The Priest at Prayer for July 16, Moderation

The Third Part - Vices and Virtues

Moderation in eating & Drinking

Second Meditation - Evils of Intemperance

I. A word about the physical evils of lack of moderation in eating and drinking. How many lives it shortens! How much distress is caused to the poor human organ­ism by unreasonable overloading with food! We tax our bodies, most of us, with a burden that often breaks them down or drags them along thorny and unclean ways.

Our existence would be more cheerful and vigorous, and perhaps even longer, if we always kept the animal senses tempered by the demands of physical well-being, not to mention those of faith and right reason.

How shall we calculate all the misfortunes which the spirit, housed in its tenement of clay, has to suffer from excessive eating and drinking? There is a debasing of the mind, drowsed and darkened by the coarse vapours of over-feeding; that hebetudo sensus of which St. Thomas speaks, that blunting and impairing of the senses; the expansion or contraction of the heart with meaningless cheer or depressing sadness; immoderation in speech; the propensity to indulge in buffoonery, the atmosphere of every piled-up table; and the awakening of sexual appetite due to the plethora of heat and blood.

It may have occurred to me to put the blame for all these misfortunes on constitutional derangements or on God Himself, as Adam and Eve put the blame for their guilt on the Serpent or on the divine Plan; as if God and Nature, which God created, did not agree in con­demning excess; and as if they were responsible for voluntary deviations of mine from the law of moder­ation!

II. Numerous are the texts in Old and New Testaments condemning drunkenness:

"A reckless counsellor is wine, strong drink a riotous friend." (Prov. xx, 1)

"Do not besot yourselves with wine; that leads to ruin." (Eph. v, 18)

But the chief evil of immoderation is, according to our Lord, the danger of sudden death:

And take heed to yourselves, lest perhaps your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunken­ness and the cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly. (Luke xxi, 34)

Christ reckons that surfeiting and drunkenness and the worries consequent upon these vices are the greatest obstacle to watching and praying and continual prepar­ation of the soul - virtues culminating in the supreme gift of a good death. What greater misfortune could there be?

Lord, if until now these unworthy pleasures absorbed a heart made to seek and rest in Thee alone, I trust, by Thy fatherly mercy, to do battle with my degraded instincts, to master them and make them slaves to my free will.

"Lord, that gavest my life and guidest it . . .let the itch of gluttony pass me by . . . do not leave me at the mercy of a shameless, an unprofitable mind!" (Eccl. xxiii, 4 and 6)

III. Holy Scripture, the Fathers, the Doctors of the Church, all the guides of the spiritual life, and the Church Herself, in the laws and the liturgy, praise and ponder most highly not only sobriety but also fasting and the severe curbing of the flesh.

"O Holy Lord, Father Almighty and everlasting God, who by the fasting of the body dost curb our vices, elevate our minds and bestow virtue and reward. . . ." (Lenten preface.)

The mere narrative of the terrible macerations and abstinential practices of so many of the Saints surprises, terrorises, and scandalises us amid the soft­ness of the modern world; but the facts are there, they cannot be denied; nor is the Church, acting by the Spirit of Christ, tired of holding up to our admiration those noble souls who so perfectly mastered the wild impulses of an appetite connatural to man.

I shall not make a mockery of these achievements of the Saints. If I haven't the courage or the desire to scale such heights, I shall own up to my cowardice; and in future I shall hold these virtues in the same high esteem as the Church does, and try to walk in the foot­steps of so many valiant souls, at least by leading a
reasonably sober and temperate life.

Resolutions
1. I shall bear in mind and strictly observe Canon 138, which mentions some of the things and places that clerks should abstain from as unbecoming to their state: clerics "should not enter public houses and other similar places, except out of necessity or for some other just cause approved by the local Ordinary." I shall also be cautious of big dinners in the company of lay people, on account of the dangers that are always inherent in them.

2. I shall not drink wines and spirits outside meal times, unless I am justified in doing so by some social need or convenience. (And why not do better still? Why not imitate so many good priests and, lay people, who abstain completely from all alcoholic drink? If I have shown the slightest weakness for drink in the past, surely I should forestall a tragedy by cutting out drink altogether. - Trans.)

3. I shall not think or talk needlessly about eating and drinking. The chief danger in every kind of intem­perance is, according to St. Thomas, thinking about the
specific or particular object which gives pleasure.

4. I shall raise my meals to the rank of acts of piety and religion, blessing the table according to the formula of the Breviary, if I am alone or with other priests, or saying grace before and after meals, if with lay people. If possible, I shall do some spiritual reading during meals, in order to take my mind off food. I shall keep to all the rules of good manners while at table.

5. I shall fast, at least when the Church commands it. And if one day I have the courage to fast out of devotion and to deprive myself occasionally even of what is convenient, in order to atone for my frequent lack of moderation in the past, I shall be a happier man for it.
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Adapted from The Priest at Prayer
by Fr. Eugenio Escribano, C.M. (© 1954)
Translated by B.T. Buckley, C.M.

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