Once upon a time, a marketing genius thought up a great slogan for Lay’s potato chips:
Betcha can’t eat just one.”
My waistline has testified to the truth of this for decades. They are right. I can’t.
My conversation partner for Lent, the great Desert Father Evagrius Ponticus, had the same insight back in the fourth century:
If you give yourself over to the desire for food, nothing will suffice to fulfill your pleasure, for the desire for food is a fire that ever takes in and is ever in flames.”
Or, in the style of a proverb,
A sufficient measure fills a vessel; a full stomach does not say ‘Enough!’”
FOOD AND LENT
In Lent, traditionally, the Church has drawn our attention quickly and directly to our relationship with food. Food can’t be the end of the discussion, of course. To be ready for the wonders of Christ’s saving work in the cross and resurrection we need to examine the whole of our lives.
But food is the classic place to start. The whole forty days in traditional Christianity is a time of fasting—not a complete renunciation of eating, of course, but a withdrawal from excess and luxury in food to give attention to prayer.
I am really not good at this at all. It is the potato chip problem.
Part of the problem is that food is not itself a luxury, but a necessity. The need for food is part of our created nature.
And clearly taking joy in food is part of noticing the goodness of God’s creation. As Calvin put it,
he meant not only to provide for necessity but also for delight and good cheer.”
But the fact that I cannot, for long, give up eating and continue to live serves to mask the real problem: the pleasure of food has a real power over me.
Freedom in Christ should lead me away from any slavery. I want what Paul described when he said
‘All things are lawful for me’, but not all things are beneficial. ‘All things are lawful for me’, but I will not be dominated by anything.” (1 Cor. 6:12 NRSV)
FOOD AND FREEDOM
Evagrius has a lovely image to describe his ideal relationship with food:
A docile horse, lean in body, never throws its rider, for the horse that is restrained yields to the bit and is compelled by the hand of the one holding the reins”.
Evagrius calls us to consider who is in charge of our lives.
- Are we the horse, being ridden by passions and desires of our bodies, including the need for food?
- Or is there a way for Christ to be the rider, our embodied lives, full of passions and desires, guided by his gentle reins?
Evagrius has a fully embodied faith. He does not set out to reshape our opinions on points of doctrine. He directs our attention to things that affect our bodies, knowing that this will influence our relationship with God and what we believe.
In his discussion of food, as in everything else, he attends to our “thoughts” as both cause and cure. He places our minds, the thinker of our thoughts, in the saddle.
FOOD AND PRAYER
And so, he suggests we develop a relation to food that sounds very much like a traditional Lenten fast. It is a purposive approach to food. And the purpose is not pleasure. The purpose is to be ready and attentive for prayer.
A stomach in want is prepared to spend vigils in prayers, but a full stomach induces a lengthy sleep.”
I can tell you that in the second half of this assertion Evagrius is spot on. In school, if I had a class at 1:00 or 1:30, lunch in my tummy made it very hard to stay awake. Or after the Thanksgiving feast, how many of us just roll off our chairs for a nap?
Evagrius wants us to limit our food so our bodies take notice. He doesn’t call us to starve. He wants us to be free to draw close to God.
————
I’d love to hear from you in the comments! How does your relationship with food affect your experience of Lent and your relationship with God?
————
If you enjoy looking for wisdom with Desert Fathers and other greats of the past, click here for my new FREE eBook Love Your Bible: Finding Your Way to the Presence of God with a 12th Century Monk!
Hi Gary — wonderful reflection on Evagrius on food. It is a needed word in a time when I think we have lost the connection between food and our faith. It’s interesting that the “original” sin actually had to do with food! I have found Alexander Schmemann’s “For the of the World” especially helpful in thinking about the role of food in our spiritual lives. Given that Jesus became human, it makes sense that food & our bodies compose significant parts of our “spiritual” lives. Additionally, reading the church fathers (and Scripture), with attention towards food and our appetites, you start to discover our fore fathers and mothers had a much deeper understanding of the relation between our physical appetites and our spiritual appetites, and the deep connections between the two. Blessings to you, my friend.
Thanks so much Dave. Your comments are spot on–just slightly ahead of my posts! So glad you are a reader of Schmemann.
Very nice. Thank you. I especially liked this:
“But the fact that I cannot, for long, give up eating and continue to live serves to mask the real problem: the pleasure of food has a real power over me. Freedom in Christ should lead me away from any slavery.”
Of course, there are days, in the traditional Lenten fast, that a complete renunciation of food *is* called for!
Thanks Fr. Dustin.
Yes but it is, as you say, “days”. I can avoid eating for a while, but not forever. The Church wisely does not insist that people complely renounce of food for the whole of Lent, even while reminding us of the biblical 40 day fasts. And room seem to be made for people with health issues.
There is, in our culture, much danger afoot in relation to food and fasting–we are prone to excess rather than balance both in eating (see the tragic obesity rates) and renunciation (see the tragic incidence of anorexia). Both are deadly.
LOL…true, a complete renunciation of food is not called for, for the entirety of Lent! In fact, to be fair, it is usually only monastics who fast completely from food on certain days. After all, the rest of us still need our strength to work and take care of our families!
On a side note – but somewhat related – I would like to recommend a book to you and your readers. It is, Brokenness and Blessing: Towards a Biblical Spirituality by Frances M. Young (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007). Chapter 1 is called the Desert Experience and I believe that Young wonderfully explains Lent, and fasting, in relation to the over all experience of Scripture. You may find it interesting, and, hopefully, nourishing (pun intended?).