Pints With Aquinas - AVOIDING Gluttony and Lust: 8 Evil Thoughts Episode 1 | Mthr Natalia

Episode Date: June 10, 2024

Mother continues her mini series on the eight evil thoughts discussing Gluttony and Lust. 🎧 Mother's Podcast: https://whatgodisnot.com/ 🖥️ Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ 🟢 Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/pintswithaquinas 👕 Merch: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com 🚫 FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/matt 🔵 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd We get a small kick back from affiliate links

Glory to Jesus Christ. I'm Mother Natalia, a Byzantine Catholic nun from Christ the Bridegroom Monastery, and this is Pines with Aquinas. Last week I introduced the concept of the eight evil thoughts which was brought about by Elagrius the Solitary and then developed by Cassian and St. Gregory the Great and then even Thomas Aquinas.

And then this week I wanted to start diving into the eight evil thoughts themselves. But I'll start by just admitting that this is actually a re-recording. I recorded this episode yesterday and after recording it I just was really convicted that I needed to change it and to try again, which I don't really have time for. So this is a great act of love for all of you. But the reason I was convicted that I needed to try again is, I feel like the first time I recorded, there was a lot of information about gluttony and lust, which are the evil thoughts that I'll go through today. But I want these episodes to be more than just information because I don't want it to be about having a list

that you follow or checking boxes. I really want to even more than go into the details about the eight evil thoughts, to just kind of start to go into them and to teach you to ask the right questions, to try to help you a little bit in your discernment of what are the areas that you need to be working on. But I will say that I can try to aid in that discernment, but you really need to be doing that discerning yourself and particularly with a spiritual director or at the very least with someone who is further along in the spiritual life than you, who you feel knows your heart well.

Because in part you might just be not seeing yourself clearly, not seeing your struggles, your addictions, your sins clearly, but also because even the ones that you are seeing, we can't change everything at once. And so maybe you're going to try to tackle all of the 80 well thoughts at once and change everything in your life and never eat anything again so that you're never gluttonous. But yeah, it's helpful to have someone to help you through that. So as an overview of gluttony, there are... So St. Dorotheus of Gaza lists two kinds of gluttony.

So there's the kind that most of us are familiar with, which is the overeating, right? Eating or drinking more than we need. And yeah, so that's one kind. That's the most obvious one. But then Dorotheus also mentions a second kind, which is being particular or preferential in what we eat, wanting to have certain foods or wanting to have delicacies.

St. John's Passion adds a third kind of gluttony, which is wanting to move the meal time earlier than it's set. And then St. Gregory the Great lists five kinds of gluttony, but the first one that he lists is that third one that John Cashin added in, and then the other four are just all from the categories that St. Dorotheus of Gaza lists. So they really can all be broken down into those three kinds. And just as a reminder to make sure I'm giving credit where it's due,

basically everything I'm sharing with you from about the 80 Well Thoughts I'm getting from Dr. Jean-Claude Larcher's therapy of spiritual illnesses, which is amazing and extremely expensive, so maybe you can't buy it, but if you can, I assure you it's worth the money. It's rocking my world. So St. Gregory the Great in talking about gluttony, he says, vice is not in food. Because again, you know, we've talked about this before. Everything God has created is good, right? Food is good. He said this very, very clearly to St. Peter. So vice is not in food,

but in how one partakes of it. This is why it is entirely possible to have fine meals without any sin, whereas it can be tainted with transgression to partake of more unrefined dishes. So, so the question that you should be asking yourself is what is your attitude towards eating and drinking? How attached are you to your food and, and drink? And, and I would say don't just assume you're not because we humans are just very good at self-deception. But really test that out. Allow yourself to not have some of what you want and see how you react to that. Don't just say, yeah, I would be fine without this thing. You know, I remember, oh, this was terrible. I remember a time that someone told me

they were giving up coffee for Lent. And I responded, oh, wow, I can never give up coffee. And as soon as that came out of my mouth, I was like, oh no, I have to give up coffee because it's not okay. It's not okay that there's anything that other than Jesus that I feel I cannot do without. And so I gave up coffee for a month anything that other than Jesus that I feel I cannot do without.

