Sermons & Letters 15

CHAPTER I. — When the Savior was instructing His disciples concerning the coming of the kingdom of God and the end of the times of the world, and was teaching His whole Church in the apostles, He said: Take heed, lest perhaps your hearts be weighed down with surfeiting and drunkenness and the cares of this life (Luke 21:34). This precept, dearly beloved, we recognize as pertaining more especially to us, to whom the day, though hidden, is not doubted to be near. For His coming it behooves every man to be prepared, lest He find anyone either given over to the belly or entangled in worldly cares.

For by daily experience, dearly beloved, it is proved that the keenness of the mind is blunted by satiety of the flesh, and the vigor of the heart is dulled by excess of food, so that the delight of eating becomes contrary even to the health of bodies, unless the reason of temperance resists the enticement and withdraws from pleasure what is to become a burden. For although the flesh desires nothing without the soul, and receives sensation from the same source whence it takes also its motion,

yet it belongs to the same soul to deny certain things to the substance subject to it, and by an interior judgment to bridle exterior things from unbecoming ones, so that, being often free from bodily desires, it may in the court of the mind have leisure for divine wisdom, where, with all the din of earthly cares silent, it may rejoice in holy meditations and in eternal delights. And although in this life this is difficult to maintain continuously, it can nevertheless be frequently undertaken, so that we may be occupied oftener and longer with spiritual things rather than carnal; and when we spend greater delays upon the better cares, even temporal actions may pass over into incorruptible riches. CHAPTER II.

— The usefulness of this observance, dearly beloved, is established especially in the ecclesiastical fasts, which, by the teaching of the Holy Spirit, are so distributed throughout the circuit of the whole year that the law of abstinence is prescribed for all seasons. For we celebrate the spring fast in Lent, the summer fast at Pentecost, the autumn fast in the seventh month, and the winter fast in this which is the tenth; understanding that nothing in the divine precepts is void, and that all the elements serve the word of God for our instruction, while through the very cardinal points of the world, as through the four Gospels, we unceasingly learn what we should both preach and do. For the prophet says: The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament announces the works of His hands;

day utters speech unto day, and night shows knowledge unto night (Ps. 19:1-2). What is there through which the truth does not speak to us? Its voices are heard by day, its voices by night; and the beauty of things founded by the workmanship of the one God does not cease to instill into the ears of the heart the master-principle of reason, so that the invisible things of God may be clearly seen and understood by the things that are made (Rom. 1:20), and that not the creatures but the Creator of all may be served. Since, therefore, all vices are destroyed through continence, and whatever avarice thirsts for, whatever pride aspires to, whatever luxury covets, is overcome by the solidity of this virtue,

who does not understand how much aid is conferred upon us through fasting? in which it is enjoined that we abstain not only from foods, but also from all carnal desires. Otherwise it is superfluous to take on hunger and not to lay aside an iniquitous will; to afflict oneself by cutting off food, and not to draw back from a sin conceived. It is a carnal, not a spiritual fast, where the body alone is not spared, and one persists in those things which are more harmful than all delights. What does it profit the soul to act as mistress outwardly, and inwardly to serve as a captive; to command its own members, and to lose the right of its own liberty? And deservedly it often suffers a rebelling handmaid, since it does not render to the Lord the service that is due.

Therefore, while the body fasts from food, let the mind fast from vices, and let it judge its earthly cares and cupidities by the law of its King. CHAPTER III. — Let it remember that the first love is owed to God, the second to the neighbor, and that all its affections must be directed by this rule; so that it may neither withdraw from the worship of the Lord, nor from the benefit of a fellow servant. But how is God worshipped, except that what pleases Him may please us also, and that our affection may never rebel against His command? For if we will this which He wills, from Him our weakness will take strength, from whom we have received the very will; for it is God, as the Apostle says, who works in us both to will and to accomplish, according to good will (Phil. 2:13).

And so a man will neither be puffed up by pride nor broken by despair, if he uses the goods divinely given for the glory of the Giver, and recalls his desires from those things which he knows will harm him. For, abstaining from the malignity of envy, from the dissoluteness of luxury, from the disturbance of anger, from the cupidity of vengeance, he will be purified by the sanctification of a true fast, and will be fed by the pleasure of incorruptible delights, so that through spiritual use he may know how to transfer even earthly abundance into heavenly substance—not by storing up for himself what he has received, but rather by multiplying more and more what he has given.

Wherefore with the affection of fatherly charity we admonish your love that you make the fast of the tenth month fruitful for yourselves by the bounty of almsgiving, rejoicing that through you the Lord feeds and clothes His poor—to whom indeed He could grant those very resources which He has conferred on you, were it not that in His ineffable mercy He wished both to justify them through the patience of toil, and you through the work of charity. Let us therefore fast on the fourth and sixth days of the week; and on the Sabbath let us keep vigil at the tomb of the most blessed Apostle Peter, who will deign by his prayers to assist our prayers, fastings, and almsgivings, our Lord Jesus Christ granting it, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.