The Flavor of God: On Cooking and Christian Materialism

“Our Lord moves amidst the pots and pans,” St. Teresa of Avila once said, and indeed, I often find God in a busy kitchen. I love cooking, once described to me as the art of redistributing water, which is simply a very clever way of saying that chefs are masters of matter.

Catholicism, when fully understood and well practiced, offers the best spiritual orientation to the physical world. Western culture is often derided as being materialistic, but the philosopher Alan Watts disagrees, suggesting that instead of loving matter, Western civilization either hates it or disregards it completely. This contempt (or ambivalence) is most visible in our dietary practices. In a passage contemplating thoroughgoing Christian materialism, Watts writes:

I would point to bad cuisine as the main sign that American culture is not only post-Christian but anti-Christian. Proper cooking can be done only in the spirit of sacrament and ritual. It is an act of worship and thanksgiving, a celebration of the glory of life, and no one can cook well who does not love and respect the raw materials he handles – the eggs and onions, the herbs and salts, the mushrooms and beans, and, above all, the living animals – fish, fowl and flesh – whose lives we take to live.¹

Preparing everyday meals in a sacramental spirit means working with the goodness of God’s bounty on the table to delight in those at the table — to love God-given matter for his glory and purposes. The Catholic Bishops of Japan wrote in Reverence for Life, “To sense each creature singing the hymn of its existence is to live joyfully in God’s love and hope.”² At the best feasts, everything and everyone is singing joyfully in God’s love, giving tribute and thanksgiving.

My most elevated cooking comes when I am fully absorbed in this joyful hymn of existence. I can ritualistically enter into spirit of love and respect by reciting my favorite part of the Eucharistic prayer as I assemble the ingredients needed:

Fruit of the earth and the work of human hands . . .

Fruit of the vine and the work of human hands . . .

A cosmic vertigo occasionally overwhelms me at the simple act of looking down at a carrot in my left hand and a knife in my right. Everything — the sun, rain, earth, fire, time, and human craftsmanship — everything is in my hands, and as I chop, I often muse on a passage from Martin Luther King Jr.’s A Christmas Sermon on Peace:

Did you ever stop to think you can’t leave for your job in the morning without being dependent on most of the world? You get up in the morning and go to the bathroom and reach over for the sponge, and that’s handed to you by a Pacific Islander. You reach for a bar of soap, and that’s given to you at the hands of a Frenchman. And then you go into the kitchen to drink your coffee for the morning, and that’s poured in your cup by a South American. Or maybe you want tea: that’s put in your cup by a Chinese. Or maybe you’re desirous of having cocoa for breakfast, and that’s poured in your cup by a West African. And then you reach over for your toast, and that’s given to you at the hands of an English-speaking farmer, not to mention the baker. And before you finish breakfast in the morning, you’ve depended on more than half the world.³

At an ontological level — at the very level of being itself — everything is interconnected and inter-related. That means, among other things, that I am not self-reliant; I am dependent on God and the rest of my fellow human beings for all that I have and all that I am. Transforming an everyday meal into a ritual means entering into this flowing stream of interconnectedness. As the Catholic Catechism suggests:

God wills the interdependence of all creatures. The sun and the moon, the cedar and the little flower, the eagle and the sparrow: the spectacle of their countless diversities and inequalities tell us that no creature is self-sufficient. Creatures exist only in dependence on each other, to complete each other, in the service of each other.⁴

Both the roles of chef and dinner guest are completed when the meal is served. As I soak in the laughter, I am again overcome with that cosmic vertigo that dizzies me when I consider how the bountiful diversity of God’s great creation led me to this moment of near perfect praise that hints at what heaven might be like.

All of which likely explains why my favorite dishes are reductions, dishes that take time and allow the fragrant steam to rise from the pot like incense. In risotto, for example, at a crucial stage you must burn off the alcohol from a dry white wine to concentrate its sweetness. In pisto manchego, the water from the tomatoes, peppers, and squash slowly bubbles off until there’s nothing left but the flavor of God.

In the union of Heaven and Earth, God has always been saying, “I love you with my whole heart,” calling us to a wedding feast that transforms the animal need for nutrition into a spiritual celebration of deep and authentic communion. God would never feed us hyper-processed fast food that pollutes our bodies and litters our environment. Quite the opposite; God offers us the bread from heaven that gives everlasting life to the world in the person of Jesus Christ in the eternal and ever-present Eucharist.

