October 26

A family meal

Sharing a meal as a family fosters a spiritual strength within your domestic church. Since everyone has to eat every day, choosing to break bread together is a “little” way you can grow in faith as a family and honor the dignity of one another by caring for their needs—(i.e. hunger, community, fellowship, etc.)

Consider for a minute that the Bible is filled with stories about God feeding His people. Before their flight from Egypt, God instructed each Israelite family to eat a slaughtered lamb during the Passover. Before the Israelites reached the Promised Land, they wandered in the desert for 40 years; God fed them with manna (bread) that fell from the sky each night. In the Gospel, before He preached, Jesus miraculously fed thousands with only a small basket of fish and loaves. Before His Passion and death on the Cross, Jesus fed the apostles at the Last Supper, and on the road to Emmaus, before Cleopas and another disciple’s eyes could recognize Jesus, He broke bread, said a blessing, and gave it to them. Notice that God takes great care to feed His people—especially before something BIG happens?

God knows that breaking bread together is an important way in which we grow in communion with one another and nourish our hearts and minds to prepare ourselves to live God’s plan each day. It is so important that God chose the humility of bread and wine for consecration to make Himself intimately and completely present to us as our divine meal. When we gather at Church and receive the Eucharist, we grow in communion with God and one another—God feeds us before we face the BIG day ahead!

God has ordained our home as the domestic church. When we share a meal as a family, we honor the dignity of God’s design for family life. With each meal, many little sacrifices and acts of love come together to nourish us. The family meal is a powerful spiritual tool!

If eating together is already a common family practice—discuss with your kids why it is so important. If it isn’t yet a common family practice—commit to breaking bread together at least once a week. Use Breaking Bread as a Family to discuss why!