Transcript

Hi.

I'm Emily Stimpson Chapman, author of The Catholic Table, and welcome back to our last discussion of the series.

Over the past five episodes, we've talked about hospitality, feasting and fasting, the reverence that we owe our bodies, the thanks we owe God for food, and how everything we eat is meant to be a sign of God's love and a foretaste of the Eucharist.

It's all beautiful, it's all important, but is it practical?

You know, are these ideas we can actually live?

For those of you who have made it through the last chapter of the book, you know the answer is yes.

This is a totally practical, applicable theology.

I don't have time, however, to go over everything I talked about in that chapter today, so right now, in this last video, I wanna talk about a few ways that you can put into practice all of the ideas we've talked about together so far.

First, it all starts with a vision check.

If we wanna live the abundant life God has for us, an abundant life which barring sad, sad dairy allergies, really should include cheesecake, and equally important, if we want to share that life with others, we need to make sure we're using those sacramental glasses we talked about in week two.

We need to see everything in life, and I mean everything, food, sex, babies, houses, work, the whole kit and caboodle, for what it really is, for what God made it to be, and not for what the world says it is.

Some of you, I am sure, have no problem looking at a big old maple bacon donut and seeing the love of God made manifest.

You look at the donut and you're like, Yep, God is love.

Got it.

But maybe when you look at a man, all you see is an object to be used for your own pleasure and affirmation.

Or maybe you look at the numbers in your bank account or the title on your office door or the number of followers you have on Instagram and you think those things are what define your worth.

Or maybe you're where I was not too long ago, wanting so, so badly to be a wife and mother and having to work like the dickens every day to remember that husbands and babies are gifts, not rewards for good behavior or rights to which I am entitled.

Almost all of us have something in this world that we're not seeing properly, and if we're not seeing something properly, there is disorder.

There are either occasions of sin, temptations to sin, or actual sin.

Like, if you can't see right, you can't act right.

So ordering our vision so that we see reality and getting to confession to tell God we're sorry for not seeing and treating his creation properly is the first step to living how God made us to live and eating how God made us to eat and helping others do the same.

The second thing we need to do is eat Eucharistically.

Now, our word Eucharist comes from the Greek word eukaristia, which means literally thanksgiving.

So, at the most basic level, eating Eucharistically means eating everything with a spirit of thanksgiving, with a spirit of gratitude.

It is breaking off a piece of chocolate and saying, Thank you, Jesus.

It's also sitting down to a meal that a friend made for you, and maybe you wouldn't have made that meal for yourself because it includes beets, and receiving that meal as a gift of love, eating what's been served to you without complaint.

Exceptions, of course, being things that will make you sick or kill you.

I have an anaphylactic peanut allergy, so all around the most loving thing for me to do is not let you kill me by serving me pho tai.

But beyond that, just be grateful.

Learn to see God in every little morsel of goodness that comes your way and praise him for that.

Every meal, every snack, every drink of water is an opportunity to think about God and praise him.

It is an invitation to see him in all the little blessings and moments of life, knowing that he is there, loving you and caring for you.

And all those little moments, they add up.

When storms strike, they remind you who's in charge.

When temptations arise, they help you remember what really matters and who is really important.

Never underestimate the power of finding God in the little and the ordinary.

God loves the little and the ordinary.

You know, he created it.

He created hummingbirds and bumblebees and lilies of the valley.

God delights in little, ordinary things and little, ordinary moments, and he blesses us when we delight in them too.

Along with eating gratefully, eating Eucharistically also means eating with others, okay?

We receive the bread of angels in community, and as often as possible, we should receive our ordinary bread in community too.

In the midst of a busy day, we need to find some time to sit down and eat with real live people.

For those of you who rarely do this, that might mean just starting with eating one night a week with your spouse or your roommate or asking a coworker to go to lunch.

Once you've got that down though, reach out beyond the four walls of your house.

Invite a single person or a new neighbor or an older coworker who just lost their wife over to your house for dinner.You don't want to do dinner?

Have Sunday brunch after mass or happy hour with chips and beer on Friday night.

It doesn't have to be fancy, okay?

You don't have to whip out the silver.

If you like whipping out the silver, you don't have to whip out the silver.

Lonely people don't care if your house isn't spotless.

They don't care if your kids are rowdy or that the best supper you can muster is takeout pizza.

They want community, not five star dining, and you can give them that.

Unless you have an eight by four foot hole in your kitchen floor and no running water, like we did the first six months we lived in this house, you can give people a meal and a place to belong.

Never underestimate the power of the Italian grandmother inside of you.

She is there, and she has so much good she can help you do in the world.

Third thing eating eucharistically means is eating liturgically.

So, fast when the church fasts, pray more during advent and save the cookies for Christmas, give up sweets during Lent or lattes or booze.

You know, also abstain from meat every Friday between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday.

You can fast from meat on Fridays year round if you want to.

The church calls us to make some voluntary sacrifice every Friday, and meat is the sacrifice she most highly recommends.

But then, when the church feasts, feast with her.

You know?

Have dessert on Sunday, every single Sunday.

Buy an extra special bottle of wine for Christmas Day or for your favorite saint's feast day.

Celebrate name days and baptismal anniversaries.

Eat a piece of chocolate every single day during Easter, and definitely eat bacon on the Fridays that fall during the octaves of Christmas and Easter, and on those really awesome solemnities that fall on Fridays throughout the year, too.

A failure to feast isn't something we have to confess, okay?

We don't have to dine on steak on Easter Friday, but as a wise man once told me, You can fast when the church is feasting, but know that you fast alone.

