger, Desire, and the Bread of Life
By Jonathan A. Powers
A Simple Lesson about Hunger
There are two words spoken many times each day in our home by our daughter Elizabeth, two words spoken in many homes around the world: “I’m hungry.” As tiresome as it can sometimes be to hear those words repeatedly, especially right after dinner, they are actually important words. They are words we are glad to hear because we know that hunger is a good thing. It means she is growing and that her body and mind are aware of her need for food.
This lesson became especially clear to us in the first few weeks after Elizabeth was born. She did not eat very much and slept far more than expected. During an early check-in with her doctor, we learned that she was not gaining weight as she should because she was not eating enough. The problem was that she was not feeling hunger in the way a newborn normally would. She wasn’t crying to be fed, and she would often fall asleep while eating. For several weeks we had to establish new routines and feeding schedules to help her body recognize its need for nourishment. Eventually, her body became aware of hunger, and ever since then, she has not stopped letting us know.
That experience taught us something simple but profound: hunger is a gift. Hunger reminds us that we need nourishment to live. This truth is not only physical, it is also spiritual.
Human Beings as Creatures of Desire
In his book For the Life of the World, Alexander Schmemann observes that human beings are not merely homo sapiens (thinking beings) but homo adorans (worshiping beings). Since worship is related to love, Schmemann’s point is that at our core we are desiring beings. Our lives are driven by desire.
One of the most fundamental desires we experience is hunger. From the moment we leave the womb, we have an innate hunger for food. Hunger directs us toward the means of life. If we do not feel hunger or do not respond to it properly, it will eventually lead to our deterioration. Hunger is therefore not the enemy but a guide.
Hunger also reminds us that we are not self-sufficient. We cannot survive on our own. We need something outside ourselves to live. We need food and drink that come from outside us to satisfy a need within us.
This physical reality points to a spiritual reality. Just as we need physical nourishment, we also need spiritual nourishment. Jesus himself made this connection when he said:
“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4; Deuteronomy 8:3).
Physical hunger can therefore remind us of our spiritual hunger. The physical and the spiritual are not opposed to each other; they are intertwined. God often uses physical things, even physical desires, to draw us toward Himself. This is why fasting is such a significant spiritual discipline in the Christian life. The physical urge we feel to eat when abstaining from food reminds us that we have desire, and that our desire needs proper direction.
Desire and the Problem of Consumerism
Within some movements of Christianity, there has been an idea that the goal of the spiritual life is to eliminate or transcend physical desire, as if physical desire itself were evil. Practices such as fasting or abstinence are sometimes misunderstood as attempts to suppress the body in order to become more spiritual.
But the Christian goal is not the eradication of desire; it is the ordering of desire.
Fasting, abstinence, prayer, and other spiritual disciplines are not meant to destroy desire but to redirect it toward God. These practices intensify our awareness of desire so that we might turn toward God rather than self-gratification. They teach us to seek satisfaction not on our own terms but in God’s provision.
The problem, however, is that we tend to want instant gratification. We want our desires satisfied immediately. When this happens, our desires become disordered, and we settle for false forms of satisfaction. This is the spiritual problem of consumerism.
Consumerism is not only an economic or cultural phenomenon but a spiritual disposition. Consumerism is characterized by indulgence, restlessness, and constant dissatisfaction. It trains us to believe that satisfaction is always just one more purchase, one more experience, or one more achievement away. But consumerism depends on dissatisfaction. It thrives on keeping people always wanting more.
This is why consumerism ultimately enslaves the soul. It turns people into addicts of consumption. It trains people to treat the world as an object for personal pleasure rather than as a gift from God.
In contrast, St. Augustine spoke of the Christian life as a life of rightly ordered love. Augustine famously wrote:
“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
Rightly ordered love means that our desires are oriented first and foremost toward God, the only One who can truly satisfy the human heart. When our love is rightly ordered, we begin to practice patience, simplicity, moderation, self-control, and charity. Our desires are not destroyed. Instead, they are transformed.
Through prayer, fasting, worship, and acts of mercy, our desires are gradually reordered so that we learn to receive the world as a gift rather than consume it for pleasure. What were once self-indulgent desires become self-giving acts of love, justice, empathy, and compassion.
True satisfaction is therefore not something we can create for ourselves. It is a gift that can only be received from God.
The Crowd That Sought Bread
This theme of desire helps us understand Jesus’ teaching in John 6. After the feeding of the five thousand, a crowd follows Jesus across the sea, searching for Him. When they finally find Him, Jesus says something surprising:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life” (John 6:26–27).
The crowd is chasing Jesus not because of who He is but because of what He can give them. They want more bread. They want another miracle. They want their physical hunger satisfied.
Jesus does not deny the importance of physical needs. He had just fed them. Now He wants to address their deeper hunger because their desires are disordered. They are focused on temporary satisfaction rather than eternal life.
This connects to another Gospel passage where the disciples are described as having hardened hearts because they “did not understand about the loaves” (Mark 6:52). The issue is not intellectual misunderstanding. It is a problem of desire. Their hearts are not rightly ordered.
The crowd in John 6 reveals the same problem. They are spiritually hungry but do not realize it. They are focused on temporary bread while standing in front of the Bread of Life. So, they demand another sign from Jesus and even reference the manna in the wilderness:
“Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat’” (John 6:31).
They are essentially saying, “If you want us to believe you, do what Moses did. Give us bread from heaven.”
Jesus responds with a correction and a revelation:
“It was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (John 6:32–33).
The manna in the wilderness was not just food. It was a sign that God was sustaining His people (Exodus 16; Psalm 78:24). Now Jesus tells them that the true bread from heaven is not merely something God gives, it is someone God gives.
Jesus Himself is the Bread of Life (John 6:35).
He is not simply the giver of bread; He is the bread. He is the one who gives not just physical life but eternal life. Just as bread is necessary for physical survival, Christ is necessary for spiritual life. Only in Him is true and abundant life found (John 10:10).
Learning to Hunger for God
Human beings are creatures of desire whose hearts seek satisfaction. Our desires remind us that we are not self-sufficient. We need something outside ourselves to satisfy our longings. This is true both physically and spiritually.
But too often we try to satisfy our deepest desires with lesser things: food, sex, pleasure, success, possessions, entertainment, or achievement. When we set our desires on these things, our love becomes disordered, and our hearts become restless and hardened to spiritual realities.
We need the Holy Spirit to reorder our desires and awaken us to our spiritual hunger for the Bread of Life. We need to become aware of our hunger for God.
This is one reason the Church gathers for worship, prayer, Scripture reading, fasting, service, and the sacraments. These practices are not empty rituals but are means through which God offers grace to awaken our hunger for Him. They train our hearts to desire the right things.
This is especially true at the Lord’s Table. In the Eucharist, we are fed by the grace of God. We receive the Bread of Life, Jesus Himself, who was sent from heaven so that we might have life (John 6:51).
We come to the Table hungry, and Christ feeds us.
We come restless, and Christ gives us rest.
We come empty, and Christ fills us.
As we learn to hunger for Him, we begin to discover what St. Augustine meant when he said that our hearts are restless until they rest in God. True satisfaction is not found in consuming the world. It is found in communion with Christ. He is the Bread of Life. And He offers Himself to us so that we might truly live.
