Fr. Rolando V. Dela Rosa, O.P.         By Fr. ROLANDO V. DELA ROSA, O.P. “The proof of the pudding is in the eating” is an old saying. It means that you have to taste or eat a particular food to determine its quality. Now comes the Urban Dictionary that says this has been “messed up by idiots” and mutilated into this form: “The proof is in the pudding.” Those alleged “idiots” must be chuckling in glee now because their seemingly senseless version has gained wide currency, thanks to the surge of TV programs that have shifted our attention from the food to the cook. Once confined to the kitchen, cooking is now a top-grossing, informative, and entertaining daily spectacle of talkative and self-proclaimed food experts displaying their culinary crafts and techniques as they prepare mouth-watering dishes. Cooking competitions are also in the upswing, featuring celebrity chefs who imperiously judge contestants aspiring to become “master chefs” based on their very subjective criteria of food preparation, taste, and presentation. “The proof is in the pudding” means that a chef’s excellence is evidenced by the food he prepares. The trouble with this is, television can make us falsely believe that a food is delicious because of its enticing cinematic image. Having said that, I welcome the proliferation of TV programs that feature the art and technique of cooking because they balance the repetitive and mindless advertisements of junk and fast foods swarming all over the Web and television, creating a mindset that looks at food in a utilitarian and functional way. In the name of efficiency, economy, and speed, advertisers have diverted our appetite for a home-cooked meal to pre-packaged, ready-to-eat, microwavable food. True, fast food saves time and meets our hunger for “fuel” but they make us oblivious to the other hungers of the soul. Eating junk food, while slouched on the sofa, or ladling it from paper plates and plastic containers, using disposable fork and spoon may save us money and time, but these reduce eating to mere feeding. Eating is not only a functional activity, but one that is replete with value and meaning, which we can discern only if we give eating enough time, if we ritualize it, thereby preventing it from becoming a mere routine. For instance, do we realize that whatever we eat has to die first? What we call food is actually another living being that has died after it is butchered, skewered, steamed, broiled, baked, and cooked. Hastily wolfing down food dishonors both the human effort to prepare it and obliterates the memory of those creatures that died to keep us alive. Today’s Feast of Corpus Christi addresses precisely such insensitivity that reduces us to animals whose main reason for eating is survival. The gospel reading tells us how Jesus took five loaves of bread and two fish, prayed over these, then distributed these to the hungry multitude. The miraculous multiplication of the bread and fish foreshadows the mystery of the Eucharist. Jesus invites us to look with fresh eyes at how food, lovingly prepared, can give sustenance to many, how life arises from death, the tree from a dead seed, the phoenix from ashes, eternity from time. Every time we celebrate the Mass, we remember and ritualize how Jesus prepared Himself to become food for the many: “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never be hungry; he who believes in me will never thirst.” (John 6: 34-35). He died that we may live. The living testimony of Jesus’s redemptive love is the Eucharist. Here, indeed, we can rightly say that the proof is in the pudding.