Mange

"Mange" is Italian for "eat." I am imagining an expansive, generous, outgoing Italian woman, serving a rich, delicious meal, and exhorting-commanding-imploring: "Mange!!" What, I ask myself, is the primary, foundational, and essential command of Christ to us, his disciples? I would argue that it is: "Mange!" In English: "Take and eat...Take and drink..." He did not say: "Believe in the real presence" or "Accept the concept of transubstantiation." He said: "Take and eat." This is first and foremost. Eating is active reception. Normally, we are served a meal, we receive, we accept. But it is an active reception in that, ideally, we gratefully receive and then actively, and happily ingest. Recently I was feeding my grandson Michael small pieces of cheese. I was enjoying how heartily and eagerly he was eating them. I realized how much I love to feed people, especially little people and particulary my grandchildren. It occured to me that this might be a glimse of how God yearns to feed us. We are talking about the Eucharist, of course. That He hungers for us to come to Him hungry and thirsty, eager and expectant, grateful and happy. Much of the Church seems to be afflicted with "eucharistic anorexia"...a lack of appetite. But this eagerness of appetite extends well beyond the Sunday banquet and infuses all of life. Every experience comes to us as gift, as nourshment and satisfaction, and we need to eat and drink with relish: every joy, encounter, disappointment, trial and suffering. Everything...is gift! May we eat and drink voraciously, passionately, deeply!