Love Overcomes All—Even Hunger

This year, we're collaborating with writers across the Augustine Collective, a network of student-led Christian journals, to bring you a series of short devotional articles during this season of Lent, the 40-day period prior to Easter. Find this series also published by UChicago's CANA Journal and UC Berkeley's TAUG.

By catherine horner, dartmouth college

“But he answered, ‘It is written, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”’” (Matthew 4:4; cf. Deuteronomy 8:3)

It is tradition for Catholics to abstain from food for an hour before receiving the Eucharist. As a result, I am often hungry during Mass. I know this isn’t true hunger—it isn’t starvation. Even so, the small sensations bite, distracting me from my prayer.

I too often overlook the blessing that I have not lived in deprivation. Sometimes I say “give us this day our daily bread” without thinking. After learning about and reflecting on the dark realities beneath our comforts, I want to believe that I would not succumb to the biological impulse of hunger and would still rejoice in faith. But what about that hour in Mass! When I think about the world in these extreme terms, I recall something my brother once told me: “Never forget the colossal power of love.” Love is indeed colossal. How my small struggles pale before the Passion of Christ.

I tend not to think about the Passion in my daily modes of Lent. Indeed, Lenten practices can seem so small in comparison. To love God is to resist eating that piece of cake. To love God is to pray in the morning, to hold the door for your neighbor, and to wash the remaining dishes. How removed these practices seem from the throes of His suffering. But just because a deed is ordinary does not mean it cannot be colossal. As St. Thérèse of Lisieux writes, we might “do ordinary things with extraordinary love.” Love breathes through ordinary habits and movements. Down to the smallest and most trivial detail, love remains colossal because it flows from God. And we may never know the good that it does.

My hope for this devotional is that you reflect on the following two interdependent points: First, that we do not see any challenge as too large for love. And second, that we do not see any deed as too small for love. For God oversees the stars as He does the atom, and the two are intertwined in and by the One who made them.

Catherine Horner is a junior at Dartmouth College studying Economics and Philosophy.  She serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Dartmouth Apologia, an undergraduate journal of Christian thought and member of the Augustine Collective. Catherine also enjoys surfing.