Giving Cups and Bitter Herbs

What’s in the Basket? Why?

Easter Foods & Eats:

How we eat, more than what, makes us healthy — Part 1

Remember, the market’s best sellers are cook books and diet books.  Could it be that many are so concerned about what they eat, they forget how to eat?

St Paul tells his parishioners in Corinth to slow down at meals, wait for each other, not to get drunk or overeat but rather share with those who have less. That’s the reason for blessing St Casimir Giving Cups (pic above). We eat less, gathering excess for those who have less.  We choose to fast for those for whom fasting is a lifestyle and a pain. This is how we recognize Jesus in every needy person: Whatsoever you do to the least of my people, that you do unto me. (Mt 25:12).

How have you treated Jesus this Lent? Have you recognized Him in a needy person? Have you talked with and sat down at table with some of our needy friends at the St Casimir Hospitality Table?  Many took that opportunity last week at the Food Pantry St. Joseph Table blessing. Have you listened to the cries of the needy, people in economic or family transition, like you want Jesus to listen to your prayers?  This is real Lent.

How we eat means sharing with others.  Sometimes, that may mean listening from the heart when someone interrupts you, “stealing” your time, needing a listening heart. Then, we are listening to Jesus Himself.

These special edition Lenten reflections present a deeper, more lasting meaning to the Holy Saturday blessed menu. Remember it’s not just about eating sausage or placek. The priest’s blessing bestows a spiritual power and profound faith meaning on each food. In our PolAm tradition each food, and the way we eat the blessed food, reveals how we welcome Jesus into our home, preparing Him a seat at our family tables. It’s never just “pigging out” after the fast like St Paul’s Corinthian parishioners. For this meal especially, food is blessed to be eaten only after Easter Sunday break-fast, the Holy Eucharist or Mass.

Talk about this to your adult sons and daughters. Share the the meaning of what is important to you with someone you love. This may encourage them to come closer to Jesus and accept His weekly invitation to His Table. Then they’ll live and walk in the world with meaning in their heart and soul. Remember the opposite of depression —the most debilitating illness of our time— is meaning, a meaning-filled, connected life. And that does not mean just another app. 

My Father always prepared the blessed eggs for the sharing. Placing the halved, hardboiled eggs on a fancy dish, he shaved the blessed, fresh, horseradish root on them with a knife & sprinkled them with blessed salt & pepper.

When he approached me to do the egg ritual he said, “Sonny (Synu),” Then I knew I had to listen up. He continued, “These eggs are like life. They taste bitter.  If you spit them out, you will go hungry. Swallow them. The bitterness passes, and you are nourished.”

Having survived and escaped alone from a Russian, Soviet concentration camp in Siberia, he knew what he was talking about. For him and our family, the blessed egg sharing ritual was very important. On holydays how we ate was more important that what we ate.

What’s in the Basket? Why?  —  Part 2

Horseradish: Bitter Herb, Bitter People

We’ve felt the bitter sorrow of the loss of a loved one, grand/parent, of a spouse or friend. Some never get over it. Well, you never really get over the loss of a close, life-companion, parent, child. Jesus, too, did not only get over the fact that most of the world, government officials, religious leaders, media, even his friends, left Him alone, rejected Him, shunned Him, made sport of Him, even yelled, “Crucify Him!”

Crucifixion is still the most brutal and barbaric, torturous death humans ever invented. You slowly died of asphyxiation, not from loss of blood. Each breath and movement sent shocks of excruciating pain thru the whole body.

This was a bitter death, a bitter execution. And when Jesus cried, “I am thirsty!” they gave him vinegar. Agony, like none of us have ever seen or experienced.

Jesus didn’t get over it. He passed right straight thru it. Through gruesome scourging, torture, nailing to and hanging on the cross, and a lonely burial. He did not divorce himself from the human family. He forgave the thief from the tree of bitter sorrow. He forgave those who were brutalizing Him, while they were still executing those unheard of tortures. People bullied Him to death. Jesus loves us to death and beyond….

This is our God, like no other, ever. Tormented by the people he created, left alone, forgiving us, and dying for us, and finally RISING for us. There is no Easter without death. No week is Holy without 40 days of fasting, abstaining from preferred pleasure, absolutely no Sunday sunrise without the dark Tomb.

This is why each year, I remind families not to forget their horseradish for the food blessing. Few forget, chocolates, placek or rum-iced babka cakes, jelly beans, yet many still forget the bitter herb.  You want a life without pain? You want to live without hurt, rejection, loss? Why? Revisit the Good News. We did it to our Lord, why ought it not happen to us? No servant is greater than his/her master.

Expecting to be treated differently than Jesus, we become victims of a constant flow, endless  news, a media hype, day after day. Some even feed on bad news: they bad mouth others behind their backs. Is this not what people did to Jesus? This is far from the life Jesus wanted and won for us.

Bless the bitter herb. Place it joyfully in your basket, knowing that God has already conquered death. Bitterness can never take our life away, although some let it steal them of happiness especially, when they cannot accept the death, no matter how tragic, of a friend or loved person. Some even blame God! Why would God do this to me?!  Well, we did it to Jesus first. So why are we so special (?!).

Only if the grain of wheat dies, does it bear fruit…a hundred, a thousand fold! That’s the way Jesus sees it. That’s the way He lived, died and was executed.  Then He rose like the wheat in the field to feed us with His everlasting Body and Blood. If you’re too busy for Him, you may be carrying around bitterness over something, maybe even blaming God.

Some chuckle when I ask, “Did you bring your horseradish?”  and then add, “I don’t care if you don’t like horseradish. If you don’t like it, it’s even a bigger sacrifice to have some. Only after tasting the bitterness of life, can you really enjoy the sweetness of the blessed Resurrection Table. Otherwise you may become a victim of bitterness. Go through it, don’t just get over it.

Come ½ hour before Sunday Mass to the Lenten or Bitter Lamentations and experience how our ancestors experienced Jesus being bullied, beat up, and handed over to torturers. Then you may stop blaming God for your woes and experience Resurrection.

Remember: it’s not what we eat it’s how we eat. Share some blessed, bitterness with Easter eggs and gracious wishes, and experience a home-style Resurrection.