The fourth aspect of eating eucharistically I wanna touch on is eating wisely.

Christ, Saint Paul tells us, is our wisdom.

So, let common sense wisdom guide you in how you think about food and your eating habits, and how you think about yourself, too.

First, remember there are no good foods and bad foods, okay?

There are yummy foods and icky foods.

There are healthy foods and less than healthy foods.

There are special treat foods and everyday foods.

But food does not have a moral value.

It is not capable of virtue or vice, okay?

It is a thing.

It can't earn gold stars in heaven or go to confession.

Likewise, you are not good or bad because of what you eat.

Having a piece of pie after supper, cooking with olive oil instead of organic coconut oil, or buying your toddler nephew Graham crackers laden with GMOs does not make you bad.

Nor does having a kale salad for lunch, drinking $20 a pound free trade coffee, or eating nothing but hormone-free meat make you good.

Holiness has nothing to do with what you cooked for dinner last night.

Your moral rectitude is not determined by the food in your pantry, where you shop, or who grew your corn.

It's determined by whether or not you are patient in traffic, kind to the checker at the grocery store, faithful to your spouse, and grateful to God, loving him by doing his will in all things.

Also, eat when you're hungry.

Stop when you're full.

If you're bored, skip the Oreos and clean your toilet instead.

If you're depressed, have a talk with Jesus, not with Ben & Jerry.

You know?

You don't have to eat the donuts Marjorie from accounting brought in just because they're there.

And the Clean Plate Club doesn't accept adults for membership.

We can save what we don't eat for tomorrow.

It's also important to remember that it is better to be a happy, healthy, energetic size eight, or 10, or 12, or 14, than it is to be a crabby, crotchety, underfed size two.

Life is short, too short for not eating creamy bowls of risotto, pizza dripping with cheese, and salted caramel cheesecake with that crispy Graham cracker crust.

Likewise, Christmas parties are a thousand times more fun when you are drinking cocktails and dining on bacon wrapped dates, and not standing in a corner munching on celery.

And lastly, what is a birthday without cake?

Each of us only has so many hours left on this planet, and in those hours, we have babies to chase, houses to clean, races to run, cities to tour, spouses to kiss, walls to paint, poems to read, gardens to plant, horses to ride, mountains to climb, ponds to fish in, baseballs to throw, parties to host, homeless to feed, children to dress, symphonies to hear, books to write, buildings to design, cars to drive, stories to tell, friends to make, bodies to heal, and souls to save.

There is no time for counting calories.

There's no time to fret about stretch marks and cellulite.

There is no time to waste being hungry and tired.

So, that's what eucharistic eating looks like.

It is grateful, it's communal, it's liturgical, and it's guided by wisdom.

But if you wanna eat that way, reading my book is not the most important thing you can do.

Maybe the second most important thing.

For the most important thing, whether you are struggling with food or just struggling to make sense of how you can help this crazy hurting world The two most important things you can do are receive the Eucharist as often as possible and sit in front of the Eucharist as often as possible.

Satan is relentless.

Every day you are on this earth, he is coming after you, and the two best tricks he has up his sleeve are to make you think that you are better than you are or worse than you are.

Satan loves it when we wallow in our own sin and ignore God's love and mercy.

He also delights when we think that we are so good and so strong and so important that we don't need Jesus.

He will do whatever he can do to get you to fall into one of those two traps.

The Eucharist is where God undoes those lies.

Every day, God is there wanting to give Himself to you.

Every day, He proves His love for you by being there for you to consume.

Every time we receive communion, that's where God is telling you, I love you.

You were worth suffering and dying for.

You are mine.

At the same time, the more we receive Jesus in communion and the more we sit in front of Him in the Blessed Sacrament, the more clear it becomes that He is God and we are not.

Okay?

The Eucharist brings us face-to-face with His greatness and that makes our own littleness starkly clear.

Temptations to pride fall away and the one thing we know for sure is how very much we need Him.

That's what the Eucharist does, okay?

There is real transformative healing power in the body and blood of Christ.

And whether you are struggling with food or pornography or heart-wrenching grief, God can do great things in your heart when you go to Him in communion and receive His life into your body.

Back before we bought our money pit in Pittsburgh, I lived across the state line in Steubenville, and one of my neighbors is someone that I'm guessing you might have heard of, Scott Hahn.

Well, one day, Scott and I were talking about something random like the weather, uh, and he said in an offhand way that people put more faith in Tylenol than they do in the Eucharist.

I have been repeating that line now for about five years because it is so true.

When our head hurts or our backs ache, the first thing most of us do is run right for the medicine cabinet.

But when our heart hurts, when our souls are anxious and afraid and confused, not nearly as many of us run with the same confidence to the Eucharist.

We need to, though.

Eucharist, it isn't magic, it's not gonna fix our problems in a puff of smoke, but it is Jesus Christ.

It is God giving Himself to us under the guise of bread and wine.

He is the food that saves, and the more you eat of that food, the more His love and life are gonna work in you, patching up the broken parts and making you into a new creation who can go out and help bring others to Christ.

Today, tomorrow, the next day, every day, God is there for you in the Eucharist.

He offers Himself to you.

Whenever you can, receive Him.

Let Him enter into the stress and the anxiety and fear and confusion of your life and transform it.

He wants to feed you.

He wants to nourish you.

He wants to love you in a way that puts even the best Italian grandmothers to shame.

Let Him.

It is what you were made for.

Thank you for spending time with me these past weeks.

I hope someday I get the chance to meet you in person and maybe even cook you a meal.

God bless.