Spiritual nourishment

“ What could better illustrate this Spirit of Life dwelling in men's bodies and making them temples of God than a rite which drew attention to the fact that nourishment of the body is necessary for the continuance of the manifestation of the Spirit? Bread, the staff of life, is in some form or other the daily food of all peoples. ”

“ It is by frequent acts that habits are produced. It is by often eating and drinking this spiritual food, that we learn how to do it, so as to digest and convert it into proper nourishment for our souls. ”

“ Nor will even the supply of spiritual nourishment to hungry and thirsty souls be accounted to us for righteousness. We must find a higher meaning still in the text. Are we not, each one of us, starving for heavenly food?—spiritually exhausted with thirst?—naked, sick, in prison? ”

“ If the body and blood convey as infinitesimal an amount of nourishment to the soul as the small portions of bread and wine do to the body, the soul must suffer much from spiritual hunger. But how do they nourish the soul? The body and blood must be somehow in the bread and wine, and how is it managed that one part shall nourish the soul while the rest goes to the body? ”

“ This is not a temporal, natural life, which we have received through birth and which is nourished through the ordinary food and drink, but it is that new, spiritual life, which has been regenerated through the new birth in Holy Baptism, and which subsists by virtue of faith in the Lord Jesus and in love to God and our neighbor. But inasmuch as this life is yet weak and imperfect and constant growth is necessary, the Lord has instituted the Holy Supper as a spiritual means of nourishment, in order to strengthen the new spiritual life. ”

“ Provided there is a demand for food in the form of true hunger.
Natural diet, deep rhythmic breathing with corresponding exercises awaken latent talents within us and rapid mental and spiritual unfoldment takes place. Inharmony, disease and pain are caused by living a life contrary to the laws of God and Nature. ”

“ The next petition of the Lord's Prayer is, "Give us this day our daily bread." By these words we ask for all things which are needful both for our souls and bodies: the body needs daily food to preserve it in life, and make it strong to do its work; the Soul also wants food, to nourish and increase the spiritual life; and render it more active in the service of God. The word of God, Prayer, religious teaching, all the services of our religion, are the food of the Soul ”

“ II. Corporal food produces three effects on the body; it strengthens, satiates, and preserves life. Three similar effects, as the Angelical Doctor observes are produced in the soul by the eucharistic bread. This divine food strengthens it by giving it grace and virtue to overcome vice and bad habits. Next, it satiates the soul, by creating a disgust of earthly pleasures ”

“ We have elevated eating and drinking to be social functions; we make meals and meal times minister to the intellectual, emotional, and social elements in our nature. We invoke reason to assist in the redemption of the necessary vegetative and vital functions of the body, to be spiritually helpful to the fullest spiritual life. ”

“ And, after all,—though men in general think so much less of it—this is by far the more important concern of the two. The proper supply of the soul's nourishment is far more essential to our highest, that is, to our eternal, interests, than the supply of bodily food. ”

“ As the feeding, and health, and growth of the body do not come through the actual materials of our foods, for these are cast out of the body in the draught, but from the hidden power which is in them, so also the nourishment and the growth of the soul take place through the fear of God. ”

“ We think it a much better plan to use ordinary precautions and judgment in the selection of one's food, and then to bother no more about the matter, but eat with the thought of nourishment and strength in your minds, masticating the food as we have stated, and knowing that nature will do its work well. ”

“ These early sages have always held that prevention is better and easier than cure of diseases, physical, mental or spiritual. Regular spiritual practices, performed daily, form habits, and spiritual habits cleanse the impurities of the mind which then becomes fit to reflect the highest spiritual truths by the light of which man witnesses the unity of all Nature, feels the ecstasy of the One Essence which pervades it and stands face to face with his Maker.
The next essential of harmonious human life is food. Most people of our day will say that food is rather the first essential of life. ”

“ When He says: "He that eateth me, even he shall live by me," few understand Him to speak of natural eating or living, but nearly every one thinks of the spiritual things to which such natural acts correspond. When He says: "If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink," what Christian thinks of natural thirst or natural drinking, or of any movement of the body through natural space? ”

“ The bodily eating and drinking of such a Christian is thus complex act, including in it the appropriation and incorporation of all principles, from the lowest to the highest, whether material, rational, spiritual, or celestial, which have a tendency to nourish and strengthen either corporeal or mental life. ”

“ The new-born understanding — that neither food nor the stomach, without the consent of mortal mind, could make her suffer — brought with it another lesson, namely, that gustatory pleasure is a sensuous illusion, an illusion that diminishes as we understand our spiritual being and ascend the ladder of Life.
This woman learned that food neither strengthens nor weakens the body, — that mind alone does this. True, mortal mind has its material methods of doing it; one of which is to say that proper food supplies nutriment and strength to the human system. ”

“ Honey may be eaten unto it cloys the appetite and injures the eater, but not so with the Word of God. Those who eat the most of this spiritual food are the most spiritually healthy, and have the keenest appetite for it. 2. Although this God-given bodily food may do much to nourish and sustain a healthy man, it cannot cure a diseased body, or prevent the inroads of sickness and decay. But there is a soul-transforming power in the spiritual food of which it is here an emblem. ”

“ I beseech you most earnestly, my dear young Christian reader, to ever remember that you can no more live a spiritual life independently of the word of God than you can live a physical life independently of bread. If growth in grace is worth anything to you, and eternal blessedness in the sweet fields of heaven of any value, keep this ever in mind and act accordingly. As with the physical being, so it is with the spiritual. There must be appetite, eating, digestion, and assimilation, that the word of God may impart life. ”

