Month: March 2019

Indeed, we have seen that in the passion of gluttony, man delights in food outside of God–he considers it in and of itself and uses it only for his own pleasure. Since food is a creation of God (either directly or indirectly) and a gift of God to men, it has no value by itself but only through God, and is meant to be consumed Eucharistically. Thus, St Paul teaches that God “created [it] to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.”

Man is healed of his passion and regains a virtuous attitude by the turning around of his attitude that led him to consider food in itself and have it serve his own pleasure to considering such food in God, linking it to Him and giving Him thanks for it. Thus St Paul advises: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

By consuming food in such a manner, man sanctifies it, and in it, the created cosmos which it represents. But above all, he simultaneously sanctifies himself, not only doing away with the barrier that gluttony erected between man and God, but also uniting himself all the more to God every time he gives Him thanks.

~Dr Jean-Claude Larchet (Therapy of Spiritual Illnesses, vol. 3, pp. 10-11)

…what man is potentially in his nature by grace, he must also become personally and actively by his free will in all his life and being. For, as St Gregory of Nyssa warns: “That which you all have not become, you are not.”

And St Diadochus of Photice spells out in detail that if the first of the gifts bestowed by the grace of baptism is the immediate restoration of the image of God, the second gift–the likeness of God–“requires our cooperation.”

~Dr Jean-Claude Larchet (Therapy of Spiritual Illnesses vol. 2, p. 57)

The pathological character of love of money and greed is likewise and consequently made manifest in the relationship of man to himself. Subject to these two passions, he lacks the most basic love with regard to himself; he prefers money and material riches to his own soul. Preoccupied with keeping the goods he possesses and acquiring new ones, he neither takes care for his soul, nor does he worry about his salvation.

St John Cassian says that he neglects “the image and likeness of God…which [he] should preserve without stain in himself” by worshiping God: “Indeed, one cannot love both one’s soul and money.” Occupied with increasing and maintaining material wealth, man cannot develop his spiritual potentialities and effect the blossoming of his nature, and thus he keeps himself enclosed within the limits of the fallen world.

Even though he believes that he truly enriches himself–that he gains his freedom and guarantees himself life in gathering treasures on earth, he alienates and pins down all his being and existence to this world and “the flesh”, “for where man’s treasure is, there his heart is also”.

…Above all, it takes the place of spiritual delights which are incomparably superior and alone capable of fully satisfying man, whom pleasure in the end deprives of eternal bliss. Thus it is clearly apparent that man in many ways becomes “his own enemy”, as St John Chrysostom says, through love of money and greed.

~Dr Jean-Claude Larchet (Therapy of Spiritual Illnesses, vol.1, p.174)

Where there is the love of God, “Christ is all and in all” and “there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free man” “neither male nor female.” On the contrary, where self-love reigns, there one sees only oppositions, divisions, rivalries, envy, jealousy, dissensions, enmity, quarrels, aggression, all manifestations which are the fruits of this passion, as are unsociability, injustice, the exploitation of others and even murders and wars.

Self-love appears then to be deeply pathogenic on many levels, and is considered by the Fathers–as much in its nature as in its effects–as the mark of a man who has become mad and as itself being mad and profoundly irrational.

~Dr Jean-Claude Larchet (Therapy of Spiritual Illnesses vol.1, pp.149-150)