The hand of the Lord feeds us, the Psalmist says; the Lord answers all our needs. In fact, the Psalmist says, the Lord satisfies the desire of every living thing.

Is the Psalmist blind? Or is he a shameless liar? The whole earth is soaked with the tears of the suffering. Who suffers when his desire is satisfied? Who cries when his needs are met?

But here we might pause to consider: what actually are our needs? If I say that I need red shoes to complement my outfit, are red shoes a need of mine? Ridiculous thought, isn’t it?

A need is something without which we cannot live. But anybody can live without red shoes. Food, water, clothing, shelter – these are our needs, because without them we will die.

But these are not our only needs, are they? We need education, too. And that’s not nearly all. We need the beauty of nature and of art. And what are these to us if we can’t share them? We need company as well. We need love most of all.

And so we need more than food and shelter to live. We need truth and beauty, love and care, too. That is because there is more than one way to die. We can die in the body, but we can also die in our minds and hearts. A person adequately fed and sheltered but deprived of love will wither away.

In fact, the needs of the soul are primary. As long as they are met, even the death of the body cannot kill us. As the martyrs of the Church show us, a person can die in the body and still live, as long as his soul is nurtured and sheltered by the love of the Lord.

The Lord himself is our greatest need, then. And, whether we feel it or not, our deepest desire is for the Lord too. Whatever we get, we will drown in disappointment if we do not get Him.

And that is why the Psalmist concludes by saying that the Lord is near to all who call upon him. Even in our worst suffering, what we most greatly need and desire, the Lord himself, is always at hand for us. The hand of the Lord feeds us till we want no more.

Eleonore Stump