Chef Ben

Learning to cook with faith, hope, love and mercy

06/09/2020

Matthew 5:13-16 Jesus said to his disciples: “You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house. Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.”

Cooking is a fine art. And when it comes to the art of cooking, I love being an art critic. In other words, I would much rather consume a great meal than have to cook the meal. This summer we are blessed to have Ben Riley with us as a seminarian, and he loves to cook. And I love to let him cook. We have another “Chef Ben” in Fort Smith! He boiled down the secret of cooking in this way. He said: “You can master the art of cooking if you can learn how to balance four things: salt, sugar, butter and heat. All great chefs know how to play with those four key ingredients.” Last week Ben prepared a breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausage, avocado toast and coffee made from fresh ground beans. I had to give him the Michelin five star rating!

Our scriptures today also speak about the art of cooking, but in the kitchen of the spiritual life. In other words, what are the key ingredients we need to be “saints,” to be a sort of “gourmet meal” for God? If that image sounds a little cannibalistic, I borrowed it from St. Ignatius of Antioch in 108 A.D. On his way to martyrdom in Rome, he wrote to his parishioners: “I am the wheat of God. And let me be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ.” That is, the gourmet meal of martyrs does not balance salt, sugar, butter and heat, but rather faith, hope, love and mercy.

Jesus says in the gospel of Matthew: “You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned?” That is, one ingredient of holiness is the salt of good works that spiritually nourishes others and gives flavor to our faith. And in 1 Kings 17, Elijah asks a widow of Zerepath to make him a little cake, saying: “First make me a little cake and bring it to me.” I’m sure Elijah gave the widow a Michelin 5-star rating, too, for the meal that saved his life. In other words, the whole Christian enterprise can be seen as the art of fine cooking, where we cannot sit back comfortably and be an art critic and let someone else do the cooking. Rather, we have to get into the kitchen and do some cooking ourselves; indeed, where the meal is our own lives so we become “the pure bread of Christ.”

What are the basic ingredients we have to balance (like Chef Ben said) to earn a 5-star Michelin rating for our Christian culinary skills? I believe these key ingredients are faith, hope, love (as St. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13:13), and the fourth ingredient is mercy, as Pope Francis frequently reminds us. I am probably pushing the limits of this analogy, but we might even say that faith is like the salt, hope is like the sugar, love is like the butter and mercy is like the heat of every gourmet meal. And Christian gourmet chefs do not prepare beef, chicken, pork or lamb for their entrée, but rather they prepare themselves. St. Ignatius entered the kitchen that was the Roman Colosseum to make of himself “the pure bread of Christ.”

You and I enter the kitchen of this world and through our faith, hope, love and mercy make ourselves a meal for others and for God. Sometimes in this kitchen, however, the people over salt us with their criticisms and complaints. We get burned by the heat of people’s anger and ire. We grow lazy with too much lard in our butts. Or sometimes people are too sweet and hide the truth from us. Their compliments are saccharine. In other words, mastering Christianity is like mastering the art of cooking. In Christianity we balance faith, hope, love and mercy; in cooking we juggle salt, sugar, butter and heat. And we are all hoping to receive a 5-star rating.

I am looking forward to my next meal with Chef Ben. But I am also looking forward to his ordination as a priest, where he will make a meal of his whole life, and become “the pure bread of Christ.”

Praised be Jesus Christ!