Misael Galdámez’s Reviews > Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating > Status Update

“Eating is about hospitality and intimacy. When we appreciate that the whole of creation manifests God's primordial hospitality, God making room for the world and then nurturing it into life, then we can also see that the many dimensions of our eating can be a daily testimony to the love of God.”

Paul Evdokimov writes: "In the immense cathedral which is the universe of God, each person, whether scholar or manual laborer, is called to act as the priest of his whole life - to take all that is human, and to turn it into an offering, a hymn of glory." Schmemann thinks similarly, stating that "to offer food, this world, this life to God is the initial 'eucharistic' function of man, his very fulfillment as man."

“The point is not simply to see that everything has its cause in God, "but also that everything in the world and the world itself is a gift of God's love, a revelation by God of his very self, summoning us in everything to know God, through everything to be in communion with him, to possess everything as life in him."”

“John of Damascus claimed that God's invitation to Adam and Eve to eat from every tree meant that God could be tasted as the One who is "all in all." John imagines God to be saying, "Through all things, ascend to me the Creator; from every tree harvest one fruit, namely me who am the life. Let all things bear the fruit of life for you: make participation in me the stuff of your existence"”

“The experience of delight is indispensable beeause it opens our minds and hearts so that we can sense ereatures in their relationship to God."

“The experience of delight begins when love joins perception. In his commentary on Peter Lombard's Sentences, Aquinas wrote "Where love is, there is the eye.””

“In his death he shows that life is ultimately about giving oneself completely to others: "unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.””

"The essence of the Eucharistic ethos...is the affirmation of the Other and of every Other as a gift to be appreciated and to evoke gratitude"

“Creation is an immense altar upon which the incomprehensible, self-offering love of God is daily made manifest…Because there is no life without sacrificial love, and no love without surrender, the destiny of all creatures is that they offer themselves or are offered up as the temporal expression of God's eternal love."

“Creation is an altar on which creatures are offered to each other as the expression of the Creator's self-giving care and provision for life. To be made in the image of this Triune creator is to be invited to share in the shaping of the world as an offering of love. The passage from death to genuine life is a loving movement of self-offering in which people lay down their lives for others...”

“Today's economies, in other words, are planned. They depend on founding myths or assumptions that. need to be seriously questioned if we are to make significant changes in the way we live.
Of these founding assumptions, one of the most important would have to be self interest as the major driving force of economic life.”

“Sin is a refusal of relationship and a refusal of responsibility for the well-being of others. Consider Lash's formulation: "All things exist as expressions of God's knowledge and love; as finite refractions of the absolute relation - eternal utterance, inexhaustible donation - that God is. Sin is refusal of relation, self-enclosure in a futile search for safety.'”