And so I gave up coffee for a month and I'm now back to drinking coffee, but I decided I'm going to not drink coffee for a month just to make sure I can actually do without it. So I would encourage you to do the same and maybe a couple like small ways to try this out, to practice your discipline here is a very simple one is don't snack before your meal time. So I don't even mean necessarily in between meals, but I mean, so I got into the really terrible habit of after Vespers, so we have about 20 or 30 minutes before dinner in our community. And so after Vespers, I would come to the monastery and then from the chapel. And then the first thing I would do is go to the cabinet and take out a snack and just

have a little snack to time you until dinner. But honestly, I could have waited another 20 or 30 minutes. And so this is something that I've tried to work on and I'm not perfect at it, but that's a simple thing that you can do. Or if another thought would be if you order something at a restaurant and they bring out the wrong food, so this is the gluttony, not of the overeating or the meal time, but of the preference in your food, if they bring you the wrong food, unless it's an allergy, I consider myself emotionally allergic to raw onions, unless it's an allergy,

maybe just eat the food and don't send it back and don't waste that food that they're just going to dump into the trash. So yeah, test out some of those things, some of those just plinth. test out some of those things, some of those just plinth. And to just remember, as I've been talking about, the passions are illnesses. The fathers refer to them as illnesses. And so, the question to ask is, are your habits of eating and drinking helping to heal you, or are they making you more ill? And I don't just mean in a bodily sense, right? I mean, are they drawing you towards God?

Are they fostering in you a gratitude to Him for the gift of this good food, of this nutrition? Or are they drawing you away from Him? Or are they drawing you away from him? Are they causing you to be more interested in the pleasure that you're receiving from eating and forgetful of him? So how can we be reminded of his presence in our eating and drinking?

I had thought of just a couple, yeah, a couple simple ideas here as well. One might be maybe until dinner time you don't eat after 3 p.m. Like don't snack after 3 because this is the hour of our Lord's death on the cross, His crucifixion, and so it could just be a reminder to you, oh, I'm not eating right now because I'm remembering the Lord's crucifixion. And so that can be a way to use food to tie your memory back to Him, to practice the presence of God. And also just the foods that are delicacies, the ones that you do particularly enjoy, maybe you reserve

those for Sundays to celebrate the resurrection or for feast days or your name day or things like that. And then the last thing I'll say about gluttony before moving on to lust is that the fathers talk pretty unanimously, I think, about how gluttony really opens the door to the other evil thoughts, to the other passion. Saint Isaac the Syrian has this great quote talking about the man who's been gluttonous. He says, He has lost half of his power with the result that one can say that before going to battle, he is subjugated without having, he is conquered by the relaxed will of the flesh without his enemy having put forth the slightest effort."

Because it's true, like, not just in the overeating, but even in the delicacies, in the indulgences, we can see our ability to fight off other passions really declined. If you're attentive to that, you know, there can be this slothfulness that comes about, or the contentment with the pleasures of the world that just doesn't build up in us a resilience to the other evil thought. I had a conversation with one of the other nuns maybe two years ago. So the Byzantine fast traditionally would be to not have meat or dairy and then some other things vary depending on the tradition but not have not have meat or

dairy for any of the fasting periods. So during Lent, the great fast, we don't have meat or dairy throughout the entirety of it. And then comes Bright Week, the week after Pascha, the week after Easter. And in that time, there's no fasting and there's just meat and cheese and all of the delicious things all week. And I had realized maybe by like Bright Wednesday, Bright Thursday, so halfway through the week,

we were all kind of like impatient with each other in community and getting snippy with each other. And I was like, is this just because we're spending so much more time together now or what's going on here? And I was talking with one of the other nuns because it was all of us just across the board. And I was talking with one of the other nuns and I was like, what do you think is going on? And she said, you know, I really think it's because we're eating such rich food. And I think that she was onto something there. And I think that the father there onto something here. And that doesn't mean that we never have those things. But I do think we need to be attentive to our charity or lack thereof to those around us and, and kind of, yeah, just see if we think

that what we're eating and drinking or whether we're exercising, things like that are affecting our charity or lack thereof towards others. So moving on to lust. I don't want to say a ton here because I think that lust is pretty frequently talked about in Christian circles today and there's a pretty fair understanding of it. But I will say a few things. So the Greek word used for this evil thought is actually pornea, which literally means prostitution. I don't actually know if that's how it's pronounced, but I, this is terrible. So my only knowledge of Greek lettering comes from the fact that I, so I studied engineering

physics in college and you use Greek letters for lots of things in physics. And so looking at the Greek letters, it looks to me like it says pornea, but I have no idea if that's how it's pronounced. Okay. So literally translated it's prostitution, but the fathers actually use this word to talk about all the different types of sexual desire. And so in English, it's usually translated into lust. And again, I don't feel the need to focus too much on this one, but what I will mention is that I think there's a misconception that, especially in Christian circles today, I think there's a misconception that lust is all about the externals. And if we just dress more modestly, then we'll defeat lust.

