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| Chapter XIV. How gluttonous desires can be overcome.
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Chapter XIV.
How gluttonous desires can be overcome.
First then we must
trample under foot gluttonous desires, and to this end the mind must be
reduced not only by fasting, but also by vigils, by reading, and by
frequent compunction of heart for those things in which perhaps it
recollects that it has been deceived or overcome, sighing at one time
with horror at sin, at another time inflamed with the desire of
perfection and saintliness: until it is fully occupied and possessed by
such cares and meditations, and recognizes the participation of food to
be not so much a concession to pleasure, as a burden laid upon it; and
considers it to be rather a necessity for the body than anything
desirable for the soul. And, preserved by this zeal of mind and
continual compunction, we shall beat down the wantonness of the flesh
(which becomes more proud and haughty by being fomented with food) and
its dangerous incitement, and so by the copiousness of our tears and
the weeping of our heart we shall succeed in extinguishing the fiery
furnace of our body, which is kindled by the Babylonish king838
| 838 Cf. Dan. iii. 6; and see below Book VI. c. xvii. where
Cassian once more speaks of the devil as the Babylonish king. | who continually furnishes us with
opportunities for sin, and vices with which we burn more fiercely,
instead of naphtha and pitch—until, through the grace of God,
instilled like dew by His Spirit in our hearts, the heats of fleshly
lusts can be altogether deadened. This then is our first contest, this
is as it were our first trial in the Olympic games, to extinguish the
desires of the palate and the belly by the longing for perfection. On
which account we must not only trample down all unnecessary desire for
food by the contemplation of the virtues, but also must take what is
necessary for the support of nature, not without anxiety of heart, as
if it were opposed to chastity. And so at length we may enter on the
course of our life, so that there may be no time in which we feel that
we are recalled from our spiritual studies, further than when we are
obliged by the weakness of the body to descend for the needful care of
it. And when we are subjected to this necessity—of attending to
the wants of life rather than the desires, of the soul—we should
hasten to withdraw as quickly as possible from it, as if it kept us
back from really health-giving studies. For we cannot possibly scorn
the gratification of food presented to us, unless the mind is fixed on
the contemplation of divine things, and is the rather
entranced with the love of virtue
and the delight of things celestial. And so a man will despise all
things present as transitory, when he has securely fixed his mental
gaze on, those things which are immovable and eternal, and already
contemplates in heart—though still in the flesh—the
blessedness of his future life.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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