Food and Faith Quotes

“Food is a gift of God given to all creatures for the purposes of life’s nurture, sharing, and celebration. When it is done in the name of God, eating is the earthly realization of God’s eternal communion-building love.”
― Norman Wirzba, Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating

“Thanksgiving is the power that transforms desire and satisfaction, love and possession, into life, that fulfills everything in the world, given to us by God, into knowledge of God and communion with him.2”
― Norman Wirzba, Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating

“Fasting, in its most fundamental aspiration, is about developing a sacrificial, self-offering life that addresses and nurtures the needs of others.”
― Norman Wirzba, Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating

“The root of all sin is fear: the very deep fear that we are nothing; the compulsion, therefore, to make something of ourselves, to construct a self-flattering image of ourselves we can worship, to believe in ourselves – our fantasy selves. I think all sins are failures in being realistic; even the simple everyday sins of the flesh, that seem to move from mere childish greed for pleasure, have their deepest origin in anxiety about whether we really matter, the anxiety that makes us desperate for self-reassurance.”
― Norman Wirzba, Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating

“work is ultimately to be about a finer attunement to the world as the place of God’s sustaining presence. With an awareness of God and with an appreciation for God’s intention that creatures be whole and at peace, people’s use of the world can be transformed so that the gifts of life are better cherished, nurtured, and shared.”
― Norman Wirzba, Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating

“If the experience of delight presupposes a sustained, patient, sympathetic, and affectionate embrace of the world, then the decline of delight will be preceded by the erosion of the practical conditions that make such an embrace possible. What trends and practices in culture work to undermine a loving regard for creatures and things, and how have these trends and practices contributed to a situation in which relatively few people bow their heads before raising their forks?”
― Norman Wirzba, Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating

“To meet and know God people must therefore begin with a deep commitment to serve life as they meet it because this is where God is, at the heart of all life’s intersections.”
― Norman Wirzba, Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating

“To “remember Jesus” in their eating was not simply to recall a past event. It was to call on Jesus and invite him to transform what they were doing together.18 Jesus’ presence at the meal could thus be an “effective” presence that challenged and corrected their eating practices.”
― Norman Wirzba, Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating

“The evidence of the early church suggests that the community of followers ate together regularly and often, and that in their eating they tried to bear witness to Christ’s way of dwelling on earth.”
― Norman Wirzba, Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating

“We were created as celebrants of the sacrament of life, of its transformation into life in God, communion with God … [R]eal life is “eucharist,” a movement of love and adoration toward God, the movement in which alone the meaning and value of all that exists can be revealed and fulfilled … [I]n Christ, the new Adam, the perfect man, this eucharistic life was restored to man. For He Himself was the perfect Eucharist.”
― Norman Wirzba, Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating

“The inability to understand the spiritual roots of gluttony (as the inability to sacrifice) or to appreciate a culture’s role in fostering this anxious condition, makes it all the more difficult for individuals to find the help and direction they need.”
― Norman Wirzba, Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating