The Seven Deadly Sins, Hieronymus Bosch, 1475–1480
Their God is their belly (Phil. 3:19).
Like any passion, gluttony comes from a completely natural human need. Man needs food and drink; it’s one of his vital, organic needs. Moreover, food and drink are gifts from God; in consuming them, we not only nourish our body with nutrients, but we also get pleasure, for which we thank the Creator. Moreover, a meal, a feast is a chance to talk with friends and loved ones. It unites us. In eating together, we have the joy of communicating and are strengthened physically. It’s not without reason that the Holy Fathers call the trapeza a continuation of the Liturgy. In church, we’re united by the spiritual joy of praying together; we commune from one chalice, and then we share our bodily and spiritual joy with those who are close to us in spirit.
In the first centuries of Christianity, after the Eucharist they held so-called agape, or love meals, where Christians ate food at a common table, having spiritual conversations. Therefore, there’s nothing sinful or unclean about eating food and drinking wine. As always, everything depends on our attitude to it and maintaining moderation.
Where is this measure, this fine line separating natural need from passion? It runs between inner freedom and unfreedom in our soul. As the Apostle Paul says: I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ Which strengtheneth me (Phil. 4:12–13).
Are we free from attachment to food and drink? Don’t they own us? What’s stronger: our will or our desires? The Lord revealed to the Apostle Peter: What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common (Acts 11:9). And there’s no sin in eating. The sin isn’t in food, but in our attitude towards it.
But let’s take this in order. This is how St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) defines the passion of gluttony: “Overeating, drunkenness, breaking the fasts, secret eating, indulgence in delicacies, and generally violating moderation; improper and excessive love of the flesh, its stomach and comfort, which gives rise to self-love, leading to unfaithfulness to God, the Church, virtue, and men.”
The passion of gluttony comes in two forms: gluttony and gourmandism. Gluttony is when a man is more interested in the quantity than the quality of food. Gourmandism is indulgence, gratification of the palate and taste buds, the cult of culinary refinements. The passion of gluttony (as well as many other vices) reached its ugly peak in Ancient Rome. Some patricians, in order to endlessly enjoy themselves at magnificent feasts, made themselves special devices from bird feathers so that once they were completely satiated, they could induce vomiting to empty their stomachs, and then satisfy the insane passion of gluttony again.
Truly, [their] God is their belly, and [their] glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things (Phil. 3:19). It’s no coincidence that satiated people suffering from gluttony rarely take interest in spiritual matters. The cult of food and bodily pleasures doesn’t allow you to remember the things above. As the Holy Fathers say, “Fat birds can’t fly.”
Gluttony and winebibbing give birth to another bodily passion—lust, carnal desire. As they say, “delicacies (that is, gluttony), give birth to lust.”1
Satiation of the stomach not only keeps us from thinking about God and prayer but also makes it very difficult to keep ourselves in purity. “He who fills his stomach and promises to be chaste is like a man who claims that straw will stop fire. Just as it’s impossible for straw to hold back the rapid spread of fire, so it’s impossible to stop the burning urge of depravity through satiety,” says the fourth-century ascetic St. Nilus of Mt. Sinai.
By Prayer and Fasting
How is the passion of gluttony treated? The Holy Fathers advise combating any passion with its opposite virtue, and the demon of gluttony goeth not out but by prayer and fasting (Matt. 17:21). Fasting is a great educational tool in general. Blessed is he who is accustomed to spiritual and bodily temperance and strictly observes the established Church fasts and fasting days.
Here I’d like to say a bit about the meaning of Orthodox fasting. Many observe the fasts now, but do they do so properly? Restaurants and cafes now have special Lenten menus during the fasts. TV and radio hosts talk about the start of the fast. There are many cookbooks with fasting recipes for sale. So what is the essence of fasting?
Fasting isn’t a diet. Fasting, especially Great Lent, is referred to as the spring of the soul by the Holy Fathers—that time when we’re especially attentive to our soul, to our inner life. We cease marital physical relations and amusements. In Russia before the revolution, they closed the theaters during Great Lent. Fasting days are established so we could sometimes slow down the crazy pace of our hectic earthly life and could look within ourselves, at our souls. During the fasts, Orthodox Christians prepare and commune of the Holy Mysteries.
