If you want to learn,
     then go and ask
the wild animals and the birds,
     the flowers and the fish.
Any of them can tell you
     what the Lord has done.
Every living creature
     is in the hands of God.
– Job 12:7-10 (CEV)

I am and have always been fascinated by ecology. The hawk ate the snake that ate the frog that ate the grasshopper that ate the grass that received its energy from the sun. The pike ate the sunfish that ate the damselfly larvae that ate the water flea that ate the green algae that received its energy from the sun. They all sound like nursery rhymes or children’s songs (I don’t know why she swallowed the fly…).

But food chains are simplistic. Most creatures aren’t fussy. They will eat many other species. Great chains of beings become interconnected webs as the eaten are prey to many different eaters. Eating and being eaten are ecological acts. It is through the acts of eating and being eaten that they all participate in the great web of life.

Eating is an ecological act for humans as well. We depend on other species for our survival, and so we become part of this great web of being. Whether we are herbivores, omnivores, or carnivores (for these are the basic ecological categories; you won’t read of vegetarians in ecology textbooks), we cannot survive without devouring other creatures.

And this is the way God has made it. For that reason, eating is much more than just an ecological act. It is also a sacred act. In His handiwork there is a fundamental truth: there is no life without sacrifice. One creature gives up its life to nourish another. The food web is sacramental.

Even in the communion meal, the supper that our Lord shares with us, grain is ground into tiny pieces and grapes are crushed. Both bread and wine are the result of communities of micro-organisms that eventually give up their lives to nourish and sustain us. Violence sustains us.

And what does all this teach us?

God has created a world where the most fundamental ecological interactions demonstrate that sacrifice is required for growth, that out of death comes life. All these interactions in ecosystems across the planet point to the One Sacrifice that our Lord made when His death became our life. It is only through acceptance of the truth that is found throughout creation that we will receive true life.

There is nothing to eat,
     seek it where you will,
          but the body of the Lord.
The blessed plants
     and the sea, yield it
          to the imagination
intact. And by that force
     it becomes real,
          bitterly
to the poor animals
     who suffer and die
          that we may live.

William Carlos Williams (excerpted from The Host)

*With apologies to Wendell Berry, who stated that eating is an agricultural act.