Grace (meals)

A grace is a short prayer or thankful phrase said before or after eating. The term most commonly refers to Christian traditions. Some traditions hold that grace and thanksgiving imparts a blessing which sanctifies the meal. In English, reciting such a prayer is sometimes referred to as "saying grace". The term comes from the Ecclesiastical Latin phrase gratiarum actio 'act of thanks'. Theologically, the act of saying grace is derived from the Bible, in which Jesus and Saint Paul pray before meals (cf. Luke 24:30, Acts 27:35). The practice reflects the belief that humans should thank God who is believed to be the origin of everything.

Pope Francis has suggested that "all believers ... return to [the] beautiful and meaningful custom" of stopping to "give thanks to God before and after meals".

Typical Christian mealtime grace prayers include:

German prayers to be sung before a meal include "Aller Augen warten auf dich" (All eyes are waiting for you) by Heinrich Schütz, after Psalm 145:15, and the anonymous 20th-century round "Segne, Vater, diese Gaben" (Bless Father, these gifts).

Before eating, a blessing is said based on the category of food that is being eaten. The categories are: (i) Bread, (ii) fruits that grow on a tree, (iii) fruits/vegetables that do not grow on a tree, (iv) derivates of the five grains (except for bread, which has its own blessing), (v) derivatives of grapes and (vi) everything else.

The Jewish mealtime prayer, after eating a meal that includes bread, is known as Birkat Hamazon. If the meal does not include bread, a blessing after the meal is recited based on the category of food that was eaten.

With the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD, the offering of the prescribed sacrifices ceased in Judaism. Thereafter, the Rabbis prescribed the substitution of other ritual actions to fill this void in Jewish obedience to the Torah. The ritual washing of hands and eating of salted bread is considered to be a substitute for the sacrificial offerings of the kohanim (Jewish priests).

Though there are separate blessings for fruit, vegetables, non-bread grain products, and meat, fish, and dairy products, a meal is not considered to be a meal in the formal sense unless bread is eaten. The duty of saying grace after the meal is derived from Deuteronomy 8:10: "And thou shalt eat and be satisfied and shalt bless the Lord thy God for the goodly land which he has given thee." Verse 8 of the same chapter says: "The land of wheat and barley, of the vine, the fig and the pomegranate, the land of the oil olive and of [date] syrup." Hence only bread made of wheat (which embraces spelt) or of barley (which for this purpose includes rye and oats) is deemed worthy of the blessing commanded in verse 10.