About Food: An Opportunity for Virtue and Hospitality
/MAGGIE STRICKLAND
Food plays an important role in our lives. Families gather at table for daily meals and family reunions; the Eucharist was initiated at the last supper and operates under the physical properties of bread and wine; similarly, for a wedding, the reception often plays significant social role and contributes to the bulk of the budget. Unfortunately for many brides, their relationship with food is in conflict.
PHOTOGRAPHY: VISUAL GRACE
Despite the personal and social good that food brings, brides are often encouraged to take up strict diet and exercise regimes to look their “best” for their wedding day, and then provide a lavish feast at the reception for their guests, even when the bride and groom may or may not be able to sit down and eat. This was certainly the case when I was planning my wedding, and I believed much of this advice, especially about not eating during the reception. Although my parents helped us throw a wonderful event, I wish I had a healthier view of the event in the planning stages.
Much of this internal conflict comes when we misunderstand the importance of food and its proper role in our lives. When we see dessert as a reward, or a starvation diet as a fast way to lose weight, then we are acknowledging externally a disordered internal moral approach to the food we eat and, moreover to the way we view our bodies. When starvation is a means to losing weight, then we deprive ourselves of the nourishment we need, and when dessert is a reward, then we abandon discipline in the name of celebrating discipline. In extreme cases, these internal views of the body can yield eating disorders.
Emily Stimpson Chapman’s The Catholic Table: Finding Joy Where Food and Faith Meet addresses these issues head on. This short book--only 170 pages--looks at food and eating from a truly Catholic perspective.
Chapman states in her introduction that “The Church, in her great wisdom, offers us a way to see the world that can restore the gift of food to its proper place. In her teachings on grace, the Eucharist, the virtues, fasting, hospitality, and the body, she charts a course for us quite different from the one the world urges us to follow” (xvii). The book includes Chapman’s own story of recovering from an eating disorder as well as profiles of saints, food film and Catholic cookbook recommendations, recipes, and quotes from saints and Catholic writers.
The Catholic Table has been instrumental in helping me not only see how the food I eat fits in with my own pursuit of holiness, but also develop a healthy home culture for our children. For couples planning their wedding and reception, three themes stand out as especially insightful.
Exercise and Control
This Catholic view of the body and exercise makes it clear that it’s not wrong to pursue physical fitness, as long as you’re using exercise to care for your body and not to punish it. Chapman explains, “To control something isn’t to care for it. Control is about power. It’s about managing a problem. Caring, on the other hand, is about love. It sees to honor a good. Someone who seeks to control their body and someone who seeks to care for their body are doing two entirely different things. One is treating the body like a problem; the other is treating the body like a gift. One sees the body as a thing; the other sees the body as the person – as me, as you” (57).
“Eating and the Virtues”
Chapter 9, titled “Table Lessons – Eating and the Virtues,” is a reminder that, rather than being “an opportunity for vice,” eating is “a daily invitation to flex our spiritual muscles and grow in justice, prudence, temperance, and fortitude. It’s also a chance to demonstrate faith, hope, and charity” (110). Through this virtue-focused lens, the discussion unfolds to reveal ways to practically live out those virtues, rather than going to extremes--which leads to burnout and the formation of bad habits. What better time than engagement to work on developing those spiritual habits that you will need in married life?
For example, instead of eating clean or eliminating a food group, focus on eating with gratitude and in community with others. By shifting a focus away from the food and seeing food as a means to grow in virtue, we are invited to bring prayer and discernment into an ordinary daily task. Many couples strive to prepare for marriage by growing in virtue; making changes around meal times is a frequent opportunity to build virtuous habits and seek God every day.
Hosting and Hospitality
No matter how many times you have hosted dinner parties or social gatherings, a wedding reception is a one-of-a-kind event to offer hospitality to loved ones. Too often we fall into the trap of thinking that a reception should look like a spread in a magazine in order to impress our guests, an event “meant to demonstrate to all who walk through our doors how perfectly fabulous we are” (130). This mindset misses the point of Christian hospitality: loving others and “giv[ing] people a foretaste of the supper to which we’re all invited: the marriage supper of the Lamb” (139).
Just as your wedding Mass is an opportunity to show your guests the goodness of God, the reception can be another opportunity to show them how much they are loved and valued as a member of your community, even if your financial means are limited. If you offer what you have in love and a spirit of real hospitality, the impact will be more meaningful and longer-lasting than an Instagram post.
About the Author: Maggie Strickland has loved reading and writing stories since her earliest memory. An English teacher by training and an avid reader by avocation, she now spends her days homemaking, chasing her toddler son, and reading during naptime. She and her husband are originally from the Carolinas, but now make their home in Birmingham, Alabama.