Tolstoy said, “Everything that I know…I know only because I love.”

Likewise, everything that I know about the Eucharist…I know only because I love.

One day at the seminary I was invited by a Capuchin Father to give a talk on the Eucharist to the sisters of perpetual adoration in St. Paul’s shrine Cleveland. Although I was asked to speak Korean because there were three Korean sisters, providing an English text for the sisters, giving a talk on the Eucharist to those whose charisma is the Eucharistic Adoration seemed very hard.

Here we go again. The annual “eating less” season! The fasting, abstinence, no chocolate or coffee, cutting back “maybe this Lent I will finally lose weight” time of the year.

What does eating, or eating less, have to do with following Jesus?

There are lots of stories in the gospels about eating. One of the more powerful ones is in the gospel of Mark, where the evangelist gives us the story of the feeding of the five thousand. Jesus calls on his disciples to do something about other people’s hunger.

There are over one billion people in the world today who do not know whether they will eat on any given day. It is the first time in the history of the human race that such a number of people are food insecure.

Ephphatha! Be opened!

You are a deaf person. You don’t hear the sound of what is essential. Your ears are occupied with iPod, gossip, noise and lifeless jokes. Your heart doesn’t have room for what gives you life.

Since you are not able to listen, your words are empty. You speak, but it doesn’t last nor touch any heart. Your impediment is so great that it paralyzes you. You need healing.

Jesus took you off by himself away from the crowd, the noises, and the world, so that you could be able to listen to the Word of God and to be touched by his whole being, especially his body and blood.

Ephphatha! Be opened!

I am in the presence of God. I am in the presence of the mystery of the love of God.

I live this mystery of the love of God in every moment of my existence.

The love of God is like the ocean and I am a drop within this immensity. But I am a drop of water that never loses its own identity. God knows and loves me as an individual person. In a Chinese tale the little fishes of the sea, swimming in the depth of the ocean, speak up and ask of their elders: where is the water? The drops of water in the ocean do not live separated, isolated, independently from the water of the sea; rather, every drop is completely integrated totally as part of the water.

I, for all my individuality, do not live separated, isolated, independently from the love of God. Everything that I am, that I have, my dreams, my aspirations, are integrated into the mystery of the love of God.

How can I ask: Where does one discover the love of God? It is as if the small fishes in the depths of the ocean would ask: Where is the water? I am submerged in the love of God. The love of God is closer to me than the air that I breathe, the sound that I hear, and the fragrance that I smell.