What began as a joke in the kitchen will become a published cookbook this fall and a cooking television series next fall, said Father Leo Patalinghug, the break dancing, martial arts guru, who also happens to be skilled in the kitchen.
The media project, “Grace Before Meals,” aims to bring families together around the table, said Father Leo, a priest of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, who recently was appointed to serve as director of pastoral field education at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md.
Although there is an undeniable novelty about watching a priest hosting a cooking show, Father Leo said what is most important is the actual “movement” to get families to come closer together. The cookbook and the show are simply the vehicle to make that happen and to “strengthen families,” because families are the “domestic church,” he said.
The show, in which the priest will visit families and cook with them, will potentially air on PBS next year if the production company is able to find enough sponsors, said Father Leo, who stressed family meals as a necessity to the integrity of the family.
“It’s a movement before a TV show. It’s God’s movement to bring God’s family to His table,” said the energetic priest.
The cookbook, which is in its final editing stages will be published this fall. Each recipe is linked to a feast day in the liturgical year, a family milestone or even disappointments. Cooking gives families a reason to come together, said Father Leo.
Filled with Scripture passages and essays about various feasts, the cookbook includes 50 original home styled comfort food recipes created by Father Leo. But it is not a typical cookbook — it is partly theological. According to the author, it is “bite-sized theology.” Every meal has a reason to celebrate, and the combination of faith and food “makes faith bite-sizable for the entire family.” The creative nature of cooking can allow people to become “co-creators with God.
“A meal can satisfy the stomach, but it can also enrich the soul,” Father Leo said, who helps families create easy to prepare home styled comfort food including Italian inspired pastas and seafood. “The history of food has always been religious,” he said. “Food is religious. ‘Religere’ means to bind,” he continued. “It can bind us to God and to one another.”
While in seminary at the Pontifical North American College in Rome, Father Leo would cook for his fellow seminarians on his days off. He still enjoys cooking.
“You could see what a good meal does. It makes people smile. It doesn’t have to be a big snobby meal. It has to have a purpose,” he said.
“It’s an extension of our Eucharistic meal. You can see why Jesus became our food.”
The idea for the cooking show surfaced while Father Leo was cooking for some priest friends when one of them said he wished he had a video camera to document a priest cooking. Recalling the events, Father Leo said, “it’s not a typical way a TV show comes about. We were just goofing off.”
Other priests jumped on board and even started making up names for a cooking show. “Grace Before Meals,” Father Leo said, joking along with his brother priests.
As divine providence would have it, Father Leo was transferred to St. John Church in Westminster, Md., where he met Tim Watkins, a parishioner who also happened to be a television producer.
Although he kept insisting that it was just a joke, Father Leo realized after prayerful discernment that God was calling him to take on the project of “Grace Before Meals.” He teamed up with Renegade Production Company and took on the “opportunity for families to come closer together — that’s what I do as a priest… strengthen families.”
The entire project is under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, he said. “If we take the Holy Spirit out of it, then we’re talking about fast food,” he said lamenting the fact that society has become immersed in the fast food mentality of instant gratification.
Continuing the analogy, he said, “God uses a crock pot. He takes his time. This will force us to become patient. It makes me put my message into practice.”
Cooking and serving in the kitchen is not something new to Father Leo. “I love food,” he said with a broad smile. He recounted his childhood days when he was “easily bored,” and would happily comply with his mother’s request to help her in the kitchen cutting vegetables or stirring a pot over a hot stove. As he grew older, he would make his older siblings breakfast in exchange for a ride to school on time.
Calling himself a “typical kid” he found his way to martial arts at an early age, and is a third degree instructor of Tae Kwan Do, a Korean art of hands and kicking defense and a third degree black sash instructor in Arnis, a Filipino art of full contact weapons defense. As a youngster he was also into break dancing and was part of a group, “Breakanics” that won Baltimore’s Best Break Dancing Group in 1983. He said he was “fascinated by it because it requires skill.”
His vocation to the priesthood was “the next logical step,” he joked. All sarcasm aside, Father Leo, the youngest of five, including a brother who died at birth, had no idea he would one day be called to the priesthood. He was not particularly “churchy,” and admitted that he failed the altar server test the first time. In fact, he said, the only reason he signed up to be an altar server was to ensure a spot on the annual Kings Dominion trip. By age 19 he realized “there was a God and it ain’t me.”
It was the age when he began to understand the “sacred meal,” he said, referring to the Mass and the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.
Although he went to Mass every Sunday, he did not understand the Mass until it was explained to him by a priest who invited people to come to a conference by telling them that if they decided not to go to Mass afterwards, they were free not to. Trying to find any excuse not to attend Mass, the teenager happily attended the conference only to be overwhelmed by the power of God.  
During consecration at a Mass following the talk, “I saw the presence of God and it reduced me to tears of sorrow and joy. Even though Christ was always present to me I was not always present to Him,” he said. “His blood is pumping through our veins.”
Diving deeper into the faith along with a pilgrimage to Medjugorje, he experienced a deep conversion, which eventually led him to consider a vocation to the priesthood. He felt the Lord say, “your past might not have been perfect, but I can use it. Every saint had a past and every sinner has a future,” he said.   
Although he cannot do some of the same moves from the past, he uses his break dancing skills during youth conferences, “to get the crowd going.”
“We’re supposed to be able to dance and have a good time,” he said. “I also challenge people to dance appropriately, and I’d rather see young people break dance than see the ‘junky moves’ that young people today call dancing.” 
It is his vocation as a priest to “feed God’s children, body, mind and soul” and through “Grace Before Meals,” he hopes to “bring families to the table and prayer back to the families.”
To watch a pilot episode or clips of the show, to sponsor the show, or to reserve a copy of the cookbook, go to www.gracebeforemeals.com.

Henrietta Gomes can be reached at hgomes@catholicherald.com.

(c) Copyright 2007 by Arlington Catholic Herald