For this post, all citations are using Kindle location numbers — however I try to provide as much chapter information as I can to assist in quote location.
In reflecting on Sr. Ann Astell’s book, Eating Beauty, it is difficult to find a place to begin. She packs so much into this book; I think it may be best to just take a step back and look at two aspects of the beauty of the Eucharist in particular: the simplicity of its physical appearance and our participation in its beauty through our consumption of it. She brings this up in the beginning of the book, but I felt that these ideas were carried through, in parts more or less, throughout the book. I was especially drawn in by how these aspects of the Eucharist’s beauty form us. Having written several of these now, it is clear that I tend to be drawn to images of simplicity and also intrigued by tensions, and I think both of these are key in Eating Beauty.
Astell describes St. Gertrude’s understanding of the Host in her chapter “Hidden Manna”. “Gertrude conceives of the Host itself as a revelatory, imagistic book. The very plainness of its outward appearance as bread, like the unadorned walls of the Cistercian church, facilitates the recall of a wealth of meditative imagery and the eucharistic reception of visionary experience, leading to a deeper self-knowledge” (Astell 2507–2514). Astell also explores the experiences of other saints and their reflections on the eucharis, however I find St. Gertrude’s especially close to my heart. There are many ways in which the simplicity of the Eucharist’s physical appearance draws out meditative imagery, but Gertrude — I think — really hits home in how the Eucharist is able to shape us and form us in Christ. Reading what Astell writes here, I can’t help but recall the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words” — if a picture, which is just a static capture of an object in a single moment from one perspective is worth a thousand words, how many millions is a physical object? And how long would a book be that is the Host, which — while appearing as bread to our physical senses — becomes Christ Himself through transubstantiation. No book could ever perfectly and completely convey the revelation and beauty of the Eucharist (although Astell does make some pretty big strides), and so we turn to the Eucharist itself. By meditating on its simplicity, we are formed in its image. We are called to the same humility as our Lord, who comes to us in the Mass under the humble appearance of bread.
While we can gaze upon and meditate on the simple appearance of the Eucharist, and that alone can form us — we participate in it as well by eating it. Astell says early on in the book that “beauty cannot disappear, cannot be deformed and hidden, cannot be eaten” (213). While the form is consumed, beauty cannot be destroyed — so in the consumption of the Eucharist, we participate in this beauty. We consume it both with our eyes, as seen with St. Gertrude, as well as through our ritual eating of the Eucharist. Ultimately, the fundamental consequence for man of gazing upon and consuming the Eucharist is that we are shaped into what we receive — and thus shape our lives accordingly. The beauty of the Eucharist cannot be destroyed, so we carry this beauty this beauty and use it to shape our lives to it. We in turn, an all aspects of our lives, become beautiful if we so allow Christ to work through us and through this beauty.