The Spiritual Experience of Eating

Catholic Movie Night: Babette's Feast

(In honor of Thanksgiving)

    This is your how-to for today...bread stew: hot, mushy, and brown. First take a loaf of old bread and tear it into pieces. Let it soak in water with a little beer for an hour. Next boil for an hour. When desired goopy texture achieved, give to all needy in the area first, and then serve yourself last. It will be a quiet, humble meal, and you will eat it the rest of your life. The odd fish will grace the table, and it will be exceedingly pleasant. A rare treat. Who would want this life you ask? Why would they ever choose it? It's so...dull. Well, there are two little old ladies that chose it. They grew up under a strict father, and both were given an opportunity to live more well-fed and fabulous lives. Yet they chose to stay. They have no wants because they accepted their consciously-made decisions. The unexpected things like the elegant Frenchwoman that now helps them is certainly unusual, but she says little, works hard, and well. So when she asks for one thing, just one thing,  and even offers to pay for it, they say yes:

“Please, let me make you

a real French meal.”

   This is Babette's stage, her moment, that will forever be imprinted in the eater's memory. Babette, a French chef by training, fled France because of civil war. She lost everything: her family, her home, and the money to cook beautiful meals. But through a twist of luck, she has literally won the lottery and been awarded 10,000 lire. Does she start her life anew? No, she makes a banquet for 12 people worth 10,000 lire exactly. The food is perfection. And not a penny is left over. 
  Okay.
  Why the heck would anyone do this? 
  Because it's a nice gesture. 
  Yeah, well so is a fruit basket. 

  Consider for a moment Babette's situation more carefully. Perhaps she doesn't wish to return to France. Her old life is gone, and she can't bring her family back from the dead. The two little old ladies that she is now maid and cook for gave her a roof over her head when she had none. They ignored her papist history and let a stranger stay in their home. In a strange way, they became her family. Two proxy-aunts in need of a younger person's support.
   But they didn't pay her for her cooking or cleaning!?
   No, but they didn't have the money to pay her, and she also declined payment. So when this winning lottery ticket comes around, it is an opportunity to give these women, who have been exceptionally kind, a feast pushed by creative love. So while Babette's actions have the scent of the widow with two coins:

Luke 21:1-4 

1The Widow’s Offering1 As Jesus looked up, he saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. ² He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. ³ “Truly I tell you,” he said, “this poor widow has put in more than all the others. ⁴ All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on."

Let us look to other biblical feasts to expand upon Babette's banquet. Specifically the Last Supper and the feeding of the 5000. At the Last Supper, Jesus gave the 12 apostles and the world the gift of the Eucharist. (Notice 12 apostles and 12 guests at Babette's banquet. A bit of parallelism just for you.) Babette may not be giving her guests the Eucharist, and the meal she prepares may be a temporary filling in their bellies, but through her extraordinary cooking, she makes food beyond comprehension, beyond her friends' mortal imagination. Like the Eucharist received at Mass, the food she prepares is a brief window into something higher, beyond the everyday grasp of bread stew. It's a taste meant to sustain and to continue to give life after consumption. Food is necessary for the physical life, but Babette pushes it into an arena where it feeds a spiritual need. Through the glory of the communal meal, healing occurs between villagers, and they remember what it is to give and be loved.
      In addition to the parallels to the Last Supper, I would like to also recognized the feeding of the 5000:

John 6:1-15
6 Some time after this, Jesus crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee (that is, the Sea of Tiberias), ² and a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the signs he had performed by healing the sick. ³ Then Jesus went up on a mountainside and sat down with his disciples. ⁴ The Jewish Passover Festival was near.⁵ When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?” ⁶ He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do.⁷ Philip answered him, “It would take more than half a year’s wages^[a] to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!”⁸ Another of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother,spoke up, ⁹ “Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?”
¹⁰ Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.” There was plenty of grass in that place, and they sat down (about five thousand men were there). ¹¹ Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks,and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish.¹² When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, “Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.” ¹³ So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten.

Again there is that physical and spiritual hunger being satisfied, but here there is a connection that the Last Supper lacks to Babette's Feast. After the Last Supper, the events did not slow but sped up, moving with a terrifying three day whirlwind of betrayal and pain ending with Jesus' bloody crucifixion. Compare this to the 5000 that were fed by Jesus. They ate. He left, and so did they. They had an extraordinary day and meal, preceded and followed by thousands of ordinary ones. For a brief moment, true community was theirs. The love of Christ was tangible. Anxiety and loneliness set aside and the gifts accepted. A day lifted out of the ordinary by something as necessary to life as food. For Babette the entire meal from the selection of finest foods to the careful preparation and delicate presentation, the dishes of pheasant and glasses of wine represent her love. The setting is wrapped in her love. When the guests walk home in the snowy night, they sing quietly in the way that they had long forgotten. Her love, like Christ's love, reminded them of what it meant to be spiritually warmed to the gift of one another. For they returned to joy, and while I cannot say how long this happiness lasted, hours, days, perhaps longer, it shook them from their dullness. And if they can be shaken once, it can happen again and again.