If you have watched football at all in the past few years, you may have noticed some players doing the “eating” celebration. While it is no surprise that professional athletes have a large appetite, it does seem surprising that they compare athletic success to eatin’. Did the running back gain significant yardage? Eat some invisible cereal. Did the linebacker sack the quarterback? Might as well eat his lunch. It seems their hunger is not for food, but for glory on the gridiron.

Football players hunger for yardage or sacks—they hunger for earthly success, fame, glory, and money. But we who are children of the Father, we hunger for the glory of God and souls to share in that glory. This imagery is captured strikingly by both Saint Catherine of Siena and Our Lord.

First, St. Catherine has a few striking phrases in her Dialogue. While the Father is speaking to St. Catherine, he tells her: “When she [the soul] has attained the third stage of tears, she prepares the table of the most holy cross in her heart and spirit. When it is set, she finds there the food of the gentle loving Word—the sign of my honor and your salvation for which my only-begotten Son’s body was opened up to give you himself as food. The soul then begins to feed on my honor and the salvation of souls….” Or again, “Find your delight with [Christ] on the cross by feeding on souls for the glory and praise of my name.” And even further, “Hungry as they were for my honor and the salvation of souls, [the Saints] fed on these at the table of the most holy cross.”

Reading these excerpts, it sounds almost as if God is recommending that Christians eat souls. This sounds quite strange. Is St. Catherine recommending that, perhaps, priests, while in the confessional, start eating imaginary bowls of cereal after absolving sins like a football player would after making a big play? 

In order to illuminate this idea, it is helpful to reference Christ’s hunger for souls and God’s glory. There are at least two instances in the Gospels in which we can see this idea of eating souls and feasting on God’s glory. 

In the temptation in the desert, Satan attempts to seduce Christ into making bread out of stones. Christ’s response? “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God” (Matt 4:4). We can see here that Our Lord, while fasting and hungry, claims that we are nourished by God’s word. This nourishment is hearty enough to sustain us, even while in the desert fasting.

The second instance in which we see Christ “eating souls and the glory of God” is in the Gospel of Saint John. While the translation is slightly dated, the Douay-Rheims is evocative in this instance. Christ has just won the soul of a Samaritan woman, who has gone to tell the townspeople about her interaction with Christ. Meanwhile, sitting beside the well, Christ’s apostles come to him offering food. His response shows us just how nourishing winning souls for the Kingdom can be: “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, that I may perfect his work” (John 4:34). The use of the word “meat” in this passage communicates the heartiness of the nourishment. 

Returning to St. Catherine, the hunger for souls and the glory of God does not mean that we are consuming other people in spiritual cannibalism. Rather, similar to Saint Paul, our love for God manifests itself in a compulsion to spread his name and to feast on his glory that can be thought of as a spiritual hunger (cf. 1 Cor 9:16). We are driven to seek the glory of God and the salvation of souls in the way a starving man seeks food—the desire consumes us. 

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Image: Albrecht Dürer, Apocalypse 10.