WHOLLY FAMILY
Rolling grape leaves: A Lenten recipe for relationships
By Mary Moore | March 19, 2009 | The Catholic Sun
A few weeks ago my daughter and I made Stuffed Grape Leaves together. I wish I could say we did this often but due to the fact that this Middle Eastern recipe is so time consuming, we’re lucky if we can get it done once a year.
Still, the once-a-year recipe helps us focus on what is important in life, which in the end has only very little to do with the ingredients that brought us there.
It’s the process of making the recipe, not a vast number of complicated ingredients, which protracts the whole experience. There isn’t a quick way to do it. No step can be omitted and each one must be completed systematically in order for the recipe to turn out well. The whole thing, which can take hours, is a very meditative experience.
I can only credit myself with knowing the proper science of rolling stuffed grape leaves as a result of a dear friend’s tutorial. In her Lebanese-American home growing up, recipes like this were part of her daily fare.
During our first lesson, which took hours, we shared stories, laughed, prayed, and even cried together. We engaged in conversation that would not have been possible by texting or e-mailing, or by updating each other on Facebook. Only by truly being present to one other did we bind our relationship fast.
Because she had grown up doing this, it is no surprise to me that my friend and her seven siblings have remained extremely close — most of them geographically — to their parents, with whom they’ve rolled many a grape leaf.
Practicing religion to foster relationship in Lent
One of the most damaging mantras of modern Protestantism asserts that salvation is based on relationship, not religion, as if a person must choose one over the other. In fact, it has become popular in many Bible Churches to teach that a person must despise the latter in order to gain the former. I offer proof in the grape leaves, and in Lent, that quite the opposite is true.
The word religion is rooted in the Latin religare, which means “to tie fast or bind together.” Like the relationship-binding task of properly rolling grape leaves, our Catholic religion, practiced properly, binds us in relationship to the God who asked us to remain in Him (cf. Jn 15:4).
This binding is especially powerful during Lent. For 40 days we focus, sometimes for hours, on what it cost God to save us. We make ourselves truly present to Him through fasting, personal sacrifice and prayer. The annual reception of ashes, the predictable changes in the liturgy and readings during Lent, all draw us closer to God in a way that only the time, reflection and presence afforded by these forty days can.
In short, if it weren’t for our Catholic religion, we wouldn’t be forced to break the rhythm of our otherwise busy lives in order to meditate again on God’s abundant love for us through the sacrifice of His son.
When we engage in this meditative, religious experience of Lent it is no surprise that by Easter we are closer to God than we were on Ash Wednesday. The entire process helps us focus on what is most important in life, which in the end has only little to do with the ingredients that brought us there.
--
Mary Moore is a syndicated columnist who lives in Mesa.
