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I Studied for the Priesthood in Rome Italy – Where to Take Food very seriously. During the quiet retreat, the retreat director asked us all to “meditate” on our meal. To ponder, contemplate what it looks like, what it smells like, what it tastes like, and how it connects us to so many people and places. Some people call this “mindfulness”. For me it was a shocking and sacramental divine moment.Not only did God become a man, Jesus, but so did the God foodCatholics call it Holy Communion. It’s as if God said, “Food is the answer to everything!”
Now I understand more why I love food so much! I was always interested in gourmets before “foodie” became commonplace. I cooked with my family for a big Filipino American festival. During high school and college, I worked in the hospitality industry. was fun.
However, I never wanted to be a professional chef. I never grew up wanting to be a priest either. But God has a way of showing us how our interests and hobbies, when placed in the hands of Jesus, can change and expand into a life of feeding with a message.
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In 2024, I will be ordained a Catholic priesthood for 25 years. Over the years, I have preached in parishes, youth ministries, prison ministries, missions, worked as a professor of spirituality and pastoral theology, and preached at the National Theological Seminary.
All of it was excellent and fulfilling. But that quiet retreat continued to ask me to use the simplest yet eternally profound gift of food to create deeper connections, not just with Catholics, but with all people.
When my parishioners heard that I had studied cooking in Italy, they invited me to dinner with my family. It was a gentle way to ask a priest to visit them to strengthen the family’s faith and bond with the building they called the “church.”
During family mealtime, the dinner table turned into a desk where great lessons could be learned, friendships turned into families, and food became a vehicle to blessed memories. is my home and the parishioners are my family. This is how the faithful foodie movement began.
Over the years, I have developed a “food theology”. I study food through the lens of God’s salvation history. It became his five books,taste our faith .taste the goodness of the Lord”(Psalm 34).
I decided my mission was to “plate grace”—to make God’s grace desirable, appetizing, digestible, and Instagram-worthy. As a church, we need to do a better job of giving grace to our hungry and grumpy flock.
Chef Bobby Flay tells me, “Slow down!” It aired on September 9, 2009. Two independent judges declared my fusion steak fajitas to beat Chef Bobby Flay’s recipe. bottom.
Over two million people visited my website that same night, seeking more food and faith connection. I received messages and emails from people all over the world. Perhaps the most moving was a message from a woman who claimed she hadn’t been to church in decades: after watching my show, she went to confession and said she was going to communion for the first time in over 30 years. I said I received communion!
My first thought was “I was just making fajitas!” But that quiet retreat many years ago was a reminder that simple acts done in the name of Jesus can transform ordinary things like bread and wine into something extraordinary.
However, I never wanted to be a professional chef. I never grew up wanting to be a priest either. But God has a way of showing us how our interests and hobbies, when placed in the hands of Jesus, can change and expand into a life of feeding with a message.
Since that big television exposure, more and more people have begun to awaken to a deeper understanding of the theology of food. recognizing.
Social scientists confirm this common-sense convention to be true. Communities and even Fortune 500 companies are improving production and employee satisfaction by creating dining experiences and family dining opportunities with their employees.After all, the word “company” comes from Latin gulp (and) and Panis The (bread) implies that the ‘company’ is a ‘companion’, a family, who share bread with each other.
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During the 2020 pandemic, my work moved and presentations to large groups stopped, but I continued to share messages and reach out to countless people through online prayer services and cooking demonstrations. I kept connecting.
Through Plating Grace and the Grub Food Truck, I started a social enterprise to meet the need for safe, face-to-face community dining. We serve delicious, award-winning food while also hiring starving people from the prison system and underprivileged communities. We have a mission to serve him one meal at a time with a message that reminds us that food has the power to save the world.
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By contemplating what we eat, thinking about the deep connections that food creates, thanking God, and praying for those who cannot eat, we can change the world for the better. I firmly believe
By joining us, we have the potential to become saints who feed our hunger. It all begins when we participate in a Food Retreat and meditate on why Jesus gives Himself to us as bread and wine. Food theology reminds us that we become what we eat.
Bon appetit!