When I was a child, despite difficulties, our family always ate together. My father would ensure that dinner time was repected! As a small child I remember the suppers, they were simple with meat and potatoes but the suppers we had with our parents signified that all was well, that in our little house on the military base, all was secure. There was a deeper significance in eating together that transcended the supper itself!
Things and customs changed. I visited my sister in the USA and observed that they do not eat together, the dinners remained on the table covered at times with tin foil while her husband was busy and the children in their rooms. Supper was only a table for snacks to be grabbed when you wanted to. It was like a McDonald's drive through.
I believe that there is an intrinsic need we have for communing with others over a supper table. Sadly, this tradition is fading. I observed many families in restaurants, not looking at their meals but engrossed in their phones and idly sticking a fork in their meal. They did not speak to each other. The sanctity of the supper table had been reduced once more to a fast food drive through.
It appears to me that the Roman Catholic church, since the liturgical reforms of Vatican 2 has been chasing the culture and trying to adapt and change its time honoured tradtions to accommodate. The communion rails were destroyed, the altars facing the people and communion, where we receive our daily bread, the body of our Lord, which could only be received on the tongue while kneeling, was now offered not only by priests but anyone and given in the hands of the faithful. In a way reminiscent of being given a slice of pizza or a donut at a drive through.
If you go to restaurants now, you will see a new trend. People want beauty and exotic tastes in their food. Coffee is no longer coffee but a latte where the foamed milk forms images in your cup, food is artfully arranged on your plate and people take pictures, It is as if the secular society, understands the sanctity and almost sacramental reality of food. It transcends mere nutrition after all. I have even seen people communicating over their meals.
If I am right, the Church too will start to understand the importance of our meal in the Eucharist and restore the sacredness and the need for reverence. Will we see the altar rails come back? Will we see more people receiving communion while kneeling and only given by the priest? Time will tell!
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