The Spirituality of Feasting: An Exercise in Practical Theology

The memory of the simple pleasures of good food and drink shared with loved ones around a well-laid table produces a numinous moment: the feast and its lingering after-effects are more than the sum of its parts. Food, already a multi-faceted topic, invites an interdisciplinary approach. Food and theology must, by extension, include a multi-disciplinary investigation. Conceived of as an exercise in practical theology, the theologies of feminism, embodiment, hospitality, and crossover approaches like liturgical anthropology all combine to describe how the basic elements of a shared abundant meal create a transcendent moment. In this moment we can experience God’s overwhelming love for humanity, begun in creation and brought to fulfillment with Christ’s death and resurrection. This abundant love is well represented at the shared feasting table. Food is good to think; feasting is good to experience God’s love