One of the most sacred rituals in the history of society is that of the meal. Men and families come to together before God, a covenant of sorts that you participate in — communing in a way which mirrors the Holy Communion of Christs flesh and blood — wherein you partake of the spirtual and life creating mystery, the “bread of the angels.”1
Meals obviously predate Christs institution of the Eucharist by a few thousand years, but it is here wherein we find the fulfillment and true purpose of mankinds need for constant sustenance. St. Ignatius states: “I have no taste for corruptible food nor for the pleasures of this life. I desire the bread of God, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ… and for drink I desire his blood, which is love incorruptible.”2
While meals are not in any sense bad unless taken to the extreme of gluttony, they serve a higher purpose other than merely sustenance — a Christological typology. All meals are ultimately temporal, giving nothing in terms of eternal nutriment; while the meal given to us by Christ “supply us with these intimate nutrients… and nothing is lacking for the growth of His children.”3
“How is this man able to give us his flesh to eat” said the pharisees;4 Christ responded by offering us a participation in His deified human nature, doubling down and not resorting to calling His body “symbolic” or anything of the sort.
Blessed St. John Chrysostom explicates John 6:52 as such:
“If you seek to know the how, why asked not you this in the matter of the loaves, how He extended five to so great a number? Because they then only thought of being satisfied, not of seeing the miracle. But, says some one, their experience then taught them. Then by reason of that experience these words ought to have been readily received. For to this end He wrought beforehand that strange miracle, that taught by it they might no longer disbelieve what should be said by Him afterwards.
Those men then at that time reaped no fruit from what was said, but we have enjoyed the benefit in the very realities. Wherefore it is necessary to understand the marvel of the Mysteries, what it is, why it was given, and what is the profit of the action. We become one Body, and members of His flesh and of His bones. (Ephesians 5:30) Let the initiated follow what I say. In order then that we may become this not by love only, but in very deed, let us be blended into that flesh. This is effected by the food which He has freely given us, desiring to show the love which He has for us. On this account He has mixed up Himself with us; He has kneaded up His body with ours, that we might be a certain One Thing, like a body joined to a head.
For this belongs to them who love strongly; this, for instance, Job implied, speaking of his servants, by whom he was beloved so exceedingly, that they desired to cleave unto his flesh. For they said, to show the strong love which they felt, Who would give us to be satisfied with his flesh? (Job 31:31) Wherefore this also Christ has done, to lead us to a closer friendship, and to show His love for us; He has given to those who desire Him not only to see Him, but even to touch, and eat Him, and fix their teeth in His flesh, and to embrace Him, and satisfy all their love. Let us then return from that table like lions breathing fire, having become terrible to the devil; thinking on our Head, and on the love which He has shown for us. Parents often entrust their offspring to others to feed; but I, says He, do not so, I feed you with My own flesh, desiring that you all be nobly born, and holding forth to you good hopes for the future.
For He who gives out Himself to you here, much more will do so hereafter. I have willed to become your Brother, for your sake I shared in flesh and blood, and in turn I give out to you the flesh and the blood by which I became your kinsman. This blood causes the image of our King to be fresh within us, produces beauty unspeakable, permits not the nobleness of our souls to waste away, watering it continually, and nourishing it. The blood derived from our food becomes not at once blood, but something else; while this does not so, but straightway waters our souls, and works in them some mighty power. This blood, if rightly taken, drives away devils, and keeps them afar off from us, while it calls to us Angels and the Lord of Angels. For wherever they see the Lord’s blood, devils flee, and Angels run together. This blood poured forth washed clean all the world; many wise sayings did the blessed Paul utter concerning it in the Epistle to the Hebrews. This blood cleansed the secret place, and the Holy of Holies. And if the type of it had such great power in the temple of the Hebrews, and in the midst of Egypt, when smeared on the door-posts, much more the reality. This blood sanctified the golden altar; without it the high priest dared not enter into the secret place. This blood consecrated priests, this in types cleansed sins. But if it had such power in the types, if death so shuddered at the shadow, tell me how would it not have dreaded the very reality? This blood is the salvation of our souls, by this the soul is washed, by this is beautiful, by this is inflamed, this causes our understanding to be more bright than fire, and our soul more beaming than gold; this blood was poured forth, and made heaven accessible.”5
St. John Chrysostom consistently tells us to turn every action into one that glorifies God, including eating. As do other fathers such as St. Basil: “Has thy need for taking food passed away? Let not the thought of thy Benefactor pass away too”6 and St. Maximos; “Let us be satisfied simply with what sustains our present life, not with what pampers it.”7
The Fathers tell us that all meals are meant to glorify God, not just in the Eucharistic sacrificial meal, and that they must be partaken of in a Godly manner. Such is why we pray and give thanks beforehand and ideally after as well.
Sustenance also, in a sense, finds its purpose with us so that we may eventually partake of the Eucharist. We are kept afloat during the week by temporal food prepared for us to share communally ( as a family ) just as we prepare to share in the “one bread” and “one body” consecrated on sundays.
Societies that honor meals and share them communally, with family and community, so to honor God and glorify the meal which He gave us so that we can become “partakers of the divine nature.”8 They are indicative of a Godly way of life, to put it shortly.
