The Stomach’s Hypocrisy
I doubt if anyone will achieve freedom from gluttony this side of the grave.
Gluttony is the hypocrisy of the stomach which complains of being empty when it is well fed, and bellows that it is hungry when it is full almost to bursting.
If a person swallows too much food, he is inviting impure thoughts. If he mortifies the stomach, he is creating pure thoughts.
Often a lion if it is caressed becomes domesticated whereas the more you coddle the body, the more it goes wild.
Master gluttony before it masters you!
John Climacus, Stairway to Paradise, 14 (PG88, 854)
At Table
We give up a diet that is over-full and too refined to hold, at bay, the body which behaves like a champing stallion pawing the ground and quivering. As a result, we have a surplus of food which we can distribute to the poor: a sign, this, of authentic love for our brothers and sisters.
The individual who gives thanks to God and eats and drinks everything that is prepared and served up to him at table is not going against true wisdom because everything God made ‘is very good’. [Gen. 1:31]
But the individual who voluntarily gives up what he likes shows an even greater wisdom. He is only able to do it, provided he has first tasted how sweet the Lord is.
If the body is weighed down with too much food, it makes the mind tired and sluggish; if it is weakened by excessive abstinence it generates in the soul melancholy and an indifference to the divine Word.
There is therefore great need of a balance: moderate the appetite when the body is vigorous, give it more nourishment when the body is weak.
Diadochus of Photica, Spiritual Works, 43ff. (SCS6, pp. 11off.)
Living to Eat?
Some people live to eat, just as the animals do ‘whose life is no more than filling their stomachs’.
But our Teacher exhorts us to eat in order to live. Nourishment is not what we are here for, nor is pleasure our purpose in life. We only use them during our sojourning here as the Word instructs us, and he chooses our nourishment with immortality in view.
Clement of Alexandria, The Teacher, 21, I (PG8, 377)
~Thomas Spidlik, Drinking from the Hidden Fountain: A Patristic Breviary, Ancient Wisdom for Today’s World