And if we, you know, remove, yeah, it's about the externals. And I don't mean to say that the externals are not important. I think that men and women need to be dressing with the knowledge of how their appearance is being perceived. And our mannerisms and all of that, there's a modesty to those things as well. So I'm not saying the externals are not important, but I don't think that it's the only part of lust and maybe not even the most important part. So I want to share kind of a longer quote here. And this is from Dr. L'Arche's book.

And it's a combination of, he's paraphrasing some different things from Saint Basil and Kyra, Basil the Great, and Saint John Chrysostom. And he says, he's talking about, and I think this is a pretty bold statement, but I like it a lot. So he's talking about how the goal, the goal of sexual union in a marriage being procreation, and then he follows it up with this.

Again, this is a longer quote, but bear with me. However, this end goal, procreation, as essential as it may be, is neither the only one nor the most important. In the human race, procreation can seem more like a natural result of sexual union rather than its very purpose. Sexual union is first of all one of the modes of union between man and woman. It is one of the manifestations of their mutual love and translates this love to a certain level of their being, that of the body. Love constitutes the first end goal of sexual union, as well as the many spiritual benefits

man can gain from within marriage in conjunction with the other modes of conjugal union. However, we must make clear that conjugal love is seen from the Christian perspective as the union of two persons, that is two beings thought of in their wholeness on the one hand and in their spiritual nature on the other, in Christ and with the kingdom in mind. A union sealed as to its nature and purpose by the grace of the Spirit, conferred in the sacrament of marriage." So I think this points out that, I think that a great problem with lust, the primary problem with lust is that it's actually a disintegration. It's separating out the soul and the body.

It's seeing somebody instead of someone. Because it's a lot more difficult, it's not impossible, but it's a lot more difficult to use someone, to grasp at someone when we're actually seeing the person. You know, this is a big problem, I think, with technology and with things like YouTube comments and social media and things like that is kids today, oh, I just really sounded like a grumpy old man, kids today, kids today though, are not being formed in the same way that we've been in the past of having to see the person that they're hurting.

Like I think there's something, you know, when I was a kid and I made a mean comment to someone, I then had to watch their face. I had to see the pain. I had to see them crumple. And that formed something in me, right? It's like, wow, I don't like having to see what I'm seeing right now. And it teaches me to have to deal with the consequences of my painful actions towards another. And you just don't have that same formation

when you post a nasty comment and you don't have to watch the person receive it. You don't have that same, that same formation when you can look at a person on a screen, when you can look at an avatar, because you're looking at, you're not seeing, you're looking at an object. And yeah, and I think that this is really where, where the problem of lust comes from, is it's separating out the person from their body and forgetting that they are body and soul. I really learned this in a way, this isn't about lust particularly,

but just again about this disintegration and this seeing people as opposed to objects. disintegration and this seeing people as opposed to objects. Several years ago, maybe, maybe four years ago, there was someone that I came across that I really felt the Lord just gave me the grace to, to see them, to see their heart. And, and I was just blown away by the beauty. and I was just blown away by the beauty. And I realized this terrible realization, scales fall from my eyes. And I realized that for most of my life up to that point,

I hadn't really been seeing people run. I had glimpses here and there, but I really was pretty objectifying, and which again was so painful and so convicting, but so good for me to realize because I could see that in most of my relationships, I was friends with people and the goodness of our friendship in my mind was and the goodness of our friendship in my mind was they laugh at my jokes and so I feel funny. They make me feel smart. They make me feel pretty. They, you know, whatever it is, it's about what I'm getting from them, what I'm taking from them, how it's building up myself, as opposed to seeing them as people, to seeing their goodness, their beauty.

And yeah, I think this is just a really common problem in our society. And I think that's my prayer for you all and for myself that we can learn to see people and not just look at them and to not just see objects. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. Thank you for the gift of the good use of technology. I pray that this episode may be for those who are listening, edification. I ask that you grant those listening a spirit of discernment that they may hold fast to

that which is true, and to discard anything else, to get rid of anything that's not from you. Please help those listening and myself to have a reverence for our bodies and the bodies of others. To be able to receive the gifts that you give us in food, in delights, in relationships with others, without objectifying ourselves or others. Help us to see others and to see ourselves

as whole beings, integrated beings. I ask all of this through the prayers of Saint John Chrysostom, Saint Maximus the Confessor, Saint Isaac the Syrian, Saint Nathaniel, Saint Thomas Aquinas, through the prayers of Evagrius and John Cashion, through Saint John Klimakos, and the Most Holy Theotokos and all the saints, through the prayers of our Holy Fathers,