SO GOOD QUOTES

Cassian also discusses dietary discipline in his fifth book of Institutes, in which he presents the common goal of spiritual abstinence as best served by varying levels of abstinence for different people. In so far as an objective measure of degrees of abstinence is possible, some community members will be suited to a stricter degree than others owing to differences in mental steadfastness, bodily health, age and gender. Indeed, when specific foods are discussed, this is often in order to show the difficulty of forming general prescriptions: moistened beans do not agree with everybody, for example, and fresh vegetables and dry bread will suit some people but not others. In defining gluttony, Cassian does not therefore focus solely on the specific types of food eaten, but adopts a broader perspective which takes account of their simplicity and ease of preparation. He advises:

Food should be chosen not only to soothe the burning pangs of lust, still less to inflame them, but which is easy to prepare and which is readily available for a moderate price, and it should be held in common for the brothers’ use. Now there are three types of gluttony: one is compulsion to anticipate the regular time of eating; another is wanting to fill the stomach with excessive amounts of any sort of food; the third is delighting in the more delicate and rare dishes. A monk therefore must take threefold care against these: firstly he must wait for the proper time of meals; then he must not yield to overeating; thirdly he should be happy with any sort of common food.

Theology on the Menu: Asceticism, Meat and Christian Diet
by David Grumett, Rachel Muers