Eat the Scroll

Ezekiel 1:1–3, 2:8–3:3; Revelation 10:1–11

Open your mouth and eat what I give you. God hands Ezekiel a scroll covered with writing on both sides—words of lamentation and mourning and woe—and tells him to eat it. Ezekiel obeys. In my mouth it was as sweet as honey. A scroll of grief, tasting like honey. This is one of the most mysterious images in all of Scripture.

Centuries later, John receives the same command in Revelation. A mighty angel holds a little scroll, and the voice from heaven says: Take it, and eat. It will be bitter to your stomach, but sweet as honey in your mouth. John eats. It is both: sweet and bitter, delicious and devastating.

"You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith, and hope." —Thomas Merton

What does it mean to eat the word of God? It means more than reading. More than studying. More than memorizing. It means taking the word into your body. Letting it enter your bloodstream. Allowing it to become part of your physical being—not just your intellect but your muscles, your breath, your bones.

The desert tradition practiced this through what they called ruminatio—the slow, repeated chewing of Scripture. A monk would take a single verse and carry it throughout the day, repeating it silently, letting it work in the depths the way food works in the body. The word was not information to process but bread to digest.

The sweetness and bitterness of the scroll are not contradictory. They are the full taste of truth. The gospel is sweet—God loves the world. And the gospel is bitter—the world crucifies the Son. Joy and sorrow live in the same mouthful. To eat the scroll is to accept both without spitting either out.

In the film Of Gods and Men, the Trappist monks of Tibhirine, Algeria, face the decision of whether to stay in their monastery as civil war closes in around them. During their last communal meal together—knowing they will likely be killed—the camera moves from face to face as Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake plays. Tears stream down their cheeks. Joy and grief, sweetness and bitterness, inseparable.

Today, open your mouth. Take and eat—not only the sweet promises but the bitter truths. Lent is a season of consuming the whole scroll, both sides. The lamentation and the hope. The mourning and the woe and the honey. Let the word become flesh in you. That is what it has always wanted to do.

The Benedictine tradition of lectio divina—sacred reading—is built on this same principle of eating the word. The four movements of lectio (reading, meditation, prayer, contemplation) mirror the four stages of digestion: taking in, breaking down, absorbing, being nourished. We read slowly, not for information but for formation. We let the text work on us rather than working on the text. The scroll is not a reference manual. It is a meal. And like any good meal, it changes the one who eats it from the inside.