Comfort Food

I presided over the Exposition and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament tonight at the Saint Thomas Aquinas Chapel here at Saint Meinrad. I preached a short homily (my last as a transitional deacon here at the seminary) based on one of the Bread of Life discourses, specifically, Jn 6:24-35.

Some people have fried twinkies. Others have Doritos. I have the strawberry cheesequake blizzard from Dairy Queen. It’s what we call comfort food: the dessert, the snack, the meal that we would turn to when our day needs some major cheering up. When all else fails, a pint of ice cream, a slice of cold pizza, a bag of butter-drenched popcorn, or what-have-you brings that sought after consolation to the breaking heart and satisfaction to the empty stomach, and somehow it makes an unbearable day a lot more bearable.

I suppose it is part of our make-up as human beings. The food that we crave when we are hungry not only satisfies the emptiness in our bellies, it also can console us in our miseries, albeit for a short while. Food has the ability of captivating us by heightening our senses; it makes our mouths water, it thrills our sense of smell, it captivates our eyes with its colors, it can give us a brain-freeze. Food, good food is good, and some of it that can be bad for you—fried twinkies, Doritos, and DQ blizzards—also has the ability to make you feel better.

No one else understands this more than the God who made us. A quick glance at the Sacred Scriptures will remind us of how concerned God has been throughout salvation history about the diet of His people. Don’t eat the fruit of that tree, He told Adam and Eve. Prepare unleavened bread and roast lamb for your Passover, He ordered the Israelites in Egypt. In the desert, He gave His people manna and quail from Heaven and water from the rock to sustain them in their journey to the Promised Land. He sent an angel to take Habakkuk by the hair so that the prophet could share his bread and stew with the starving Daniel in the den of lions. And don’t even get me started with the God-given dietary laws in the Book of Leviticus. The history of our salvation bears witness to our Lord who nourishes the hungers of our bodies and feeds our starving hearts and souls.

It should not come as a surprise then that our Lord chose food—bread and wine consecrated by His words—to be the sacrament of His real presence to His people. The Eucharist is food; it retains the appearance, the smell, the taste, the feel of food that sustains an empty stomach. But more so this food is the Body and Blood of Christ, the foretaste and promise of everlasting joy. Our Lord is profoundly sensitive to our human sensibilities that He deemed to give Himself to us in so tangible a manner such that our salvation is now something we can see, smell, taste, touch, eat. But this is also the Paschal Lamb that the Church in the East proclaims is ever eaten but is never consumed. Manna and quail, the forbidden fruit of the tree and the water from the rock, all of these that once fed our ancestors in faith eventually went stale and old. But the Bread of Life is non-perishable: it endures for eternal life.

This is the Bread of Life; whoever partakes of Him will never hunger, and whoever believes in Him will never thirst. This is the ultimate comfort food, that which not only gives us the consolation of God but more so unites us with the God of consolation. There is no other food on earth that the very sight of it can nurture many a famished soul. For indeed, whatever pain and drudgery is there in our lives, we know that in this Blessed Sacrament we can find our viaticum, the comfort and the strength we need in our pilgrim way.

Stay then with Him and let your hunger be fed, your thirst slaked, your burdens lifted, your heart comforted, your life filled with grace upon grace.