Eating Beauty: Communion, Healing, and Sanctity
One of my favorite quotes on Eucharistic adoration comes from St. John Vianney’s interaction with a man deeply devoted to the Eucharist, who explained that his silent prayer before the Blessed Sacrament consists of the simple gaze of lover and beloved: “I look at Him and He looks at me.” It is precisely here that the idea of eating beauty emerges, for in the gaze and reception of the Eucharist, there is Beauty to behold, to receive, to be taken up into ourselves. Sr. Ann Astell finds eating beauty aesthetic because it brings about intimate Communion and leads to the healing of original sin through Christ’s obedient redemption. As a result of eating beauty, men and women are called to radical transformation as they give themselves over to be formed into saints who show forth the Eucharistic face of Christ.
To eat beauty is to both consume and be consumed by Beauty Himself, and this reciprocal consuming gives way to intimate communion between Lover and Beloved. Simone Weil writes that “‘God is waiting to eat’ the lovers of beauty, but only to transform them: ‘They will have become different, after being eaten and digested by God’” (5) and continues by noting that “God’s eating of us and our eating of Him in the Eucharist is not destructive of beauty…but rather a way to participate in Beauty itself, the same Beauty that expresses itself in obedience to God’s law of charity” (5). The eating that is involved in Eucharistic communion is not destructive but is rather self-giving, as the one who consumes gives himself over to that which he is consuming. Eucharistic eating is not only an act by which man consumes God but an act of God eating man so as to bring about transformation within. Astell notes that “communion aims at the loss of the ‘I’ in either the ‘you’ or the ‘we’” (11). In this reception of the Eucharist, one is entirely lost in God who receives man into himself and gives himself over to man. There is not a possessing or a consumption solely for the sake of consuming, rather there is a reciprocal gift and reception that allows Lover and Beloved to dwell, one within the other. Bernard of Clairvaux beautifully speaks of this:
“I myself am His food…I am chewed as I am reproved by Him; I am swallowed as I am taught; I am digested as I am changed; I am assimilated as I am transformed; I am made one as I am conformed…For if I eat and am not eaten, then He is in me, but I am not yet in Him…But he eats me that He may have me in Himself, and He in turn is eaten by me that He may be in me.” (Bernard, 76)
Bernard’s reflection on the eating that occurs in Eucharistic communion reveals that the process of eating coincides with the process of conformation and participation in Beauty Himself. God consumes us so that we might be incorporated into Him, and we consume Him so that He might become present within us. As this beauty is “chewed”, the Beloved learns to savor the sweetness of His God dwelling in him and consuming him.
As eating beauty leads to full participation in Beauty Himself, so too does eating beauty bring about the antidote to the first sin which involved a destructive consumption of beauty. Beauty can be consumed with destructive intention, or it can be consumed in a way that “preserves and enhances” it (5). In the first sin, man was tempted by the appearance of Beauty and consumed that which he was told to only look at. The eating of the apple, which was “beautiful to behold and sweet to eat” (36), brought about the destruction of man through death. Yet, this seduction by beauty and destruction of communion with God finds its antidote in the Eucharistic gift of the Lord, for “just as by Adam’s tasting we all died, thus by tasting Christ we all recover life” (33). Whereas the consumption of the apple led to the destruction of beauty, the consumption of Christ in the Eucharist enhances its very beauty. In eating the Eucharist, that which was deformed by the first sin is consequently reformed through the grace and presence of Christ (45). He is “received as a germinating seed of grace into the soul” (37) which “sprouts, grows, and gradually matures in the garden of the soul” (57) bearing fruit within as the soul undergoes conformation to Christ who is the Redeemer. Though the first act of eating brought about our deformity, this Eucharistic eating allows us to become beautiful through Him who is Beauty (51). Christ not only redeems and restores what was lost in Eden, but does so by the very act which led to our destruction. It is precisely in this intimate restoration that the Beauty of God shines forth: bestowing on us what we were not capable of receiving ourselves.
Eating beauty results in the radical transformation of souls into living temples for the Lord. As we receive the Eucharist, we are transformed and made beautiful, which Astell compares to the work of forming a statue:
“Even as matter gains in beauty through being shaped and formed — for example, into a statue — so too the soul is beautified through a formative process that is, however, both passive and active. The soul is passively transformed through the assimilating power of love: ‘No eye ever saw the sun without becoming sun-like, nor can a soul see beauty without becoming beautiful’” (44).
The eating of the Eucharist simply cannot leave one’s soul unchanged, for the Love of Christ which possesses and fills it chisels and burns away all of the deformity of Eden. The soul becomes beautiful as it is “shaped and formed” into the One who is ultimately Beautiful. Christ presents himself the model, “the original model or paradigm according to which every saint carves and polishes the ‘statue’ of his or her being in the process of conversion and transformation” and the fulfillment “of each one’s unique being, the end or purpose toward which each one aims and gravitates” (45). Thus, in receiving the Eucharist, one receives both the template and fulfillment of his being, for he is called to be another Christ.
Astell’s masterful Eucharistic work Eating Beauty reveals the stunning nature by which God redeems His people — through an act so simple. God makes himself food, to be eaten and consumed so that as we receive Him, He can receive us. Through the intimacy of Communion and the healing of the first sin, the Eucharist leads to the transformation of souls who become other Christ’s and radical saints. Just as through eating we were once exiled from God, so too through eating are we brought back and made worthy of Him. As Astell writes at the end of her work, “We end, then, as we began. Eating beauty”(259).
In closing, as I consider this idea of eating beauty, it brings to mind a poem I wrote reflecting on this experience of being consumed and consuming when receiving the Eucharist. I will share it below.
Intimate Rest
Oh, it is so familiar to me:
the build up — a steady inhale.
I keep trying to breathe in, to hold it all.
I am parched, thirsting for you,
but I don’t drink.
The gentle whisper: Exhale, I am here.
A slow release: I am held.
You are here, you are here.
The familiar presence of your peace
stripping me, consuming me:
Let go, let go, just let go.
This is my body, this is my blood,
for you, all for you.
As I exhale, you inhale,
and I crash into you,
totally undone, totally seen,
receiving the gift.
This is the still point
here in this turning world.
You and I:
wholly consumed by the One I consume,
and in this, I rest.
No longer I,
but I held by you:
an intimacy too deep for words.
[snh]
