I think I would be right to presume, that in most homes here and perhaps even abroad, the dining table is the setting for some of the family's most intimate gatherings, not just at meals but at other times too. It is the place where family problems are discussed, programs are charted out, family strategies are planned and possibly where even the departed are mourned and the wayward bemoaned. In a manner of speaking, it is the setting for many of the most intimate discussions that the family has had and will ever have. Even if we regret the fact that today many meals are taken at the other family shrine - the TV set, the dining table still remains the place where we are compelled to face one another squarely and up close; without any distraction. But for the food that we might partake of, the table is a place of intimacy, yet we all know how easily it can become a place of distance, hostility and even hatred. Precisely because the dining table bodes such intimacy, it just as easily becomes the place where we experience its absence. Amidst the clang of cutlery and the tinkle of crockery, a simple unguarded word or gesture might touch a raw nerve revealing some dormant tension and then there erupts an angry altercation coupled with bitter recriminations that positively destroy the decorum of this sacred setting. When, for instance, a husband and wife seem to go through a strain in their relationship they hardly communicate with one another; when a child or a teenager is berated for some truancy, he refuses to eat in order to express his hurt feelings, or when brothers and sisters bicker for some puerile reason, a tense silence might ensue and the table then becomes a hell in the home, a place where we least want to be. It becomes the most uncomfortable location in the house, an awkward family tribunal which we want to escape from, as quickly as possible.

The table is therefore the barometer of the level of intimacy that prevails in a home and this simple table becomes an altar at which we are all priests who reverently accept and embrace one another whatever our struggles or hurts, our complaints or disagreements because it is here that bread is broken and it is shared; it is here that the "work of human hands" is passed around and "the sweat of every row" is appreciated and cherished. It becomes a place of hallowed intimacy. In the home (after the family altar) there is no place as hallowed as the dining table because it is graced by the presence of Him who reveals himself to the whole family - to those present and the absent ones too, to those who are happy and those who are not, to the hurting and the tired, the depressed and the drooping. It is here that we are all restored and revived because we can faintly hear Him say to all of us around the table: "This is my body!"

God Bless you!

In Mary Help of Christians,

I remain,

Fr. Jim McKenna SDB

Director