The recipe

I’m still unpacking boxes from a move over a year ago. Recently I came across a couple of recipe cards written in my mother’s excellent penmanship.

My mother, God rest her soul, passed away almost 50 years ago and the sight of her handwriting caused a moment of grief sweetened by time.

Today, recipes are more likely to be on a screen and in an electronic file than on a recipe card in a wooden or metal box. But the structure and layout haven’t changed all that much.

The list of ingredients, abbreviations for amounts and the closing instructions for cooking are simply typed versions of my mother’s cursive. My mother could have never imagined a gazillion recipes from all over the world available at her fingertips with a few typed words on an electronic keyboard.

Recipes are ancient and the time-tested ones were handed down for generations. Traditional foods are one of the characteristics that identify cultures and religions. The consistency of taste over time is because of the recipe.

The early Church had a recipe for discipleship. The struggles of a world with ever-present sin and inescapable death were like a millstone. Conversion to Jesus Christ was the harvest of the ripened seeds of essential grains. The millstone may grind them up but by the grace of God, they became a fine flour.

This flour was mixed with the waters of baptism and the oil of gladness in sacramental anointings. A dash of salt as a preservative from evil and the leaven of the Gospel. The dough is kneaded by the loving hands of the Creator and let to rest to rise ready.

The fire of the Holy Spirit transformed the dough into a loaf of bread. The bread of life come down from heaven. While the bread of the Last Supper was unleavened and is still today, the recipe for discipleship needs the leaven of the Gospel.

Wine is made from stomped grapes and oil from crushed olives. These sacramental elements testify to the mercy of God who hears the cries of those in need. Our encounter with the person and real presence of Jesus Christ rebuilds what sin has torn down and feeds the soul. Though we may be broken, stomped and crushed, we are partakers in the mystery of the body and blood of Jesus Christ and anointed by the Holy Spirit with the oil of gladness.

Bread is such a simple recipe for such a profound mystery of faith. The effects of Original Sin, so prevalent in our imperfect lives in an imperfect world, do have a way of grinding us down.

Yet as a fine flour, the waters of baptism and the oil of anointing prepare us to receive the Gospel. Prayer seasons us like salt and preserves us from evil. We rest and rise ready for the fire of love in the Holy Spirit. As members of the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church, we become transformed to be bread for the world.

St. Augustine knew the recipe for discipleship and put it this way:

“Listen to the Apostle Paul speaking to the faithful: ‘You are the body of Christ, member for member.’

If you, therefore, are Christ’s body and members, it is your own mystery that is placed on the Lord’s table! It is your own mystery that you are receiving!

You are saying ‘amen’ to what you are: your response is a personal signature affirming your faith. When you hear ‘The Body of Christ’, you reply ‘amen.’ Be a member of Christ’s body, then, so that your ‘amen’ may ring true.”

La receta