Weekly HOMILY for September 20, 2006: Food for Our Bodies; Food for Our Souls

20th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Cycle B
Our Lady of Grace
August 20, 2006

Food for Our Bodies; Food for Our Souls
By (Rev. Msgr.) Nicholas P. Amato


Food for the Body

If you go into Barnes and Noble, Brentanos, Borders, or any other bookstore, you will find shelf after shelf of cookbooks.

There are cookbooks for different cultures, like Mexican, Caribbean and French. There are cookbooks for different regions, like Tuscany in Italy or Louisiana in our country.

And there are cookbooks for different food types, like desserts or breads or salads. And then, there are also books that help us to deal with the results of all these great cookbooks. They’re called diet books.

There is the South Beach, the Atkins, the low carb, the low fat, the no meat, the no grain – a thousand and one kinds of possible diets.

There’s no doubt about it; our bookstores reveal that we have a lot of interest in food and nutrition.


Food for the Soul

Now, while we have all this liking and concern for food for our body, today’s Scripture readings call us to be concerned about food for our soul.

The readings hold up two types of spiritual food. And both types of food are important for our spiritual satisfaction and health.


The Food of the Word

First, there is the food of God’s Word.

Today’s first reading describes wisdom or the Word of God as a sumptuous banquet, almost like a buffet with our favorite meats, fish, poultry, vegetables, and desserts.

The passage calls us feast on God’s Word with much the same gusto because this feasting will give us both wisdom and life.

Our failure to feast on the Word leads to foolishness and death. The important insight to get here is that the spiritual food of God’s Word is sacramental and not just informational.

Perhaps we have not thought about God’s Word in this way before, but it truly is sacramental, and not just informational. Here is what I mean.

Most of what we read everyday is informational. For example, the pamphlet in the doctor’s office informs us about the importance of exercise.

Or the sports page informs us that the Orioles have got to acquire a front-line pitcher in the off-season. We read to gain information.

However, the food of God’s Word is different; it’s not informational; it’s sacramental. It speaks to our deepest hungers, engages us, and out of that engagement can come transformation as persons.

Yes, the Word of God, as sacramental, can have an effect on who we are, on our very being. Because the Word of God is precisely sacramental, it creates what it expresses. Imagine that! It creates what it expresses!

Thus, it can add joy to our sadness, comfort to our grief, presence to our isolation. It can do this because God is physically present in these sacred, inspired texts. They are God’s very words.

So we need to read and to listen to the Word of God differently from the way we read and listen to other things we read, just for the sake of information. We need to approach the reading of this Word as sacramental, as bringing us the presence of God and being able to transform who we are as persons.


The Food of the Eucharist

The second type of spiritual food is the Eucharist.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is talking about the bread and wine that he gives us – his Body and Blood. As with the Word, this food also will lead us to a fuller life and eventually life eternal.

We all know that the Eucharist is, of course, sacramental. It effects, it makes happen, what it signifies.

The idea here is that God wants to be so close to us that there is literally nothing between us. To accomplish that, Jesus gives us himself as food-to-be-eaten.

He enters inside us and dwells within us as food. Through this presence, we have a closeness and an intimacy with God that is almost unimaginable!

And this relationship or union with God happens in a way that is opposite from how ordinary food works.

When we eat ordinary food, like a bowl of Raisin Bran or a hamburger, we transform that food into ourselves. It becomes part of our body and part of us.

But the food of the Eucharist works differently. It transforms us into Jesus. It takes us up, draws us into, God’s very life.

This is why the word “comm-union” so beautifully expresses what happens here. This spiritual food produces and effects a comm.-union of being and life with God and us.

As St. Paul says, “It is now no longer I, but Christ who lives in me.” So, we need to approach this food of the Eucharist with an openness to the sacramental power that it has.


Conclusion

So, yes, we are naturally concerned about food for our bodies, about the satisfaction and health that can come from such food.

But today’s readings raise our sights to food for our souls, to the spiritual satisfaction and health that it brings.

The Word of God and the Eucharist are this food for us.