Fasting is a time of repentance for our sins and intense struggle with our passions. And eating fasting, lighter, low-calorie foods and abstaining from pleasures helps us in this. It’s easier to think about God, to pray, to lead a spiritual life when the body isn’t satiated, isn’t weighed down. “The glutton calls fasting a time of weeping, but an abstemious man doesn’t look at fasting sullenly,” writes St. Ephraim the Syrian. This is one of the meanings of the fast. It helps us focus, attunes us to the spiritual life, making it easier for us.
The second meaning of fasting is a sacrifice to God and the education of our will. Fasting isn’t a new institution—it’s ancient. We can say that fasting is the first commandment given to man. When the Lord commanded Adam to eat of every fruit of the Garden of Paradise save the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, He thereby established the first fast. Fasting is obedience to the Divine decree. God doesn’t need burnt offerings and blood sacrifices—He needs a heart that is broken and humbled (Ps. 50:19), that is, our repentance, humility, and obedience. We give up something (at least meat, milk, wine, and certain other foods) for the sake of obedience to Him. We offer the sacrifice of our abstinence, the restraint of our will.
Another meaning of fasting is cultivating the will and subjecting it to the spirit. By fasting, we teach the stomach who’s boss. It’s very difficult for a man who isn’t used to fasting to discipline himself, to curb the passions, to fight against them. A Christian is a warrior of Christ, and a good warrior is in constant combat readiness, constantly training and learning, keeping himself in shape.
There’s nothing random or meaningless in the Church. Those who don’t keep the fasts, those who are satiated will never know the real taste of food, this gift from God. Even a festive meal is something quite ordinary for non-fasting people, while for fasting people even a modest meal after a prolonged fast is a real feast.
Fasting is also extremely useful in the marital life. Spouses who are accustomed to abstinence during the fasts will never become satiated with their intimate relations; they’re always desirable to each other. And conversely, satiety leads either to mutual cooling or to excesses and artificial embellishments in their intimate life.
Drunkenness and Drug Addiction: Spiritual and Bodily Dependence
The manifestations of the passion of gluttony, of intemperance, are drunkenness, drug addiction, and smoking. These vices are very vivid examples of sinful, passionate dependence—not only spiritual, but painfully physical.
Wine is far from a safe thing, but Holy Scripture doesn’t treat it as something bad, sinful, or unclean. On the contrary, Christ blessed the marriage in Cana of Galilee, replenishing the depleted supply of wine by turning water into wine at the reception. The Lord Himself shared a friendly meal with the Apostles and His followers at which they consumed wine. The holy Prophet and Psalmist David sings: Wine maketh glad the heart of man (Ps. 103:16). But the Bible also gives a warning: And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess [debauchery] (Eph. 5:18).
Drunkards … shall [not] inherit the Kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:10). We’re given a warning: Wine contains a danger within itself. We mustn’t revel in it—we have to be careful and know our limit.
A man doesn’t become an alcoholic out of nowhere. Both alcohol and drugs are very simply ways to get instant joy and euphoria. And this ersatz happiness lasts as long as the alcohol or drugs are at work in the body. What a man wasn’t able to get in life, what requires a lot of effort, comes instantly. After all, it takes a lot of hard work to get real happiness.
It often happens that a man becomes an alcoholic or drug addict when things are going bad in his familial or personal life. Most teenage drug addicts didn’t get enough love in their family; many were like orphans with living parents, but a man can’t live without love—he suffers and looks for some kind of substitute, for a way to forget.
American researchers claim that one hundred percent of cases of drug addiction are associated with a sense of loss of the meaning of life. When asked if everything seems meaningless to them, one hundred percent of addicts answer in the affirmative. There’s a drug rehab center that uses logotherapy (through which patients found meaning in their life) and managed to achieve a forty percent recovery rate compared to eleven percent with traditional treatment methods. This is why the remission rate is so high in centers for alcohol and drug treatment affiliated with churches and monasteries. The suffering are shown the true meaning of life—in God, in faith, in working for the benefit of the Church and men. They repent of their sins (and without repentance it’s impossible to overcome passion), participate in the Sacraments, and pray together for healing.
If a family has such a problem and one member is sick with alcoholism or drug addiction, he can cope only with the support, help, and love of his loved ones. He should feel that he’s loved, that he’s not alone, that they’re fighting for him, and that they’re not indifferent to his troubles. The demons of alcoholism and addiction are very strong; they hold a man very tightly and have great power over him. It’s no coincidence that alcoholics and addicts even begin to see these dark entities in reality. The demons of drunkenness appear in the same form in all countries at all times.
