• When asked to bless the lavish and opulent banquet set before him he struggled to hide his distress and whispered to one of his disciples, “My son…is that the food of monks?” Without causing a scene he quietly dispatched the same disciple to source some falafel and salad, to the awe and confusion of onlookers. It is little wonder that his brother, Hanna, ended his memoirs with the words: “Becoming pope did not change him.”

    A Silent Patriarch: Kyrillos VI (1902–1971)
    Fr. Daniel Fanous

  • According to his closest disciple who served him while patriarch, Fr Raphael Ava Mina, Kyrillos’ diet was meager and austere. When he broke his fast around midday—having started the day with psalmody at three in the morning—it would inevitably be with a piece of bread (qorban) and dukkah. With much pleading, he could occasionally be convinced to add a few small spoons of beans. Often Kyrillos would be delayed by meetings and then he would have his breakfast only after three in the afternoon. For lunch, he would usually have some dried bread with a small number of cooked vegetables—but, Fr Raphael recalls, he would never actually eat the vegetables, but only dip his bread in their sauce. Before he slept, he would usually be satisfied with some fruit or bread at most. “I never saw him touch a piece of chicken or meat, or even have a sip of milk.” That was during the non-fasting days. In fasting times, especially that of Lent and the Theotokos fast, even though he had been awake since the earliest hours of the morning, he would eat only once later in the evening.At one point during the fifty days of Resurrection, Kyrillos gave his regular cook a few days of leave, upon which Fr Raphael, who in his own words “did not know how to cook,” thought to take care of the kitchen. Each evening he would lay out roasted chicken, a few small pieces of meat, rice, bread and cheese; only to find the chicken and meat untouched, with the bread and cheese eaten. Given the poor refrigeration of the day, each evening would see a new meal largely wasted. “I need to tell you something…I don’t think he likes chicken,” the disciple recalls telling the cook when he returned. Confused, the cook rebuked Fr Raphael, saying, “He would never eat it like that….You need to cut chicken so fine and mix it with the rice so that he cannot see it!” A man of sixty, physically large and athletic, and yet they had to trick him, lest he eat only bread and cumin.

    A Silent Patriarch: Kyrillos VI (1902–1971)
    Fr. Daniel Fanous

  • “Abba Doulas said ‘One day when we were walking beside the sea I was thirsty and I said to Abba Bessarion, “Father, I am very thirsty.” He said a prayer and said to me, “Drink some of the sea water.” The water tasted sweet when I drank some. I even poured some into the leather bottle for fear of being thirsty later on. Seeing this, the old man asked me why I was taking some. I said to him, “Forgive me, it is for the fear of being thirsty later on.” Then the old man said, “God is here, God is there, God is everywhere.”

    —Abba Bessarion

  • Let all persons of all conditions avoid all delicacy and niceness in their clothing or diet, because such softness engages them upon great misspendings of their time, while they dress and comb out all their opportunities of their morning devotion, and half the day’s severity, and sleep out the care and provision for their souls.

    —Rev. Jeremy Taylor, CARE OF OUR TIME. -Rules for employing our time…,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

  • Secondly, eat not hastily and impatiently, but with such decent and timely action that your eating be a human act, subject to deliberation and choice; and that you may consider in the eating, whereas he that eats hastily cannot consider particularly of the circumstances, degrees, and little accidents and chances that happen in his meal, but may contract many little indecencies, and be suddenly surprised.

    —Rev. Jeremy Taylor, On Christian Sobriety -Measures of temperance in eating..,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

  • Make nature to be your limit.

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

  • But go to the crib, thou glutton, and there it will be found that when the charger is clean, yet nature’s rules were not prevaricated; the beast eats up all his provisions because they are natural and simple ; or if he leaves any, it is because he desires no more than till his needs be served ; and neither can a man (unless he be diseased in body or in spirit, in affection or in habit) eat more of natural and simple food than to the satisfaction of his natural necessities. He that drinks a draught or two of water and cools his thirst, drinks no more till his thirst returns; but he that drinks wine, drinks again longer than it is needful, even so long as it is pleasant. Nature best provides for herself when she spreads her own table ; but when men have gotten superinduced habits, and new necessities, art that brought them in must maintain them, but “wantonness and folly wait at the table, and sickness and death take away.”

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

  • ” This hunger must be natural,” not artificial and provoked ; for many men make necessities to themselves, and then think they are bound to provide for them. 

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

  • by faring deliciously every day, men become senseless of the evils of mankind, inapprehensive of the troubles of their brethren, unconcerned in the changes of the world, and the cries of the poor, the hunger of the fatherless, and the thirst of widows

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

  • It cannot be constantly pleasant : for necessity and want makes the appetite, and the appetite makes the pleasure; and men are infinitely mistaken when they despise the poor man’s table, and wonder how he can endure that life, that is maintained without the exercise of pleasure, and that he can suffer his day’s labour, and recompense it with unsavoury herbs, and potent garlic, with water-cresses, and bread coloured like the ashes that gave it hardness : he hath a hunger that gives it deliciousness.


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