Yesterday, we had a family picnic. And this was the sight that we saw before us as we ended a happy and wonderful day. Even as the day was drawing to a close, God’s graces were still streaking across the sky to bring us unending joy and happiness. Some relatives traveled hundreds of miles just to join us; others we have not seen for more than thirty years; and still others we see regularly but whose company we long for nonetheless to give us our sense of being loved and cared for, thereby affirming the innate goodness and value in each one of us.
As we shared the food and the fun that each of the families brought, the struggles of earning a daily living, the travails of pursuing a career and the humdrum details of everyday routines were laid aside and momentarily forgotten as we reveled in each others company remembering the past with fondness, relishing the present for the love and care we share and in the process refreshed to face up to the future with greater hope.
There is something about sharing food, feasting together and being with friends and family that affirms something of deep value in human persons. Breaking bread with another person means seeing the goodness in him. It means truly appreciating his value and wanting to share your own value with him. When we share a meal, we share time as well. When we share time and a meal, our stomachs get filled and so do our hearts.
Breaking bread with family and friends also reminds us that we are part of the greater human family. And in the joy and fullness of our feasting, Jesus reminds us to make the occasion for us to be aware of others who may not have enough to eat or who may not even have anything to eat. Even as eating reminds us of what is deeply human in us, may it also remind us we are a part of a greater humanity, for whom we also have responsibility.
I can hear the exhortation of Pope Francis: Go the the edges. Live out in the peripheries. And there share you food and break bread with the poor and the marginalized.
He said also to the one who had invited him, ‘When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.’
Luke 14:1,12-14