Late to the Table Again

But I come with oh, so tasty a treat. A morsel, a soupçon, a tantilizing taste of a most remarkable book. To wit:

from The Supper of the Lamb
Robert Farrar Capon

But second, he will, by his fasting, be delivered from the hopelessness of mere gourmandaise. The secular, for all its goodness, does not defend itself very well against mindless and perpetual consumption. It cries out to be offered by abstinence as well as use; to be appreciated, not simply absorbed: Hunger remains the best sauce. Beyond that, though, it cries out to be lifted into a higher offering still. The real secret of fasting is not that it is a simple way to keep one's weight down, but that it is a mysterious way of lifting creation into the Supper of the Lamb. It is not a little excursion into fashionable shape, but a major entrance into the fasting, the agony, the passion by which the Incarnate Word restores all things to the goodness God finds in them. It is as much an act of prayer as prayer itself, and, in an affluent society, it may well be the most meaningful of all the practices of religion--the most likely point at which the salt can find its savor once again. Let Harry fast in earnest, therefore. One way or another--here or hereafter--it will give him back his feasts.