Prayer at Meals
September 26, 1993
Brother John Raymond
Not to long ago someone wrote to me asking about a prayer to say
before meals. In past years praying before meals was a standard
Catholic practice. The most popular prayer taught to Catholics,
which I also learned as a child, was the following: "Bless us Oh
Lord in these Thy gifts which we are about to receive from Thy
bounty through Christ Our Lord. Amen." This is not the only prayer
that can be prayed before meals. At our monastery we pray before our
meals: "Lord Jesus, we thank you for this food and we ask You to
bless those who have provided it for us. Blessed Virgin with Thy
loving Child Thy blessing give to us this day. Amen."
Any prayer before meals should first thank God for the food that
is about to be eaten. Food is a gift from God. Farmers experience
this maybe a little more than those of us who live in the city. Many
a farmer has had a crop failure and gone out of business because of
bad weather. The supermarket makes one forget this reality. One
child was asked by her teacher where milk came from. The child
proudly answered "from the store." One presumes food will always be
plentiful in the supermarket or that technology can always save the
day. Yet, it would not take much for our country to experience a
real famine. Lack of rain, plagues, floods, etc. could quickly empty
the shelves in the stores and the food on our tables. Other factors
may also bring about an empty table at mealtime - unemployment, war,
etc. So we have many good reasons to thank God for providing our
food both directly and indirectly. Our Lord Himself gave us this
example of giving God thanks before meals. The Gospel tells us that
before He miraculously fed the four thousand people Jesus took the
loaves and the fish and He gave thanks. (See Mt 15,36)
Another aspect of a prayer before meals is it should call down
God's blessing upon the food one is about to eat. In doing so one is
asking Him make it benefit both one's body and soul. How many people
have become sick or even died as a result of the food they ate. One
of the best examples of the power of a blessing is found in the life
of St. Benedict, the founder of the Benedictine Monks. Someone was
trying to kill him. So they put poison in the wine he was to drink
with his meal. When he said the blessing over the meal before eating
the wine glass broke spilling its deadly contents on the table. St.
Benedict was preserved from harm by God's blessing. These days
people have many worries about the food they eat and maybe rightly
so. This food causes cancer, another food causes something else,
etc. Yet, I believe calling down God's blessing before meals in
faith may be the surest protection one can have from any long term
bad effects of the food fears of today. Again Our Lord Himself gave
us this example of asking God's blessing of our meals. The Gospel
tells us that before He miraculously fed the five thousand men Jesus
took the loaves and fish, raised His eyes to Heaven and said the
blessing over them. (See Lk 9,16; Mt 14,19)
To pray before meals in today's world can involve overcoming
one's fear of what other people think. Saying grace before meals in
a restaurant, in front of other people or even with one's own family
may make one feel very uncomfortable, especially since one may be
the only one concerned about doing it. At times one may even
experience open persecution to this practice. Someone I know was in
a restaurant with a close friend of theirs. When they went to pray
before eating the friend said to them, "Oh come on, you really
believe in doing that!" In spite of what people think one is still
called to be a witness to and for Christ. So let us be the salt of
the earth and the light of the world regardless of what "everybody
else is doing!"