Category: FOOD

  • The saint sees that one hour of sleep per day is sufficient for a monk. While many people see that a person must sleep for eight hours per day, some specialists and those who have experience assert that the body, through habit, may be satisfied with less than that, without any effect on the productivity of the person, just like the stomach which gets used to being small or large in size.

    Abba Arsenius The Tutor of the Emperor’s Sons
    Bishop Macarius

  • “Run from places of sin as from the plague. For when fruit is not present, we have no frequent desire to eat it.”

    —St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent

  • Let not we who are reasonable show ourselves to be more savage than the unreasoning animals. For even the animals use in common the plants that grow naturally from the earth. Flocks of sheep graze together upon the same hillside, herds of horses feed upon the same plain, and all living creatures permit each other to satisfy their need for food. But we hoard what is common, and keep for ourselves what belongs to many others.

    —St. Basil the Great, On Social Justice

  • “We spent time talking about the gift of the Sabbath, and the actual aim of Lent — which isn’t to give up something you love, but give up something that you grasp in times of turmoil or indecision or boring, as a coping mechanism, instead of confronting what’s actually going on. You don’t give up chocolate cake because God doesn’t want you have things that you love. You give up chocolate cake if it’s what you turn towards instead of God.“

    switching between inboxes until i pass out
    Anne Helen Petersen

  • Those who have not found Christ live in this life without hearty faith; they think and care more about worldly things—how to enjoy themselves, how to eat and drink pleasurably, how to dress exquisitely, how to satisfy their carnal desires, how to kill time, with which they do not know what to do, though time seeks them and, not finding them, quickly flies away before their eyes. Day flies away after day, night after night, month after month, year after year, until, finally, the last terrible hour strikes, and they hear a voice: “Stop, the course is finished; your time has been lost; your sins and iniquities have preceded you; they will fall upon you with all their power, and will crush you with their weight eternally.”

    —St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ

  • Just as the intellect of a hungry man imagines bread and that of a thirsty man water, so the intellect of a glutton imagines a profusion of foods.

    —St Maximos the Confessor, Four Hundred Texts on Love

  • Be severe in your judgment concerning your proportions, and let no occasion make you enlarge far beyond your ordinary. For a man is surprised by parts; and while he thinks one glass more will not make him drunk, that one glass hath disabled him from well discerning his present condition and neighbour danger. 

    —Rev. Jeremy Taylor, On Christian Sobriety -Rules for obtaining temperance., The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor, Volume 3. THE RULE AND EXERCISES OF HOLY LIVING AND DYING….: The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living and Dying

  • Do not believe your flesh when it threatens to you with weakness during prayer; it lies. As soon as you begin to pray you will find that the flesh will become your obedient slave. Your prayer will vivify it also. Always remember that the flesh is lying.

    —St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ

  • …that which is enough for health is too little for delight, and that which is for my delight destroys my health, and still it is uncertain for what end I do indeed desire; and the worst of the evil is this, that the soul is glad because it is uncertain, and that an excuse is ready, that under the pretence of health, the design of pleasure may be advanced and protected.
    —St. Austin

    [from —Rev. Jeremy Taylor, The House of Feasting .The Whole Works of the Rt. Rev. Jeremy Taylor, Volume 1]

  • A wandering mind is made stable by reading, vigil and prayer. Flaming lust is extinguished by hunger, labor, and solitude. Stirrings of anger are calmed by psalmody, magnanimity, and mercifulness. All this has its effect when used at its proper time and in due measure. Everything untimely or without proper measure is short-lived; and short-lived things are more harmful than useful.

    —Abba Evagrius the Monk