The persistence of memory

Three days ago, we treated two friends to dinner at a restaurant. They live and work in Mindanao and had come to Cebu for a break, part of their long vacation as teachers. They brought the wife and me a box of fruit for which their place is known.

We had a glorious evening—good food and conversation, which ran the gamut.

The original plan was to meet for coffee. I had thought of a place where a friend had introduced me to madeleine, the small sponge cake that as a boy Marcel Proust received dipped in tea from his aunt on Sunday mornings, and whose taste in adulthood brought him pleasant memories. But, realizing that there was time only in the evening, I decided that a dinner would be more fitting.

After the meal, on our way home, I thought about food and friendship, and, as is my wont, mentally scanned the Gospels for instances of eating in the story of Jesus. I thought of Luke, in particular. On at least eight occasions in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus sat down to a meal with others. The tax collector Levi (better known as Matthew), to celebrate his having been called by Jesus to follow him, threw a big party in his house, inviting other tax collectors to the banquet. At another time, Jesus was the dinner guest of a Pharisee when a woman who had a bad name in the town came, bringing with her a jar of ointment and with it anointed Jesus’ feet. Then, of course, there was the miraculous feeding of 5,000 people with just five loaves and two fish. And the meal at the house of the sisters Martha and Mary, with Martha resenting that instead of helping her Mary just sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to him, which, however, Jesus declared as the better choice. And again there was dinner at a Pharisee’s house, in which the host criticized Jesus for not washing his hands first, prompting the Lord to condemn the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. And there was yet another dinner in a Pharisee’s house during which he cured a man with dropsy even though it was a Sabbath. And his meeting with Zaccheus, a short, wealthy man who had climbed a sycamore tree in order to get a good view of Jesus, who to Zaccheus’ delight told him to come down and prepare a meal for him at his house.

Not to forget, of course, the great meal that we now call the Last Supper, in which Jesus instituted the Eucharist, which for all time would establish his presence in the species of consecrated bread and wine.

I note that, as the Risen Lord, Jesus would show up on the occasion of a meal, such as to the two disciples at Emmaus, who had prevailed upon him—whom they had taken as a stranger—to stay with them for the night.

In fact, as proof positive that he was real and not a ghost, aside from showing the disciples the wounds in his hands and feet, he asked for something to eat, and when given a piece of grilled fish, consumed it before their very eyes.

Personally, I believe that Christ is present in every meal of friendship, and that there were really five of us at table in the restaurant—the wife and I, our two guests from Mindanao, and the Risen Lord, who showed us his wounds, in our stories of loss and injury and healing, and through us, as we fed ourselves, likewise partook of the food.

In a way, it was Christ that we ate, because our communion was not just of food, and in being one of mind and emotion we relished a spiritual and a better something than the victuals, in which something the courses found completeness.

It would be the same had we gone to the coffee shop instead and asked for madeleine, because the little cake would remind us of, well, the persistence of memory, which suggests a delightful world in which, thanks to the Resurrection, all time becomes limp and unusable.