Taste and See

Like B-Mama, I am also on an elimination diet for our baby who cannot tolerate any milk protein. I love to cook and bake, so this is tough for me. I have made some vegan versions of recipes with varying degrees of success, but I know that my family prefers buttercream icing to be made with actual butter and cream (not coconut milk and palm oil shortening.) So I continue to make the good stuff for them.

The problem is that I can’t taste it. It is like flying blind. I can’t tell is something is seasoned appropriately, or if I mixed up the salt and sugar. I am not an accomplished chef, but even a home cook needs to be able to taste what she prepares, especially when serving it to others.

This year we are preparing our son to receive his First Holy Communion and I have been thinking a lot about how we transmit the faith. Yes, we have workbooks, textbooks, and a curriculum for formal religious education, there are baptismal certificates on file, but we as parents must be a coherent example of our faith to our children.

We can’t share what we don’t have. We have to taste it and live it to be able to pass it on. That doesn’t mean that we have to be perfect. We need to communicate our imperfectness and need for our Saviour to our children. We need to know the richness of our faith, especially during this year of faith. We need to have a prayer life so that we are truly tasting what we are sharing, lest we serve them a flavorless, inauthentic faith. It is one thing to teach a child the words of the Our Father and another thing to truly pray it with them.

Today’s gospel was a familiar one, the story of Martha burdened by her serving and Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus. Mary knew that to serve well, she needed to be filled up first.  I pray that we can all taste and see the beauty of our faith as we share it with our children.