Cabbages Cannot Vegetate

Grasping the utter uniqueness of every human person

11/07/2023

Lk 14:15-24 One of those at table with Jesus said to him, "Blessed is the one who will dine in the Kingdom of God." He replied to him, "A man gave a great dinner to which he invited many. When the time for the dinner came, he dispatched his servant to say to those invited, 'Come, everything is now ready.' But one by one, they all began to excuse themselves. The first said to him, 'I have purchased a field and must go to examine it; I ask you, consider me excused.' And another said, 'I have purchased five yoke of oxen and am on my way to evaluate them; I ask you, consider me excused.' And another said, 'I have just married a woman, and therefore I cannot come.' The servant went and reported this to his master. Then the master of the house in a rage commanded his servant, 'Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in here the poor and the crippled, the blind and the lame.' The servant reported, 'Sir, your orders have been carried out and still there is room.' The master then ordered the servant, 'Go out to the highways and hedgerows and make people come in that my home may be filled. For, I tell you, none of those men who were invited will taste my dinner.'"

It is an extraordinary thing to be a human being, as it proclaims in Ps 8, “You have made him [man] little less than a god, crowned him with glory and honor.” Even though God created man and woman from the dust of the ground, he nonetheless made him in his “image and likeness” (Gn 1:26), by giving us a spiritual soul. Someone recently sent me this little joke: “You came from dust and you will return to dust. That’s why I don’t dust. It could be someone I know.”

Still, even though we are dust, we are nonetheless also divine because our soul is God’s gift to us at the moment of conception. And hence, this beautiful unity of body and soul that is every person makes us “god like.” By the way that is why Indians from my home country bow when they meet someone. They are saying: “I bow to the divine in you.”

Now if you can ponder this principle of our human uniqueness to its depths – and it is very deep – you can discover come important insights. For example, everything a human being does is particularly human. When we eat a meal, for instance, we do so as a body-soul composite, not merely as the animals do. By the way I always try to eat at the same time as my dog, Apollo. That way he does not get jealous of my food, and I do not get jealous of his food. One of our rules is, “no people food for Apollo.”

But even though it looks like we are both doing the same action – chewing, tasting, swallowing, and licking our lips – what I do and what Apollo does are two radically different actions. Why? Because my body is infused with a spiritual soul and that makes my activity uniquely human and therefore god-like, and not animal-like. Joseph Pieper made this point memorably in a book I hope you will read one day.

He wrote: “It is one of the characteristics of man, a corporeal and spiritual being, that it should be his spiritual soul which informs the physical and sensitive realms – to such a degree that taking food in man and animals are two utterly different things. It is so true that the spiritual soul informs the whole of man’s nature that even when a man ‘vegetates’ it is ultimately only possible because he is spiritual – a cabbage cannot vegetate” (Leisure, the Basis of Culture, 105).

What a piercing insight to remark that a cabbage cannot vegetate. Why is that? Because you would think that if there is anything in the world a cabbage could do it would be to act like a cabbage, to “vegetate.” But Pieper’s point is precisely that: when a human being acts like a cabbage and vegetates he does it in a radically and uniquely different manner than a cabbage does because man is much more than a cabbage, whereas a cabbage is only a cabbage. In other words, when a man vegetates, he does so as someone who is “little less than a god,” not like a cabbage.

Now, why did I tell you all this? It was in order to shed some light on a rather innocuous comment in the gospel this morning. We read: “One of those at table with Jesus said to him, ‘Blessed is the one who will dine in the Kingdom of God.’” But then Jesus gives examples of people invited to dine in the Kingdom but have better things to do. Jesus saying in effect: “You are right: that is a huge blessing to dine with me in my Kingdom because dining and eating for humans is not only a god-like thing to do, but in my Kingdom you will be dining with God himself.”

But those who reject the invitation cannot see how enormous that experience would be. In fact, they prefer to go about doing their daily chores. It is like I invite Apollo to eat together and share a meal with me, someone created in God’s image and likeness, and sometimes Apollo answers: “Eh, no thanks. I would rather play with a stick, or take a nap, or destroy more furniture.” And of course we receive this invitation to dine with Jesus at every Mass: the god-like eating with God.

I will conclude with a little confession. I often get invitations to dinner receptions after weddings and quinceaneras and baptisms. But I almost always decline because after a long day of weddings, baptisms, and quiceaneras, it feels like a huge expenditure of energy to socialize when I feel exhausted. But I will try to remember that to dine with other human beings is to eat and drink with the god-like. And I will try not to go home and vegetate like a cabbage.

Praised be Jesus Christ!