“ As the stomach digests the food it receives, and as the mind assimilates the ideas it conceives, so the divine self utilizes the experiences it gains. As the result of the physical function is bodily health, and that of the mental process is knowledge, so, also, the fruit of the spiritual operation is wisdom. ”

“ The body is not supported by the bread of life, nor the soul by the bread that perisheth: each must have its proper aliment, that the whole man may be invigorated, and be enabled to perform all the functions of the animal and spiritual life with propriety and effect. ”

“ The soul, like the body, has its hunger and thirst. Our Lord says those are blessed who take care to feed it with those things which keep it alive in the grace of God, with prayer, and instruction, and the Sacraments. Blessed are those who hunger after this spiritual food, who are always trying to get more and more of God’s grace, who go hungry to prayer, hungry to Confession and Communion. ”

“ In the first place, rising a spiritual body implies that the glorified body will no longer need food, drink, and sleep, to sustain life and strength, as it now does. The risen body will, therefore, in this respect, become like a spirit, which needs neither food nor drink. Eating is a necessity of the present life, and makes our bodies animal. This necessity will no longer exist after the resurrection. ”

“ And as food, though ever so wholesome or rich, will yield no nourishment without being eaten, here the communicants are to take and eat, or to receive Christ and feed upon him, his grace and benefits, and by faith convert them into nourishment to their souls. They are to take him as their Lord and life, yield themselves up to him, and live upon him. ”

“ Know, O inquirer after the divine secrets, that there are two things needful to man in this world; first of all, he needs to acquire spiritual food to preserve his heart from perishing. The aliment of the heart consists in the love and knowledge of God ; for whatever is a necessity of the nature of any one, that he loves, as we have before mentioned. ”

“ Further, it is requisite for every one belonging to this world to sustain his temporal life by temporal food, and earthly drink. So, in like manner, spiritual meat and divine drink are a means to him who is baptized for sustaining his eternal life in God. ”

“ By "bread," in a natural sense, is signified food in general, all that sustains the bodily life. [2] But, in a spiritual sense, it signifies all mental food, all that supports the spiritual life or life of the soul. Thus it signifies all goodness and truth, or love and wisdom; for these sustain the soul's life: this is the food of angels, and also the food of our spirits even now, while we are preparing to become angels; it is the food that nourishes us to life everlasting; and according to our reception of which we are growing inwardly into angelic form and beauty. ”

“ As new-born babes we need the unadulterated milk of the word, that we may grow thereby. As men and women, we need the strong meat adapted to our maturity. The great mistake is in trying to live the spiritual life without spiritual food. ”

“ All great spiritual Scriptures are full of the invitation not to test but to taste; not to examine but to eat. Their phrases are full of living water and heavenly bread, mysterious manna and dreadful wine. Worldliness and the polite society of the world has despised this instinct of eating, but religion has never despised it. ”

“ As to the foods we eat, it is assumed that certain kinds of food nourish certain properties worthy of cultivation, and that others retard our spiritual growth. For instance, we do not kill to eat. Such food would be held to nourish the animal body, at the expense of the spiritual body, in which the soul is said to be clothed on its departure from this physical envelope, besides laying the sin of blood-guiltiness upon the butcher. ”

“ That is, He uses man's names of natural things for His names of spiritual things, pursuant to the law of correspondence.
Bread sustains the body. Goodness from the Lord does the same for the soul. So the Lord uses our name of bodily food for His name of spiritual food. He calls His goodness bread. "This is the bread that cometh down from God out of heaven."
Water quenches thirst. It is the great cleansing element. Truth quenches mental thirst, and is the cleansing element of the soul, for only by knowledge can we control disease or shun evils. ”

“ And it will then become necessary to balance the births and deaths; which, in the pure, spiritual and intuitive conditions accompanying the universal elevation of man to a fruit diet and consequent passional self-control, will be practicable and easy. ”

“ For instance, the bare eating a fruit, considered in its self, is neither fit nor unfit. If a fruit be appointed by God for our food and nourishment, then it is as fit to eat it, as to preserve our lives. ”

“ Although the nutriment of the first be altogether material, and that of the second spiritual, yet the same want of daily supply is equally obvious in regard to the improvement and preservation of mental as well as bodily qualities. Without our daily bread we must all in some short time sicken and die; without some daily intellectual repasts, the soul must soon become diseased and perish. ”

“ Scientific pathology illustrates the digestion of spiritual nutriment as both sweet and bitter, — sweet in expectancy and bitter in experience or during the senses' assimilation thereof, and digested only when Soul silences the dyspepsia of sense. ”

“ Questions.—Do all boys and girls get hungry? What food is most universally used in the world? Does the body require food every day? Why? Do we have a spiritual nature as well as a physical nature? Is there a spiritual hunger as well as a physical hunger? Will food which satisfies the physical Hunger satisfy the spiritual hunger? Who does the Bible say is the "bread of life"? Can we obtain food for the body without buying it either with money or effort? Must Jesus, the spiritual food, be bought? Can salvation be purchased? ”

“ But our daily bread is so called because there is here constant need for as much nourishment as the spirit and the flesh demand, whether we understand the expression spiritually, or carnally, or in both senses. ”

“ As often as you eat this bread, &c. Our bodily meals return often; we cannot maintain life and health without this. And it is fit that this spiritual diet should be taken often tool The ancient churches celebrated this ordinance every Lord's day, if not every day when they assembled for worship. ”

“ Physical vigor, regarded as a sign of complete nutrition, is an indispensable preliminary to the highest religion. Correct thought cannot be, without sufficient and appropriate food. If the nourishment is inadequate, defective energy of the brain will be transmitted, and the offspring will revert ancestrally to a lower plane of thought. ”