The Broth that Warms

Over the weekend, we dropped the latest episode of our podcast Awkward Asian Theologians, with this episode focusing on the Eucharist, but with a twist. Instead of bread, we began by talking about soup.

Rather than talk about what the Eucharist is, Daniel and I focused on the implications of the Eucharist for our life, knowing what it is as the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ. Being Asians, we could not help but look at it in terms of a graph with a vertical and horizontal axis.

On the horizontal axis, we hinted at how the a concern for the Eucharist should as St. Paul warned in his first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 11:29), enjoin us to “discern the body” before we receive it. While this was not explicitly stated in the podcast, the concern for the Eucharist does lead us to a concern for our neighbour. If we had it all over again, this would be an aspect we would have liked to elaborate upon a bit more.

However, we did focus on the vertical axis, since that horizontal concern could only be properly funded by a proper appreciation of the vertical. We talked about how the Eucharist, contrary to the sociological confection of the Eucharist as a product of the community, is actually the fruit of a divine calling to which we respond via participation. As my friend Fr Harrison of the podcast of happy memory Clerically Speaking (in which I was kindly invited for an episode), we participate at mass in Christ’s offering of the world back to the Father.

Flowing from that, we also asked the question of who ate who. More to the point, we looked at the Augustinian idea that our initial consumption of the Eucharist is the prelude to a more profound consumption of us by Christ, thereby drawing us ever deeper into the mystery of Christ.

The Broth that Warms is available to listen to in full on Spotify, Apple Podcast and Amazon Music.