A Flood of Alcohol
When the ground has been watered enough it produces good grain abundance. If, on the other hand, it is sodden through a flood, it sprouts only thorns and thistles.
It is the same with the ground of our soul. If we use wine with frugality, alcohol helps the soul to make what the Holy Spirit has sown in it grow luxuriantly.
Instead, a bout of unrestrained drinking makes the ground of the soul slushy and incapable of producing any thoughts but thorns and thistles.
Diadochus of Photica, Spiritual Works, 48 (SC5b, p. 112)
The Young People’s Drink and the Drink of the Elderly
‘Take a little wine for your stomach’s sake,’ says the Apostle to Timothy who was drinking only water. [1 Tim. 5:23] In saying this he was offering welcome help to Timothy’s weak and disease-ridden body. Note that he says ‘a little’ for fear that the cure by reason of excess should make another cure necessary.
Water is the natural non-alcoholic drink for anyone who is thirsty. Water streaming from the rock is what the Lord provided for the Hebrews of old to drink a simple sober drink, and the wanderers very much needed to keep sober.
Only later came the fruit of the vine, when the travellers had been taught how to rest from their journeying. The prophetic grape-bunch, the Holy Vine, specially crushed for us, is the Word, and the Word has ordained that the blood of the grape should be mixed with water just as his blood is blended with water for salvation. To drink the blood of Jesus is to partake of the Lord’s immortality.
I admire people who have undertaken a life of austerity and seek water as the medicine of temperance, people who flee as far as they can from wine, as though from the threat of fire. I am glad that young men and women keep off this drug. It is not good to pour wine, the most fiery of liquids, onto the ardour of youth, lest it inflame their burning desires, and kindle their wilder instincts.
But for those of a more advanced age for whom the fires of youth have cooled off, taking wine is a happier recommendation. They are less likely to be bowled over by the billows of drunkenness. They have age and reason to secure them. Even so, for them, too there should be a limit, so that their mind remains clear, their memory continues to work, and their body is unaffected by the wine.
Clement of Alexandria, The Teacher, 2, 2 (PG8, 409)
~Thomas Spidlik, Drinking from the Hidden Fountain: A Patristic Breviary, Ancient Wisdom for Today’s World
