Book Review of The Sacred Meal by Nora Gallagher

Book Review
The Sacred Meal, by Nora Gallagher.

I remember when chicken tasted like chicken. It has been so long that I can barely remember the taste, but I miss it. In the same way, I miss books about faith that are truly books about faith. Usually, books billed as being about faith are really books about belief overly seasoned with worn out words and phrases that conjure memories I have of litmus tests and classes of Christians. Through that wall of earned (for the most part) cynicism, I reluctantly dared to engage the pages of Nora Gallagher’s The Sacred Meal.

What Nora presents is a refreshing alternative to platitudes and words that have no edge. Instead, she breaks apart the objective religionism with fixed dogmatic beliefs that so many of us have grown to detest by granting us entry into the personal dialogue she experiences in the sacraments. (A sacrament is the outward and visible sign and an inward and spiritual grace). She mixes history with her story and how her story and history engage with the other faithful (but not so faithful) informs her own faith experience. As a person whose faith type is clearly ontological sacramental (experiencing the Holy through symbols and rituals), she gives a perfectly valid and balanced description of the sacrament of the Eucharist. She understands and articulates practice of communion in the context originally instituted, as the last of many meals Jesus had with his disciples. Then she calls us to practice this meal with the gathered Body of Christ that is the very members, seen and unseen, of the Church.

What Nora has done in the book for the sacred meal of communion is to free it from the bondage of being an objective institution that it was never intended to be. Like religion in its original meaning, the practice of Eucharist is supposed to be a verb, “giving thanks”. The Eucharist is a “doing” in which the Incarnation of God is reenacted and celebrated as history, as the very present, and as the hope for the promised age to come.

I would recommend this book as one that promotes a healthy dialogue of the internal and external aspects of faith. Her approach is blended, symbolic, and subjective… like the sacrament she successfully portrays.

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