Spiritual Nourishment
“The food and drink of nature sustains natural life, and only natural life. A few years ago on a warm summer afternoon I was sitting on my back patio. I was either reading, or playing a guitar when I noticed a lovely garden spider. In her web was her catch, her prey, which provided her nourishment that sustained her life. The capture of the insect led to its death. Later that year she would die. No further eating would prolong her short life. For us, as for the garden spider, our physical food, generally, derives from the death of another physical, mortal creature (even the uprooting of a carrot ends its life). Death, when consumed, leads to death.” (Fr. Irenaeus Williams)
“Significantly, the devil was able to exploit Eve’s sense of aesthetic appreciation when tempting her to sin. The words of Genesis 3: 6 (“ the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes”) has obvious parallels to Genesis 1: 31 when God saw that everything He had made was good. Eve’s temptation was to pursue this delightful and beautiful thing separate from the beauty of God and His commands. Eve corrupted her imagination by supposing that something within the creation could provide nourishment (life) apart from the Creator.” (Robin Phillips)
“The end of time is about God bringing justice—order and vindication—to a chaotic, oppressive world. These forces of destruction and tyranny have been part of human experience throughout all time. But God did not design the things He has made to be harmful to us. Rather, this creation was supposed to be nourishing and beneficial to us. Therefore, when the Scriptures and other traditional texts depict Leviathan and Behemoth as being defeated and turned into food, it is an indication that creation is being returned to its proper Edenic state. In Eden, all things were for the benefit of Adam and Eve, and in the end of time, God will again place humanity in an Edenic context. What has been used for evil will be turned to good.” (Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick)
“God establishes His relationship with humanity on the basis of being our sustainer and nourisher, a mother-like role. God offers us the fruits and vegetables of His creation as food and the means to maintain our relationship with Him. No wonder that Jesus establishes God’s new covenant with humanity at a meal in which He offers Himself as the food by which we maintain our relationship with our Creator…As the Lord Jesus Christ teaches us: For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing (Luke 12:23). ‘We are what we eat’ is only partially true, for we humans are far more than what we eat for we have a spiritual nature. Fasting is supposed to remind us that eating and food also belong to the spiritual nature of humans and the spiritual nature must be nourished as well. This is why cooking and eating should involve prayer just as much as fasting does.” (Fr. Ted Bobosh)
“The way human beings normally live—the way we are nourished and grow and heal ourselves—is by eating. Therefore, God gives us His life in the same way. He gives us Communion in the form of literal food and drink which is transformed so that it is also, simultaneously, the arché [beginning, source, principle]. But God cannot transform food and drink into His own body unless He Himself has a body. Hence the need for the Incarnation of God the Son as Jesus: God takes on physicality so that He can give us Himself as physical food.” (Dr. Zachary Porcu)
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