A Word from Father Martin: Gathering at the Table

When I was a child, and to some extent even today, mealtime had and still have a special significance in my family. It was a time to gather around our table to share the news of our day, what transpired in each one’s life that day, and to share some good food. Even as I grew older, gathering as a family around our dinner table to share a meal was not only a practice but, it was almost sacred. You would not dare arrive at the table without washing and having a clean shirt or take your plate to another room because there would be serious consequences. Gathering at the dinner table was the focal point of our day as it was a very special place and occasion for familial communion and fellowship. In other words, the meals we shared at the table as a family made it a place of connection and blessings, a place of encounter, and a place to face our brokenness and receive forgiveness. It was time to apologize for those who had fights, time for offer  forgiveness, time for healing and above all time to build our family bonds because the family was who we are.  We shared our stories, laughed, and celebrated one another.  The meal began with prayer, usually led by the youngest child in the family.  We thanked God for the many blessings in our life before anyone ate. 
The same is true of the importance of gathering around the table of the Eucharist at Mass, which is for us Catholics a very special time to come together as a faith community to share something truly extraordinary; the food from heaven. “ This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.” (Jn. 6:58)
Every Holy Thursdays, we remember the Institution of the Eucharist. Well aware that he had to go yet he had to stay, Jesus celebrated the Eucharist and left us this magnificent gift of his body and blood, with a command of celebrating it to keep his memory present. The New Testament scholar Nicholas Thomas Wright captured this essence when he wrote, “ When Jesus himself wanted to explain to his disciples what his forthcoming death was all about, he didn’t give them a theory, he gave them a meal.”
As Catholics who hold the table of the Eucharist as the center of our lives, we shouldn’t be surprised then, that throughout the Bible, God often appeared at tables. It is very clear that at the center of the spiritual lives of God’s people in both the Old and New Testaments, we find a table: the table of Passover and the table of Communion.
As Catholics, we cannot live fully without the Eucharist. The Eucharist is the reason our parishes exist and throughout church history, everything comes and goes but the only constant throughout the ages is the Eucharist, the very presence of Christ.
The body and blood of Christ are food for our journey through this life to the next. Jesus said those who eat my flesh and drink my blood will live forever. (Jn. 6:54) And when we eat his body and drink his blood, he lives in us and we live in him, and enter into communion with him. (Jn. 6:56)
Many families have somehow lost that precious family time around the dinner table. We let the busyness of our lives get in the way of the gift of encountering each other at table daily. We must work to ensure that our families gather around the dinner table at home and around the altar at church, remembering always how important it is to fix our eyes on the Eucharist.
Reflecting upon the road to Emmaus, the gospel that we read on the 3rd Sunday of Easter from the Gospel of Luke (24:13-35), we discover a story of the Christian life. These disciples were walking away from Jerusalem and the apostolic faith community was in defeat and dejection.  They had lost hope. We too, have moments of despair and desolation. The Risen Lord accompanies us along the road, even when we are moving in the wrong direction.  Only the Lord can “break open” the Word in order to help us understand the stories of our lives, especially suffering, and read them in harmony with the pattern of the Scriptures. Only the Lord can rekindle our energy and our resolve to devote ourselves to what is most important in life. But that isn’t the end of the story.
The road to Emmaus leads to the table, the breaking of the bread and the total gift of self.  The recognition of the Risen Lord is always linked with the Eucharist.  At the heart of our Christian life is this meal of Word and Eucharist which we celebrate every Sunday. The Risen Lord presides over all our journeys, wishing to set our hearts on fire in generous service to all people in need, near and far.  The gift we have received is the gift we share.  Humbly, we set out on the various roads of our lives to respond to all the hungers of the human family we learn about at the table.
I now invite you that during this lockdown, to rediscover together as a family, one of the most important spiritual disciplines in your homes, the discipline of table. In the fast-paced, highly technological and disordered culture in which we find ourselves, let us intentionally resolve to rediscover the art of a slow meal around a table with people we care about and together as families recognize and celebrate the blessing of God. Whether at home or at our parish, all of us need to gather at the table, especially at the table of the Lord from which we receive the bread of eternal life. I invite parents to make meals shared at the table a priority in your lives and those of your children and transform this to the table of the Eucharist.