Quotes of the Day for February 3, 2026 – Thoughts on what we truly hunger for
- Michael Haldas
- 4 hours ago
- 3 min read
“Christ is the New Adam. He comes to repair the damage inflicted on life by Adam, to restore man to true life, and thus he also begins with fasting. ‘When he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, he became hungry’ (Matthew 4:2). Hunger is that state in which we realize our dependence on something else – when we urgently and essentially need food – showing thus that we have no life in ourselves.” (Fr. Alexander Schmemann)
“To understand fasting as simply abstaining from meat and dairy, animal products, is the equivalent of understanding what Adam and Eve did in the Garden as simple disobedience to God through eating a forbidden fruit. This is not what happened. They wanted to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil before they were spiritually mature enough to be ready for it as God intended. They hungered for life on their own terms, by their own will, not in union with God. They hungered for the wrong thing. It was more of an act of self-love than love of God. They essentially refused to fast; refused to prepare properly for what God wanted to give them in due time. Because sin entered the world through hunger and refusing to fast, fasting becomes a way in which we redirect our hunger back to God so that we may hunger rightly, resist sin, repent and do good.” (Sacramental Living Ministries)
“The instinct within us that hungers for the transcendent is not a fluke nor a mistake. It is a whisper (or a shout) that calls us to stand face-to-face before the contradiction of our age. It says, “You are known. You are loved. You have purpose. You have meaning. I’ve been waiting for you”…There is a potent grace in spaces of suspension when the pilgrim nature of our lives finds expression in a period of seeking. We’re all born hungry, so hungry. We don’t always remember this, but the broken world around us was never the one for which we were originally made. At the back of our happiest moments here is the haunting strain of a music that draws us onward, beyond any good we have ever known. Our hunger is integral to our discipleship.” (Father Stephen Freeman, Sarah Clarkson)
“Sometimes at night, when the wind blows in the darkness and quiet blooms in the shadows, I sit by my window alone and let my soul stretch itself out to the love that keeps me walking through a broken world, to the light that kindles my hope, to the voice that keens and sings me forward, step by step, into the new world where all my hunger will end. But when I stopped for breath and looked around, I found myself already hungry for the next thing, and at the back of my joy grew a great fear of falling behind. I wanted a third degree, I wanted my books to be published, my voice to be heard, not from a sense of my particular importance but because the hunger still drove me. I still had this sense that significance was out there to be claimed, and I needed to push a little harder to grasp it.” (Sarah Clarkson)
“Since rejection creates an emptiness in our life and a hunger for acceptance, there is the temptation to accept some people (those who agree with us), and to reject others (those who disagree with us). We enter into an “echo chamber,” where we surround ourselves with people who will support our way of thinking, even if it is a deception….For God’s hunger is first a holy force that draws our hearts homeward and finds its satisfaction in meeting every need we bear. That hunger has followed me all of my days…Let me allow God to turn my emotional hunger into spiritual hunger for Him as I try to avoid pathways that lead only to my numerous cravings.” (Frank Hammond, Sarah Clarkson, Archpriest Steven John Belonick)