Eat at the Family Table

Researchers have told us what people throughout time have known through experience and common sense. Eating meals together is family glue. One of my favorite writers on Catholic family matters and also my online friend, Elizabeth Foss, writes beautifully about the doable ideal and real of eating at the family table.

Wonder and joy happen when loved ones join together to eat. At my table, we might hear a poem written by our in-house poet, we will definitely talk about baseball at least once during the meal, and we will very likely to belly laugh, hopefully with napkin covered mouths. At a table long ago, Jesus instituted the Eucharist, and this is in part what happened...

And when the hour came, he sat at table, and the apostles with him. And he said to them, "I have earnestly desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer; for I tell you I shall not eat it again until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.". . . . And he took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me." And likewise the cup after supper, saying, "This cup which is poured out for you is the New Covenant in my blood."

Indescribable outpourings of love and the miraculous happen too.