The comparison by analogy of
Scripture to ‘meat’ in the homily (and in Latimer’s sermon) is a typical trope
of the English Reformers, who spoken often of the Scripture as something to be
tasted, chewed and ingested by the hearers. They were, as the 1549 Collect of
Day puts it, to ‘read, mark, learn and inwardly digest’ the Holy Scriptures. As Susan Waduba writes: ‘For the reformers, a
figural eating of the New Testament slowly displaced the traditional
understanding of the testament of the sacrament of the altar’.[1]
The spiritual sustenance and nourishment that is found in Scripture is
analogous to physical food. As ‘food’, it has the nature of a blessing provided
from above, on which the readers/hearers are dependent. The analogy has its own
biblical basis in the episode of manna provided to the starving Israelites in the
wilderness; and to Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand, as well as his saying
‘I am the bread of life’ from John’s Gospel. It is interesting to note how the
reformers are willing to read this image figurally as opposed to the
literalistic understanding of the medieval Church. In this way, the ‘eating the
Word’ trope in itself demonstrates the kind of ‘eating’ that is to be
done.
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