“He is bread that restores and does not run short; bread that can be eaten but not exhausted.”9
Food and Society
“Let neither gluttony nor lust overcome me, and do not surrender me to a shameless soul.”10
I heard once an anecdote from my spiritual father about a man who had inquired to be an Orthodox Christian priest. This man was uncustomarily overweight to the extent that it was very obvious he was a terrible glutton. The monk whom the man had gone to was sought out because of his intent upon explaining all the moral and theological reasons why he wanted to become ordained a priest. He had thought that the monk was going to willfully consent to hearing the mans lifelong spiel about his dreams and aspirations regarding the priesthood, and how he had been called into it from an early age etc.; but the monk took a different approach; he took one look at the man and said, to paraphrase — “you’re too fat to be a priest.” The man was shocked as you can probably imagine.
But why was the man rejected? Was it because the monk was “mean” or “fatphobic.” Well, yes, actually. If the man cannot bear the struggle of losing weight, how so would he be able to handle the daily struggles that a priest endures? Priests must constantly battle between balancing hearing and attending to the needs of the parishioners and community around them with that of family life and their many children, and the man who sought the priesthood couldn’t even balance a diet.
Brillat-Savarin once stated: “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.”11Societies are in a large way defined by what they value in terms of food. For example, Ezekiel says that one of the greatest sins of Sodom was that of the “fullness of bread;”12 St. Paul calls the Cretans “liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons;”13and St. James lambasts those who have “lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter.”14
Godly societies, and therefore successful ones, it can be extrapolated, emphasize heavily fasting and abstaining from over-indulgence. Outward fitness which can be seen in such societies is indicative of inner virtue.
Modern society, being the inversion of Gods sacred order, corporatizes this facet of human society — atomizing it to the greatest extent. Fast food is the foremost example of this. The entire purpose of food being “fast” is to divorce it from the ritualism meals previously had with family and kin. What was previously a drawn out affair which prioritizes human interaction and familial bonding has been reduced to nothing more than an act of intimate consumption. Calories over comraderie.
“Come, therefore, let us enjoy the good things that exist, and make use of the creation to the full as in youth. Let us take our fill of costly wine and perfumes, and let no flower of spring pass us by.”15
Fast food is such a grotesque act not only because of vast array of poison you are consuming; truly what Charles Galton Darwin, Jonas Salk and their ilk talked about in their books — a unique delinquency of their writing being about dumbing down, manipulating DNA/RNA, and sterilizing the public through fake food; but that it is such that fast food seeks to divorce man from his innate communal nature and turns him into a stout, Randian, and fragmented agent.
Pre-corporatized man could sit up until the wee hours of the night with friends and family, telling stories about times long past, procuring and giving advice to those close in bond or those further from them while laughing and forming bonds which strengthen faith and glorify God. Coinciding with said principal is the necessity of families staying together.
Now, man sits up into the wee hours of the night carousing about the “World Brain” which he possesses in his hand, ordering food to be delivered to his doorstep — to be eaten alone in his dungeon.
“Modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow men, and from nature.”16
In part, while mostly because of social engineering, mans alienation from that which is transcendent has not only alienated him from his community and from God, it has also alienated him from a healthy diet.
His nihilism leads him to conclude that what he puts in his body doesn’t matter, as nothing does, and insofar as he stays alive, miserabile though he may be, he will eat anything, as it is now permitted — per Ivan Karamazov.
Today’s Soyciety
Quite funny yet also dystopian is the realization of Soylent Green society. Soy, a toxic maligancy which verifiably reduces men to castrati, is in just about everything — on purpose. Plant based soy “food” represents the cannibalistic “food” which the New York people consume ( in the movie ), unknowingly.
For the leftist, imaged changed new ager, plant based “food” is their 9th symphony. Consuming oodles of soybeans is the ultimate solution to the Club of Rome lie — climate change. The climate is in fact always changing, and so to is the “science” surrounding it. But the leftist brain seldom changes.
Whatever the elite tells them is “best” for “society” they de facto accept and regurgitate, over and over again until they breathe their last breath. Methods of propaganda and conditioning have gotten so advanced as to where if the Soylent Green, Monsanto broadcast were to tell them, with flowerly language, that they are eating their fellow libtards, they would love it, and hate you for hating it.
We have come to accept it as Orthodox Christians and “conspiracists”, however. It is now the way our wicked Gomorrah functions.
No families, no communal meals, just soy, soy, and more soy.
“Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things”17
- Cyril, Catechetical Lectures, Ch. 22 ↩︎
- Ignatius, Epistle to the Romans, Ch. 7:3 ↩︎
- Clement, The Paedagogus, Book 1:6 ↩︎
- John 6:52 (NKJV) ↩︎
- Chrysostom, Homily 46 on the Gospel of John, Verse 51 ↩︎
- Basil, Homilia in martyrem Julittam (Migne, Patrologia Graeca, Volume 31), Pg. 31 ↩︎
- Philokalia, The Complete Text (Volume 2), translated by G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware, Pg. 300 ↩︎
- 2 Peter 1:3-4 (NKJV) ↩︎
- Augustine, Works of Saint Augustine (New City Press): Sermons III/4 (Sermons 94A-147A), Pg. 310 ↩︎
- Sirach 23:6 (LXX) ↩︎
- Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste, Pg. 3 ↩︎
- Ezekiel 16:49 (LXX) ↩︎
- Titus 1:12 (NKJV) ↩︎
- James 5:5 (NKJV) ↩︎
- Wisdom 2:6-7 (LXX) ↩︎
- Fromm, The Art of Loving, Pg. 88 ↩︎
- Phillipians 3:19 (NKJV) ↩︎
2ndActuality 
Leave a comment