Home (family) as a place of nourishment

A human being receives his very first food necessary for his growth and living from his mother’s body, which in the same time is his first home. In other words, a person is being nourished by her own home as a natural process of preparing for the life in the outer world. So, the link between the home and the nourishment remains important for the whole life. 

It goes without saying that we expect to have regular meals in our own home, while the same cannot be said for other people’s homes, regardless of how often we can be welcomed there as friends or guests. Hence, it is very important to take present that the nourishment is an essential part of family life. It creates and maintains communion which surpass consanguine, marital or co-residential relations. If people who live under the same roof never eat together, can we call them family? Can we call their residence their home? It seems that the answer must be negative. A process of preparing a meal, eating together and making dishes is closely related with a process of physical, emotional and spiritual growth of each single member as well as of a family taken together. 

Therefore, to give a simple answer on a nowadays intricate question what makes a group of people family, we propose to say: a family is a communion of people who prepare and share the same food at the same table. The place where they do it is called home.

Domagoj Runje ist Professor für Altes Testament, Gina Šparada ist wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin am Lehrstuhl für Philosophie an der Katholisch-Theologischen Fakultät der Universität Split.