Wrong analogy

I had the pleasure of speaking to an old high school friend on the phone last night. He was just like I remembered him--funny and witty, albeit a bit more serious now that he's married with a baby girl.

This friend left the Church shortly after I left for college--due to the tragic state of the diocese where I grew up, I'm sure. Many families in the area have left, and even my former youth group leader doesn't attend Mass anymore. My friend is now a youth pastor at a church in Maine, doing all sorts of good for the high school kids there, and loving all of it.

I figured I'd ask: "Do you ever miss the Eucharist? The sacraments?"

It took him a while to answer. He said it was a fair question, he just had to think about it. He said that the reason he left the Faith was that he never really "got" it, so it's kind of hard to miss it. Finally he gave me this analogy: "It's like asking an unbeliever if he misses God. Well, of course he doesn't, because he's never known God."

As I thought about it later, I started wondering about the analogy. There was something seriously lacking in it--something truly sad about my friend's situation that isn't so sad within the analogy of the unbeliever. The breakdown is here: the unbeliever has yet to encounter God, yet can still be given that opportunity. But my friend has already had the opportunity to live a sacramental life, and has turned away from it, looking elsewhere for holiness.

Because of this, I find another analogy much more suitable: it is like asking a starving man, "Do you miss food?"