And first of all, if you please, let us investigate the meals of rich and poor, and ask the guests which they are who enjoy the purest and most genuine pleasure; is it they who recline for a full day on couches, and join breakfast and dinner together, and distend their stomach, and blunt their senses, and sink the vessel by an overladen cargo of food, and waterlog the ship, and drench it as in some shipwreck of the body, and devise fetters, and manacles, and gags, and bind their whole body with the band of drunkenness and surfeit more grievous than an iron chain, and enjoy no sound pure sleep undisturbed by frightful dreams, and are more miserable than madmen and introduce a kind of self-imposed demon into the soul and display themselves as a laughing stock to the gaze of their servants, or rather to the kinder sort amongst them as a tragical spectacle eliciting tears, and cannot recognize any of those who are present, and are incapable of speaking or hearing but have to be carried away from their couches to their bed; — or is it they who are sober and vigilant, and limit their eating by their need, and sail with a favorable breeze, and find hunger and thirst the best relish in their food and drink? For nothing is so conducive to enjoyment and health as to be hungry and thirsty when one attacks the viands, and to identify satiety with the simple necessity of food, never overstepping the limits of this, nor imposing a load upon the body too great for its strength.
But if you disbelieve my statement study the physical condition, and the soul of each class. Are not the bodies vigorous of those who live thus moderately (for do not tell me of that which rarely happens, although some may be weak from some other circumstance, but form your judgment from those instances which are of constant occurrence), I say are they not vigorous, and their senses clear, fulfilling their proper function with much ease? Whereas the bodies of the others are flaccid and softer than wax, and beset with a crowd of maladies? For gout soon fastens upon them, and untimely palsy, and premature old age, and headache, and flatulence, and feebleness of digestion, and loss of appetite, and they require constant attendance of physicians, and perpetual dosing, and daily care. Are these things pleasurable? Tell me. Who of those that know what pleasure really is would say so? For pleasure is produced when desire leads the way, and fruition follows: now if there is fruition, but desire is nowhere to be found, the conditions of pleasure fail and vanish. On this account also invalids, although the most charming food is set before them, partake of it with a feeling of disgust and sense of oppression: because there is no desire which gives a keen relish to the enjoyment of it. For it is not the nature of the food, or of the drink, but the appetite of the eaters which is wont to produce the desire, and is capable of causing pleasure. Therefore also a certain wise man who had an accurate knowledge of all that concerned pleasure, and understood how to moralize about these things said “the fall soul mocketh at honeycombs:” showing that the conditions of pleasure consist not in the nature of the meal, but in the disposition of the eaters.
Therefore also the prophet recounting the wonders in Egypt and in the desert mentioned this in connection with the others “He satisfied them with honey out of the rock.” And yet nowhere does it appear that honey actually sprang forth for them out of the rock: what then is the meaning of the expression? Because the people being exhausted by much toil and long traveling, and distressed by great thirst rushed to the cool spring, their craving for drink serving as a relish, the writer wishing to describe the pleasures which they received from those fountains called the water honey, not meaning that the element was converted into honey, but that the pleasure received from the water rivaled the sweetness of honey, inasmuch as those who partook of it rushed to it in their eagerness to drink. Since then these things are so and no one can deny it, however stupid he may be: is it not perfectly plain that pure, undiluted, and lively pleasure is to be found at the tables of the poor? whereas at the tables of the rich there is discomfort, and disgust and defilement? as that wise man has said “even sweet things seem to be a vexation.”
—St. John Chrysostom, A Treatise to Prove That No One Can Harm the Man Who Does Not Injure Himself
Category: BEST OF
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All this is contrary to nature, for the Creator has ordained the same natural way of life for both us and the animals. ‘Behold,’ says God to man, ‘I have given you every herb of the field, to serve as food for you and for the beasts’ (cf. Gen, 1:29-30). Thus we have been given a common diet with the animals; but if we use our powers of invention to turn this into something extravagant, shall we not rightly be judged more unintelligent than they? The animals remain within the boundaries of nature, not altering in any way what God has ordained; but we, who have been honored with the power of intelligence, have completely abandoned His original ordinance. Do animals demand a luxury diet? What chefs and pastry-cooks pander to their bellies? Do they not prefer the original simplicity, eating the herbs of the field, content with whatever is at hand, drinking water from springs – and this only infrequently? In this way they diminish sexual lust and do not inflame their desires with fatty foods. They become conscious of the difference between male and female only during the one season of the year ordained by the law of nature for them to mate in, so as to propagate and continue their species. The rest of the year they keep away from one another as if they had altogether forgotten any such appetite. In men, on the other hand, as a result of the richness of their food, an insatiable desire for sexual pleasure has grown up, producing in them frenzied appetites which never allow this passion to be still.
Since, then, possessions are the cause of great harm and, like a source of disease, they give rise to all the passions, we must eliminate this cause if we are really concerned for the well-being of our souls. Let us cure the passion of avarice through voluntary poverty. By embracing solitude let us avoid meeting those who do us no good, for the company of frivolous people is harmful and undermines our state of peace. Just as those who live in an unhealthy climate are generally ill, so those who spend their time with worthless men share in their vices.
—St. Neilos The Ascetic
Philokalia -
“A mouth denied water will not ask for wine. A stomach denied bread will not ask for meat.”
—St. Syncletica -
Lord, consider me among the despised and nonexistent, but do not deprive me of working with You. Allow me to have an existence before You, although, in my eyes, and perhaps in the eyes of people, I am despised and nonexistent (1 Cor 1:28).
