We’ve talked already about how it’s silly for me to celebrate angel days with food, since angels don’t eat. Even though my children have learned to work the system.
In the Bible we see angels bringing food to people. The Eucharist is referred to as “panis angelicus,” or the Bread of Angels, even though they don’t receive it.
Humans use hunger as part of our understanding of the world. Hunger for God, hunger and thirst for holiness, hunger for prayer. We use the word “hunger” to imply a lack we urgently want to fill. In “Seven Archangels: Annihilation,” Mary is the only human being in the story, and she shows her love to the angels specifically by cooking. It’s a uniquely human way of showing care. In “Seven Archangels: An Arrow In Flight,” which is under discussion right now, Gabriel watches a family cooking and suddenly internalizes the difference between “eating” and a community eating together.
My dream of Gabriel started in a restaurant. I’ve dreamed about my own guardian, and in some of those dreams, he’s given me food. I think to them it means, “I will nurture you.”
I came across this in a journal from a couple of years ago:
Food must be amusing to angels. It’s functional — to sustain life — and yet we make it symbolic (of togetherness) and use it to say we love one another, and to seal covenants, and finally Jesus comes to us as food. And they don’t need it at all.
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Most religions (all that I’m aware of) include some sort of sharing of food, either as a family or congregation. Ages ago I read a quasi-scientific book about faster-than-daily rhythms, and how food will reset them. After a meal, people are in a mood to share and compromise, hence meals during business meetings.
It makes me sad when families don’t manage to break bread together on a regular basis.