Monastery of the Holy Cross

Most discussions on Catholics’ belief in the Real Presence focus on catechesis, whether we properly teach people the doctrine of transubstantion, etc.

I’ve recently wondered to what extent our appreciation for this Most Holy Sacrament is adversely affected by our generally skewed relationship with food and nourishment.  In most societies in most eras, food is central to life for the obvious reason that if you don’t eat, you don’t live.  There has normally existed a very real possibility for the majority of persons that not enough food would be around.  In the modern West, we have more or less eliminated famine (for ourselves) by advances in scientific food production and preservation.  Relatively few Americans go to bed hungry; indeed, often poorer persons tend more toward obesity, a sign not of a dearth of food, but a dearth of quality food, perhaps.

Because we have forgotten what it is like to have the possibility of starvation in the back of our minds, our relationship to food has changed.  This relationship may also be related to a general Gnostic tendency in our culture, to see ourselves as minds and spirits trapped in bodies but not as bodies themselves.  Eating is a way to combat existential problems: we seek pleasure from food, not nourishment.  And we seek this pleasure because the pain of purposelessness and alienation is a greater threat than starvation.

There is another, parallel difficulty with food, which might appear at first glance to be anti-Gnostic: the cult of the body, the priests of which are the nutritionists, plastic surgeons, and fitness trainers.  This might appear to be an over-emphasis on the body, and perhaps this is so.  I have a hunch that it partakes of Gnosticism, but let’s assume for the sake of brevity that it is really materialism.  Now, it is not the taste or the comfort of food but its precise chemical contents that matters, what it will do for my body.  Many people today refuse to celebrate by, say, eating a piece of cake on someone’s birthday for fear of not being able to run that marathon next Saturday.  Thus food again is not nourishment per se, that is, strength for the whole person, but something more like fuel; you fuel a car, you don’t nourish.  We ought to nourish our bodies, but so often you hear today about us fueling them.

In either of these scenarios, the Eucharist comes off wanting, at least as food.  There is much more I could say on this, but I will admit that my thought is not fully formed, so I will leave the topic here and see what readers come up with.  But to summarize what I’ve written here, in the first case, the Eucharist will not bring any major sensual pleasure, and so seems paltry compared to…Ben and Jerry’s?  Red Bull?  Doritos?  We are so saturated with food all the time and almost no one fasts before the Eucharist anymore, so the sensation of tasting the Eucharist and receiving it into ourselves is dulled.  The second case is more difficult for me to analyze, as it’s not much of a temptation to me.  But let’s just say that over-emphasis on the material aspect of food vitiates the easy understanding of the Eucharist as a celebration, as larger-scale nourishment.  By Eucharist here I mean the Body and Blood of Christ Himself, not the ritual of the gathered assembly (which as a result is over-stressed?).

“Better a fast with a pure heart than a feast in impurity of soul.”

–Evagrius of Pontus, Ad Monachos 44