Table Talk

One of the things I love about going on retreat to a monastery is meal times.  In most monasteries there is silence but not entirely.  Some people find this silence unnatural or difficult or embarrassing.  After all, isn't a mealtime a social occasion?  How many business deals have been arranged and sealed at lunch?  How many people have been proposed to at a Romantic Dinner?  How many have arranged to meet up with old friends at lunch, or slipped out for lunch with colleagues during the working day?  How many speeches have been made over dinner, how many toasts made, how many anniversaries and birthdays celebrated?

At the monastery, the eaters are read to: not necessarily from some spiritual tome or biblical book.  It could be a novel, an autobiography, or a piece of travel writing: anything that feeds the mind and heart.  It always means that the table talk is good talk: good quality words feed us and enlighten us.

In the Eucharist, as the table is prepared, as the food and drink is prepared, we retell the story of salvation, the story of God in Christ.  The story told is not simply a memoir or an historical account but something alive and real, something to be experienced now. 

We receive this story firstly through the Liturgy of the Word when the Word of God (the Bible) is announced, read carefully and attentively listened to.  At Sunday Mass there are usually three readings: the first is from the Old Testament (hoe God has revealed his saving love to the People of Israel and prepared them for the coming of Jesus).  Then we respond to what we have heard, in God given words, by singing a Psalm together.  A reading from the New Testament follows (perhaps from the Acts of the Apostles or one of the many letters).  And then we stand (with an Alleluia on our lips) to welcome a reading from one of the four Gospels: we listen to an account of Jesus' ministry among us.  Yes, at the Eucharist the table talk is good talk!
But the Word of God is not simply confined to that part of the Mass known as the Liturgy (or Ministry) of the Word.  The whole of our liturgy is filled with Scriptural language.  The table talk continues.

The Eucharistic Prayer is a thanksgiving prayer for all that God has done for us, for all that he has done to save us, most importantly in the saving death and resurrection of Jesus.  The preface (the first part of the Eucharistic Prayer) changes from week to week or from feast to feast, highlighting a particular aspect of the story of our Salvation so that we can get to know it better, so that we can enter more into the reality of Christ.  However, there is always that unique moment of the retelling of the story of the night before Jesus died, when he sat at table with his disciples, took bread and wine, gave thanks and offered them to his followers and friends as his body and his blood

And so, here at the table of the Altar, we experience for ourselves the transforming effect of words: words that change us, words that astound us, words that become a part of our own language and experience.  The story of God in Christ becomes woven into our life: we become part of the story.  Any good story will captivate us and involve us in some way.  The story of salvation, the story of God in Christ, the story that is given to us in the Bible is, to coin a phrase, the greatest story ever told.  It is our story.  It is God's story.  It is a story for the world, a story which draws us in, which changes and transforms us.  Yes, at the Eucharist the table talk is good talk.

At the Eucharist the 'Table Talk' is good talk!  This article explores the importance of the
Bible and the story of salvation at the Mass.