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Lord, it is a blessed hour when I sit with myself. When I sit with myself I sit with You, because, although I might not see You, You are within me. It is the same as when You were in the world and the world did not know You.
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Behold, O Lord, I confess to You that now whenever I sit with myself, I feel every time that my self is more precious than the whole world, “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?” (Mk 8:36). Whenever I feel that my self is more valuable than the world, the world grows smaller and smaller in my eyes, and I take from You the grace of indifference to everything. When I am thus indifferent, I find You before me, encouraging me: “Do not fear, for I am with you” (Gen 26:24).
When I sit, O Lord, with myself, I discover what is inside me, and I also see how the strangers transgressed Your sanctuaries within me (Jer 51:51). When I see that, and expose it before You, for You to keep my soul from strangers, then our session goes on and on, and I find many things to say to You. Here, human consolations pale in comparison. I do not seek human companionship, but rather I seek solitude, retreat, and stillness, so as not to be deprived of this dire need, my session with You, which provides me with contrition and purity.
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I love You, and love sitting with You more than sitting with other people.
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Give me, O Lord, to leave people, and become occupied with myself, to connect with You.
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Dialogue with the Divine
from the poem ‘A Whisper of Love’
Wherever You are, there shall my thoughts be
Family and friends have I forgotten—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Dialogue with the Divine
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There are those who are called the slothful in the book of Wisdom, who strew their path with thorns, who consider harmful to the soul a zeal for deeds in keeping with the commandments of God, the demurrers against the apostolic injunctions, who do not eat their own bread with dignity, but, fawning on others, make idleness the art of life. Then, there are the dreamers who consider the deceits of dreams more trustworthy than the teachings of the Gospels, calling fantasies revelations. Apart from these, there are those who stay in their own houses, and still others who consider being unsociable and brutish a virtue without recognizing the command to love and without knowing the fruit of long-suffering and humility.
—St. Gregory of Nyssa
James Stuart Bell, ed.,Ancient Faith Study Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bibles, 2019), 752.Daydreamers, they have very very high dreams and very very high ambition, and they live in delusion.
—Fr. Mina Dimitri, inspired by Gregory of NyssaThey stay in their homes and “isolate from others” and their community. One of the most dangerous things people do is isolate themselves from the church community. All of this is a big thorn that you are putting in your life that makes you lazy, that makes you not put effort, and makes you isolated, and makes the devil easy to control you and change you.
—Fr. Mina Dimitri, inspired by Gregory of Nyssa -
Our Longing for Home
IT is important to read Jesus’s parable of the lost son in the context of the whole of Luke, chapter 15, but the story has an eVen larger context. If we read the narratiVe in light of the Bible’s sweeping theme of exile and homecoming we will understand that Jesus has given us more than a moving account of individual redemption. He has retold the story of the whole human race, and promised nothing less than hope for the world.
In Jesus’s parable the younger brother goes off into a distant country expecting a better life but is disappointed. He begins to long for home, remembering the food in his father’s house. So do we all.
“Home” exercises a powerful influence oVer human life. Foreign-born Americans spend billions annually to visit the communities in which they were born. Children who neVer find a place where they feel they belOng carry an incapacity for attachment into their adult lives. Many of us have fond memories of times, people, and places where we felt we were truly home. However, if we ever have an opportunity to get back to the places we remember so fondly, we are usually disappointed. For thirty-nine years my wife, Kathy, spent summers with her family in a ramshackle cottage on the shores of Lake Erie. The very memory of that place is nourishing to Kathy’s spirit. But returning to the actual, now-dilapidated property is a gut-wrenching experience. It won’t be much different if someone buys it and puts up new condos on it. An actual visit to the place will always present her with a sense of loss.
Home, then, is a powerful but elusive concept. The strong feelings that surround it reveal some deep longing within us for a place that absolutely fits and suits us, where we can be, or perhaps find, our true selves. Yet it seems that no real place or actual family ever satisfies these yearnings, though many situations arouse them. In his novel A Separate Peace, John Knowles’s central character discovers that Summer mornings in New Hampshire give him “some feeling so hopelessly promising that I would fall back in my bed to guard against it . . . I wanted to break out crying from stabs of hopeless joy, or intolerable promise, or because those mornings were too full of beauty for me.” In East of Eden, John Steinbeck similarly says of the mountains of central California that he wanted “to climb into their warm foothills almost as you want to climb into the lap of a beloved mother.”
The memory of home seems to be powerfully evoked by certain sights, sounds, and even smells. But they can only arouse a desire they can’t fulfill. Many of the people in my church have shared with me how disappointing Christmas and Thanksgiving are to them. They prepare for holidays hoping that, finally, this year, the gathering of the family at that important place will deliver the experience of warmth, joy, comfort, and love that they want from it. But these events almost always fail, crushed under the weight of our impossible expectations.
There is a German word that gets at this concept— the word Sehnsucht. Dictionaries will tell you that there is no simple English synonym. It denotes profound homesickness or longing, but with transcendent overtones. The writer who spoke most of this “spiritual homesickness” was C. S. Lewis, in his famous sermon “The Weight of Glory.” He refers to many similar experiences like those described by Steinbeck and Knowles, and then he says:
Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself. . . . Now we wake to find . . . we have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face was turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken in. . . . Our life-long nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation.
There seems to be a sense, then, in which we are all like the younger brother. We are all exiles, always longing for home. We are always traveling, never arriving. The houses and families we actually inhabit are only inns along the way, but they aren’t home. Home continues to evade us.
Timothy Keller, The Prodigal Son
SO GOOD QUOTES 