As Eve twisted the apple from its stem, little did she grasp that she was also twisting the desires of her progeny for all time. By mingling good and evil, their desires would no longer be the North Star that God intended them to be. For He had willed that man, in pursuing those things that were truly good for him, would be rewarded with pleasure. Reason commanded the will towards the good and pleasure was its reward. Adam seized the reward instead by choosing that which was “pleasing to the eye and good for food,” Adam truly upset the apple cart. In choosing pleasure over reason, reason no longer ruled but instead wrestled with pleasure. In seemingly becoming “like unto the gods” he became like unto a beast.
God did not leave mankind unaware of its fundamental brokenness but instead left an orientation towards those things that are truly good for them intact. It became difficult, but not impossible. Generation after generation knew this and sought to root out vice and find fulfillment in virtue. But few of those generations have embraced this brokenness with such gusto as our own. Virtue is something to be signaled, not actually owned, and vice is to be rationalized away as, at worst, a “bad habit” akin to cracking your knuckles or clicking your tongue before you speak. If virtue is to be more than signaled, then we must restore a proper understanding of vice.
Following in the footsteps of the desert monks, St. Gregory the Great and St. Thomas Aquinas, Tradition has left us with Seven Deadly Vices. St. Thomas called them Capital Vices because these seven vices are usually the source or head of all of the sins we commit (see ST II-II, q.153, art.4). The reason why this is important is that these vices remain hidden to us as subconscious motivations for the sins we do commit. They cause us to steal pleasure where none should be found. Only once they are recognized can we restore pleasure to its rightful place as a side effect.
A Useless Vice?
One of these vices, gluttony, at least on the surface does not seem to be a big deal. How could a little overeating or carrying a little too much have anything to do with our spiritual life? But, as St. Gregory the Great said, “unless we first tame the enemy dwelling within us, namely our gluttonous appetite, we have not even stood up to engage in the spiritual combat.” His point is that gluttony is a gateway vice that, left unconquered, will most certainly lead to hell. It trains us in the practice of self-indulgence and causes us to more and more of it. Likewise, when we abandon reason when it comes to eating, we are almost certainly going to abandon it in other areas too.
Now I mentioned the connection between being fat and gluttony, but we would err greatly if we thought gluttony is all about whether we are fat or not. The skinny woman who drinks a six-pack of Coke Zero a day is likely to be far more gluttonous than the man whose six pack is buried beneath 25 pounds of fat. The latter might recognize that the purpose of eating is to provide nutrition while the former has no such awareness. She merely wants the pleasure of Coke without the caloric consequences. She is limited only by the amount of pleasure she craves, not by any bodily need or capacity. And herein lies the vice of gluttony: “the sin of gluttony is when the desire for such pleasures goes beyond the rule of reason. And so there is the saying that ‘gluttony is the intemperate desire to eat.’” (St. Thomas Aquinas, On Evil).
The problem is not the pleasure attached to eating—God has attached that pleasure to eating because eating fulfills our nature. Nor is it necessarily that we choose a food we like better than another to eat. Gluttony is deeper than that, it resides interiorly in that it is the pleasure, rather than the reason for eating, that drives us. Right reason says that food is necessary for humans in two ways: first as nutrition and second as a means of sharing life with others. Anytime we go beyond those reasons, we are operating under the vice of gluttony.
As proof that gluttony is more than just about girth, there are five ways in which it tends to manifest itself. These can be remembered by invoking the acronym FRESH—fastidiously, ravenously, exceedingly, sumptuously, and hastily.
In the Screwtape Letters, Wormwood complains to Screwtape about how useless gluttony is for capturing humans. Screwtape quickly corrects him and says that fastidious gluttons are often very easy to ensnare. The Fastidious Glutton is the one who suffers from the “‘All-I-want’ state of mind.” Its hiddenness makes it quite useful in capturing her in a diabolic net because she is so particular about her food and how it is prepared that she is miserably attached to the pleasure of eating foot that is “made your way.” The taste is all that matters for the fastidious glutton. The pleasure dominates her eating rather than coming as a side effect. It also makes all those who have the misfortune of eating with her or preparing her food positively miserable.
There is also the glutton who eats sumptuously. He is preoccupied with the pleasure of being full. He will only choose those foods which are substantial enough to leave him with the feeling of fullness. Reason should dictate when we have eaten enough to sustain ourselves and not the feeling of fullness. When we eat to be full, we are again chasing pleasure rather than being controlled by reason. Again there is no concern for what they are being filled with, only that they experience the pleasure of being full. This is, by the way, the reason the Church in her wisdom traditionally recommends fasting from sumptuous foods during Lent and restricting the menu to bread and vegetables instead.
The ravenous glutton is the one who must eat as much as they can, regardless of whether there is enough food for anyone else and how full they are. Their eyes might be bigger than their stomachs, but their stomachs will soon be bigger than their belts.
Similar to the ravenous glutton there is the glutton who eats hastily. This glutton treats his utensils like a shovel and must always have his mouth full without chewing or eating slow enough for digestion to occur. The glutton who eats excessively. He will eat past the point of fullness in order to indulge the tastes even if it leads to bloating and upset stomach later.
The Only True Antidote
The antidote ought to be obvious and something we have spoke about numerous times in the past—cultivating the virtue of fasting. There is one particular aspect of fasting however that bears mentioning and that is the Eucharistic Fast. We spoke of the reason for food and for eating being nutrition and sharing of life. But the reason from God’s perspective is more expansive than that. God gave us food as a sign of the only true Food that is the Bread of Life. Therefore, we should forego the sign for the reality.
The Church has us fast before receiving the Eucharist so that in experiencing bodily hunger we might recognize what that hunger actually points to. By receiving the Eucharist in a state of hunger, it is Real Food that nourishes us. To show us the truth of this, God gave a grace to the Saint of the Eucharist, St. Catherine of Siena by which she ate only the Eucharist for 7 years prior to her death. This miraculous sign enabled her to eat only the Bread of Life and to suffer no ill effects from what would otherwise be a severe fast. In order to truly hunger for the Eucharist then it becomes necessary to fast for more than just the obligatory hour before receiving. We may choose to do something similar to what the Church had previously held that you could not eat anything during a day until you had received the Eucharist that day.
In his book Victory Over Vice, Venerable Fulton Sheen says that Christ’s cry of “I thirst” was His definitive destruction of the power of gluttony to rule the lives of Christians. What better place then than the Mystical Foot of the Cross of the Eucharistic Sacrifice to receive those hard won graces to finally overcome the Gateway Vice of Gluttony.