“In the same way, be firm in your fasting. If you are tolerant in the time of abstaining, you will also be tolerant in the type and amount of food, then you will be tolerant in controlling yourself. This lack of control will accompany you in all the details of your spiritual life.”
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, The Life of Repentance and Purity,
Category: FOOD
-
-
“As quickly as the pleasure of eating and drinking passes away in those sitting at table dining, for instance, so quickly shall pass, and passes away the present life, with all its pleasures, joys, sorrows, and sickness.”
-
“It is not food that is evil but gluttony, not the begetting of children but unchastity, not material things but avarice, not esteem but self-esteem. This being so, it is only the misuse of things that is evil, and such misuse occurs when the intellect fails to cultivate its natural powers.”
—St. Maximos the Confessor -
“Let us then take care not to be conquered by this brutal vice. St. Augustine says, that food is necessary for the support of life; but, like medicine, it should be taken only through necessity. Intemperance is very injurious to the body as well as to the soul.”
—St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori -
“Struggle with all your might against the stomach and restrain it with all sobriety. If you labour a little, the Lord will also soon work with you.”
—St. John Climacus -
“We take food, for example, out of necessity, but while we are eating, a gluttonous spirit creeps in and we begin to take delight in the eating for its own sake; so often it happens that what began as nourishment to protect our health ends by becoming a pretext for our pleasures.”
—St. Gregory the Great -
“When sitting at a table laden with food, remember death and judgement, for even so you will only check the passion slightly. In taking drink do not cease to bring to mind the vinegar and gall of your Lord. And you will certainly either be abstinent, or you will sigh and humble your mind.”
-
“I shall speak first about control of the stomach, the opposite to gluttony, and about how to fast and what and how much to eat. I shall say nothing on my own account, but only what I have received from the Holy Fathers. They have not given us only a single rule for fasting or a single standard and measure for eating, because not everyone has the same strength; age, illness or delicacy of body create differences. But they have given us all a single goal: to avoid over-eating and the filling of our bellies… A clear rule for self-control handed down by the Fathers is this: stop eating while still hungry and do not continue until you are satisfied.”
—St. John Cassian -
“Know that often a devil settles in the belly, and does not let the man be satisfied, even though he has devoured a whole Egypt and drunk a River Nile. But after one has taken food, the unclean spirit goes away and sends against us the spirit of fornication, telling him our condition and saying, ‘Catch, catch, hound him; for when the stomach is full, he will not resist much.’”
-
Basil emphasises the transformative power of monastic asceticism; in fasting, he says, ‘the whole city generally, and all its people, are brought together in well-ordered harmony: raucous voices put to rest, strife banished, insults hushed’. He proceeds to describe the transformation that fasting brings about not only of individual persons but of the whole city. By means of the solidarity deriving from Christian practice, social space itself is redeemed. Fasting, Basil states, preserves health, keeps husbands faithful, sustains marriages, prevents bloodshed, quietens cooks and servants, limits debt and reduces crime.
Theology on the Menu: Asceticism, Meat and Christian Diet
David Grumett, Rachel Muers
SO GOOD QUOTES 