THE SEARCH FOR WHAT TRULY FILLS

The 20th-century writer Antonio Porchia lived a quiet life on the margins, an Italian immigrant in Argentina, a man who spoke through fragments of distilled wisdom rather than essays or sermons. His only book, Voces (Voices, 1943), is a collection of brief, luminous aphorisms that explore the paradoxes of being human. One of his most profound lines reads:

“He who makes a paradise of his bread makes a hell of his hunger.”

Porchia’s “bread” is more than food. It represents all the comforts and securities we cling to. To make a paradise of our bread is to treat the things that feed or please us, like money, possessions, success or routine, as the source of ultimate happiness. Yet when we elevate these things to that status, the moment they are gone or threatened, we feel not simple loss but despair. What was meant to nourish us now rules us.

“Hunger,” Porchia reminds us, is inevitable, both literal and spiritual. We will always long for something more: for meaning, love, recognition, peace. The problem is not the hunger itself, but how we respond to it. If our paradise depends entirely on what we can hold or consume, then we have built our joy on sand. When that “bread” disappears, so does our peace.

Porchia’s wisdom invites us to live differently: to enjoy life’s gifts without worshipping them, to find contentment not in what we own but in who we are. It is a call to ground our children’s and our own sense of fulfilment in something deeper: faith, community, kindness, and the quiet assurance that we are loved and capable, even when our “bread” runs low.

For our families at St Thomas More’s, this might mean encouraging our children to see joy not in the latest toy or victory, but in the shared meal, the act of helping a friend, or the courage to try again after failing. Bread sustains the body, but it is love, gratitude, and purpose that sustain the soul.

Mr Casimir Douglas

Sunday 26th October, 2025