This reminds me of one case. During perestroika, Church and community life began to rise somewhat, and Orthodox people started getting together in each other’s apartments for spiritual talks and fellowship. One of these meetings took place at the apartment of one religious woman. A group of parishioners and the priest came. Very modest and quiet, he said almost nothing, sitting quietly in the corner. This woman’s husband wasn’t a believer, but he was quite tolerant to these gatherings. Then he began asking the priest questions, expressing his doubts about the existence of the spiritual world. Batiushka listened silently, and then said just one phrase: “Tell me, please, why do alcoholics of all times and nations see demons the same way?” After that, the man didn’t pose any more questions, but spent the whole evening deep in thought. It seems he himself suffered from alcoholism. Why do alcoholics see demons? Fortunately, the world of spirits is closed to our eyes. Our earthly, bodily shell, the so-called coats of skin (Gen. 3:21), keeps us from seeing angels and demons. But sometimes people do see them. Quite often, this happens when the soul is ready to separate from the body. There are cases when sinners saw crowds of demons standing at their beds and stretching their claws out to them. A man suffering from alcoholism or addiction so thins his earthly shell, being practically in a near-death state, that he begins to see spiritual entities. And since he serves passions and sin, he naturally sees not angels of light, but quite the opposite. Therefore, a man who drinks often becomes an instrument in the hands of the devil. The majority of crimes, especially murders, are committed under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
But despite the strength of this passion and the power of the devil, there’s always hope. If a man sincerely wants to be delivered from addiction and fervently entreats God for healing, the Lord will certainly help. The trouble is that many people don’t have the determination to do it or simply don’t want to. We’ve already said that for all its torment, passion has a great sweetness for the man it possesses, and he doesn’t want to lose it. And often he begins to think about something only when he’s already reached the edge, his limit: Either the Lord visits him with a severe illness, or his family collapses, and so on. But by then it may already be too late.
A man who has started out on the path of healing and who wants to break with the passion of alcoholism must remember once and for all that even if he rids himself of this affliction, he won’t stop being sick, so to even touch vodka or wine is categorically forbidden to him. What’s permissible for an ordinary, healthy man—to have a good time with wine within moderation—is off limits for him. It’s not for nothing that people who go to Alcoholics Anonymous, even after they’ve completely given up drinking, still call themselves alcoholics. It’s impossible to be completely freed from drunkenness without giving up alcohol. There can be no compromise here. This demon is driven out only by fasting, that is, by complete abstinence.
Is it a Sin to Smoke Tobacco?
A few words about another addiction—smoking. Unfortunately, there are many who don’t consider smoking a dangerous or sinful habit. Drunkenness and drug addiction are one thing, but smoking’s nothing, they say. A priest’s duties include providing guidance and Communion to those dying at home and celebrating funeral services for the deceased in church. And I’d really like for those who take smoking so lightly to go with me at least once and talk to those unfortunate people who are dying from throat, lung, or liver cancer caused by tobacco addiction. And how many years of life did these sick people steal from themselves? Only the Lord knows.
One woman, who later died of throat cancer, went to our church. Even when she came to the early Liturgy, she couldn’t not smoke—she felt like she would die without it. And since she was already in a very bad condition, I basically had to let her take Communion. She died soon after. But even if a smoker can hold out and not smoke before Liturgy, how can you go inhale poisonous smoke so soon after receiving Communion?
When you talk to a heavy smoker, especially if he’s on an empty stomach, it’s hard to endure the smell coming from his mouth. That stale tobacco stench can only be compared to the smell of a decomposing corpse.
In some countries, the government is very concerned about citizen health. In these places they’re constantly raising the price on tobacco products; advertising tobacco is banned, and cigarette packs have lists of illnesses caused by smoking. In Australia, packs of cigarettes even have photos of organs affected by smoking-related diseases—lungs blackened by tar, for example.
I’m not saying all these horrible things to offend anyone. But maybe those who think they can be friends with tobacco will think about where this pastime can lead?
Every passion is very strong and sits not only in a man’s body, but also in his soul, in his mind. Many people who quit smoking a long time ago have told me that they often dream of enjoying taking a puff of a cigarette. That’s how deep a mark this vice leaves on the soul.