Western Christianity is not materialistic. It is not materialistic enough! Western civilization’s reductionist view of matter sees the world as a cosmic accident, a bunch of dumb stuff to be desired, consumed, and then thrown out. A proper Christian spiritual materialism stands against this impoverished diet that turns people into obese, diabetic junk food addicts who throw their paper coffee cups and plastic chip bags onto the riverbank. Again, as Watts observes, “Christianity is the only truly materialist religion which asserts unequivocally the goodness and glory of the physical universe and believes that its creations have not been a divine mistake.”⁵

God lovingly created a fine-tuned universe over billions of years, and we need to pay creation the level of respect it deserves — not to make a God out of nature, but to see nature as God’s handiwork, as His supreme gift to us, for us to love and care for. A joyful banquet, lovingly made, is one of the greatest moments of life, and as William Cavanaugh observes in Being Consumed: The Ethics of Christian Desire, “simple acts such as making our own bread or our own music can become significant ways to reshape the way we approach the material world.”⁶ A sacred materialism does not see the material universe as something made for our utilitarian purposes, but as a means of praising God through our labour and creativity.

And it is precisely this orientation of sacred materialism that allows us to fast in a meaningful way, rather than just try to lose a few pounds during Dry January. When we temporarily go without God’s bounty, we not only turn away from the idols of comfort and convenience, we refocus our attention on the Father’s loving provision. When people — like those in Medieval times who lived without an abundance of salt, fat, sugar, or the comforts of refrigeration — radically removed the meat, eggs, milk, cheese, cream, and butter from their diet, they reminded themselves that God was the ultimate provider, the only One who can truly take our hunger and thirst away.

Catholicism has been infected with our culture’s transactional mentality, where “the practice of praising God has fallen largely into disuse,”⁷ replaced by a consumer orientation best expressed in the phrase: “I don’t get anything out of Mass.” When I go to Mass, I don’t go in hopes of getting something out, though I often do. God gives me consolations, as well as moments of insight and beauty, because he always wants to bestow good things upon us. But sometimes, even in the most beautiful liturgical service, I won’t get anything out of Mass except an order: “Pick up your cross daily and follow me.” Mass is not about what you get, but about what you give. As Matthew Kelly puts it, “We are called to be responsible stewards of our own lives while at the same time living in way that is mindful of the needs of others and mindful of the needs of all creation.”⁸ We are given, above all, a commandment to love God and each other, a commandment which can be fulfilled at the supper table.

The need to reclaim this attitude of sacred materialism is powerfully expressed in Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home, where Pope Francis admits that Christians have not always lived their spirituality in a way “where the life of spirit is not dissociated from the body or from nature or from worldly realities, but lived in and with them, in communion with all that surrounds us.”⁹ We must remember that God created the world and wrote into it “an order and a dynamism that human beings have no right to ignore.”¹⁰ The supper table is a place to end this dis-integration and alienation.

Reclaiming this attitude begins with prayerful cooking at home, and it is not about global warming and the fact that our planet’s resources are being harvested at an unsustainable rate, or that we are consuming microplastics and forever chemicals (which should certainly concern us). It is primarily because any other attitude is sinful.

Christian spirituality incorporates the value of festivity, union, integration, and dependence, all of which flow from this sacred materialism. Again, as Pope Francis says, “We must regain the conviction that we need one another,”¹¹ that all the parts of the body are baptized in one spirit.

This orientation that we need one another is being lost, even in the domestic church. Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education says only 30% of families manage to eat together on a regular basis, but those that do experience lower rates of depression, anxiety, substance abuse, eating disorders, and higher rates of resilience and self esteem.¹² Empirical evidence seems to suggest that eating together is a powerful bond, and so it is not surprising the Father has always been calling us to a meal; this is one of the most immediate ways he keeps us free from all anxiety, and a family dinner can be a minor mirror of the Mass.

And this is why we always pray and say grace before our meal, no matter who joins us at our table, even if we are uncomfortable or afraid our simple prayer will make others uncomfortable. This proper attitude of materialism is proclaimed in our prayer to honor this moment as a gift from God, to be appreciated and lived to the full:

One expression of this attitude [of serene attentiveness to our interdependence on the natural world and each other] is when we stop and give thanks to God before and after meals. I ask all believers to return to this beautiful and meaningful custom. That moment of blessing, however brief, reminds us of our dependence on God for life; it strengthens our feeling of gratitude for the gifts of creation; it acknowledges those who by their labors provide us with these goods; and it reaffirms our solidarity with those in greatest need.¹³

When we reclaim this attitude of sacred materialism, we can once again find our Lord in the midst of the pots and pans.