Sermon quotes on meals
Tamar Adler
“Breaking bread” means eating. “Our daily bread” means food. It is also called the staff of life, which I like: bread there, all life leaning against it. Our lives don’t lean against it anymore: we’ve decided that bread is bad for us. Our staff has broken, and that is part of why our diets seem so hard to get in balance.
An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace (New York: Scribner, 2011), 79.
Augustine of Hippo
Here below, He who has promised us heavenly food has nourished us on milk, having recourse to a mother’s tenderness. For just as a mother, suckling her infant, transfers from her flesh the very same food which otherwise would be unsuited to the babe . . . so our Lord, in order to convert His wisdom into milk for our benefit, came to us clothed in flesh.
Bernard of Clairvaux
When thou writes, promise me nothing, unless I read Jesus in it. When thou converses with me on religious themes, promise me nothing if I hear not Jesus’ voice. Jesus—melody to the ear, gladness to the soul, honey to the taste.
Catherine Of Siena
You, eternal Trinity, are Table and Food and Waiter for us. You, eternal Father, are the Table that offers us food, the Lamb, your only-begotten Son. He is the most exquisite Food for us, both in his teaching, which nourishes us in your will, and in the sacraments that we receive in Holy Communion, which feeds and strengthens us while we are pilgrim travelers in this life. And the Holy Spirit is a Waiter for us, for he serves us this teaching by enlightening our mind’s eye with it and inspiring us to follow it.
M.F.K. Fisher
There is communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk.
Anne Lamott
Earth is Forgiveness School. You might as well start at the dinner table. That way, you can do this work in comfortable pants.”
Facebook status update, April 8, 2015.
Jen Pollock Michel
For as long as there is a compassionate Father, there will be a home, a table, and a feast. This was Israel’s great consolation: exile was the middle act of the drama, but it was not the final scene.
Taken from Keeping Place: Reflections on the Meaning of Home Jen Pollock Michel. Copyright (c) 2019 by Jen Pollock Michel. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Jen Pollock Michel
Dinner is a cacophonous exercise of holy sanctification.
Taken from Keeping Place: Reflections on the Meaning of Home Jen Pollock Michel. Copyright (c) 2019 by Jen Pollock Michel. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Midge Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan)
“That’s why New York is so great, though. Everyone you care about can despise you and you can still find a bagel so good, nothing else matters. Who needs love when you’ve got lox? They both stink, but only one tastes good.”
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
Matta al-Miskin
It is clear that Christ himself was responsible for the drawing near of sinners who came to him and sat to eat with him. They came because in him they discovered themselves to be lost, and their tormented consciences found rest and peace. They loved him because they felt his love for them.
The Gospel According to Saint Luke (Arabic), (Cairo: Dayr al-Qiddis Anba Maqar, 1998), p. 568.
Michael Pollan
The shared meal elevates eating from a mechanical process of fueling the body to a ritual of family and community, from the mere animal biology to an act of culture.
Michael Pollan
So much about life in a global economy feels as though it has passed beyond the individual’s control–what happens to our jobs, to the prices at the gas station, to the vote in the legislature. But somehow food still feels a little different. We can still decide, every day, what we’re going to put into our bodies, what sort of food chain we want to participate in. We can, in other words, reject the industrial omelet on offer and decide to eat another.”
Elizabeth Seton
That he is There (oh heavenly theme!) is as certainly true as that Bread naturally taken removes my hunger—so this Bread of Angels removes my pain, my cares, warms, cheers, soothes, contents and renews my whole being.
Source Unknown
Dry is all food of the soul if it is not sprinkled with the oil of Christ.
Timon (Nathan Lane)
“Listen kid, if you live with us you have to eat like us”
The Lion King (1994)
Norman Wirzba
To say grace before a meal is among the highest and most honest expressions of our humanity. . . . Here, around the table and before witnesses, we testify to the experience of life as a precious gift to be received and given again. We acknowledge that we do not and cannot live alone but are the beneficiaries of the kindness and mysteries of grace upon grace.”
Shauna Niequist
I think preparing food and feeding people brings nourishment not only to our bodies but to our spirits. Feeding people is a way of loving them, in the same way that feeding ourselves is a way of honoring our own createdness and fragility.
Wendy M. Wright
We are called to be food and drink for one another.
Robert Karris
In Luke’s Gospel Jesus is either going to a meal, at a meal, or coming from a meal.”
Eating Your Way Through Luke’s Gospel (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2006), 14.
Alexander Schmemann
To eat is still something more than to maintain bodily functions. People may not understand what that “something more” is, but they nonetheless desire to celebrate it. They are still hungry and thirsty for sacramental life.
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