Don’t spoil your appetite! Many is the mom who admonishes her kids, not always in vain, with those very words in these days when treats and tasties abound, often as prologue to celebratory meals lovingly prepared and presented to be enjoyed with some ceremony. The holy days of Advent and Christmas feature much feeding, and sometimes it can be hard to finish one massive meal in time to move on to the next; an embarrassment of riches, indeed.
It is odd, therefore, that even as we look forward to the great feast of Our Lord’s Nativity, united in worship as Christ’s pilgrim people, we do so by… eating.
The God Who Comes will be found in a feed trough, and that is no accident, nor devised by some clever set designer. The Blessed Mother about to give birth goes to the home of her husband’s tribe, a tiny town known as the House of Bread – Bethlehem. Food references abound, and if this awakens your hunger, that is because it is supposed to do just that. But the best way to prepare for the promised banquet is, counterintuitively, to chow down now.
All through Advent, we chew figuratively, and meditatively, on the promises of God laid down by the holy prophets. We ruminate on the psalms, the poetic songs of praise and petition that passed our Lord’s lips with the familiarity of His own name. We drink in the glory of the Gospel, the News so Good we can become tipsy from joy, with thirty-gallon jars filled to the brim standing by with more.
But more than a figure is the fact and food of Our Lord’s Body and Blood, which He has lovingly prepared and presents for us to enjoy with no small ceremony. This is the Main Course, giving us entrée into the Divine Life that he brought bundled with His newborn body into that manger. We show our appreciation for this gift by destroying it, devouring and digesting Him Who lays the spread.
Remarkably this repast reverses the results of regular meals. Rather than turn the food into what we already are, as we do (some of us to excess) with meat and bread, fruit and cheese, augmenting the flesh we already have with more of the same, this food transforms us into what it is, and what we long to be: ever-living bodies, raised and glorified with God. You are what you eat.
Repeated application of this food therapy results not only in augmentation, but also in a reduction: Christ’s presence in our bodies reduces the persistence and power of sin, dropping the dead weight that accumulates over time like so much cholesterol. Reducing resistance increases speed, and we fly toward our heavenly goal with souls and bodies made light with eager joy.
Perhaps because we are sated, perhaps because we are delighted, and please do not let it be because we are distracted, it can be easy to miss the Prayer after Communion: We implore your mercy, Lord, that this divine sustenance may cleanse us of our faults and prepare us for the coming feasts. Through Christ our Lord. This food sustains us on our journey, but marvelously makes more room, not less, for more of the same, by cleansing us of what we have consumed in our selfishness and sin. This morsel is the foretaste of heaven itself, the first course that does not fill us, but rather frees us.
Therefore even now, long days and still longer nights away from the joy of our Lord’s birth, we light the pink candle and Rejoice in the Lord always; I say it again – Rejoice! (Entrance antiphon for Gaudete Sunday, Phil 4:4-5) The Lord spreads a banquet in the sight of our foes; to allow him to feed us will only enhance and enliven our appetite. Our Mother, the Church, not only approves; she insists.
Monsignor Smith
