Intemperance

An intemperate person is one who has gone beyond the proper limits in eating and drinking. It is, of course, not easy to say where this begins and ends. Moralists, therefore, usually content themselves with four general guidelines. The first rule is external, social. The immoderate is one who cannot abstain from food or drink that is expressly forbidden, e.g., who eats meat on days when abstinence is enjoined, who cannot withhold it even on the two days of Lent days of the ecclesiastical year (Ash Wednesday and Good Friday).
There are, however, other forbidden foods. The sick are sometimes ordered to doctors put the sick on a strict diet. It is, understandably, an unstrict one who breaks it despite the damage to his health. The one who is considered intemperate we also consider one who cannot control his eating and conform to the rules of decency and good customs of the society in which he lives.

The second rule concerns personal moderation. We eat and drink to make the body strong. Thus, immoderate is anyone who weakens himself by eating and drinking, who destroys his health and efficiency, who gets drunk, etc. Everything that God has created is to serve good. Sin is the misuse of God’s gifts. Usually natural feeling and experience are enough to know, when we are full and when harmful overeating begins.

The third rule is more subtle and seems to apply only to
those who strive for greater perfection. Spiritual writers consider both intemperance and pickiness in eating to be intemperance,seeking out expensive foods and delicacies. As a reason is that it feeds the senses while weakening the will and the endurance to endure the hardships of life. The experience of daily life, however, confirms that they are ill-equipped for life those who have not learned fastidiousness and avarice from youth. Nevertheless, most good people have feel as if they were touching their honest right to make a profit and enjoy themselves with their own money. Naturally, this cannot and should not be denied to anyone. For we eat not only to keep ourselves alive, but also to feel good, to be satisfied. However, there are limits here, too. Social justice demands that others feel good too. Can this fully justify the unnecessary and exorbitant expenditure that goes down our throats when a third of the globe suffers malnutrition and outright starvation? In that case, is it really ‘our own’ even that which is unnecessary?
The fourth rule, in turn, is related to the spiritual ideal. The perfect Christian is to bear witness to the power of the spirit. It is difficult to speak here of the virtue of spiritual values when one sees in one who professes them, that he is blindly subject to carnal inclinations, and that during meals everything else takes a back seat. It is thus considered immoderate to eat and drink, which is undisciplined, with animal predation, where the appetite and the stomach become stronger than ourselves.
Of the dangers of intemperance to the health of the body the physicians have spoken sufficiently. They say jocularly that they have taken over upon themselves today the old ecclesiastical duty of imposing upon the people fasts. It is not, of course, only intemperance in eating. We know well how sad are the effects of alcoholism, of excessive smoking, and especially of the use of narcotic and irritating
poisons.
The ascetic writers are more concerned with spiritual damage. Intemperance is the manifestation of a weak will and a lack of interest in the higher values. He who cannot control himself in such small matters will soon, as it is figuratively said, sell his birthright in the kingdom of God for a lentil (cf. Gn 25:29). Immodesty is called “the mother of fornication.” Strong diet, understandably, feeds the carnal urges, and strong drinks diminish the sense of responsibility.
According to St. John Climacus, intemperance is “the hypocrisy of the stomach, which laments that it is empty even when it is filled to the top… Gluttony of food is the cause of sensuality; mortification of the stomach leads to purity. If you pet a lion, sometimes it can be tamed, but the body, the more it is indulged, the wilder the animal becomes… Control intemperance before it controls you”!