Does the Bible Really Say That?: Discovering Catholic Teaching in Scripture (10 page)

CHAPTER 24

Gluttony

Remember that 1970s TV commercial for Alka-Seltzer? A visibly nauseous man groans, “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.” His wife chides him saying, “You ate it.”

That commercial can be a useful, if humorous, reminder of the dangers of overeating. Christians know eating or drinking to excess as
gluttony
. In addition to causing undesirable physical side effects, such as obesity, diseases and a dulling of the will and intellect, gluttony also causes negative spiritual side effects. This is why Pope Saint Gregory the Great called gluttony a “capital” sin, because it causes a variety of other sins to spring up in its wake.

Keep in mind that although we rightly associate gluttony specifically with immoderation in food and drink, it is a spiritual disorder that can apply to created things in general, not just food. When one excessively indulges the sensual appetite for any thing—food, wine, sex, entertainment—one becomes gluttonous. And while it is commonly understood that gluttony is not typically a mortal sin (though it is always at least a venial sin), it is especially dangerous because it is often the cause of other, worse sins.

Saint Thomas Aquinas taught that “Gluttony denotes, not any desire of eating and drinking, but an inordinate desire.” It arises from an “immoderate pleasure in eating and drinking.”
¹
This means that eating in itself is not the problem. We all have to eat to stay alive. Rather, it’s when we willfully give in to an inordinate or immoderate (i.e., excessive) appetite for food that we start entering the territory of sin.

Speaking about people whose focus is only on sensual, earthly pleasures, Saint Paul warned, “Brethren, join in imitating me, and mark those who so live as you have an example in us. For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction,
their god is the belly
, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things” (Philippians 3:17–19, emphasis added).

Saint Paul’s phrase, “their god is the belly,” is a vivid description of the fundamental problem with gluttony: It tends to make a created thing—in this case, food—into a god. And when this tendency becomes so entrenched, and when a person becomes so focused on the pleasure of eating food that it has become, in a sense, an object of lust for the appetite, then in truth one can become a slave to his or her senses.

Gluttony, one of the seven capital vices, has as its opposite temperance, which is one of the four cardinal virtues. The key is to realize that if you have a problem with gluttony, you can, with God’s grace, overcome it by cultivating the virtue of temperance, or moderation, in your eating and drinking. One Catholic writer explained moderation as “the righteous habit which makes a man govern his natural appetite for pleasures of the senses in accordance with the norm prescribed by reason.”
²

Scripture contains numerous warnings about the dangers of gluttony and immoderation as well as the beauty of temperance and self-control:

Sirach 37:27–31
  “My son, test your soul while you live; / see what is bad for it and do not give it that. / For not everything is good for every one, / and not every person enjoys everything. / Do not have an insatiable appetite for any luxury, / and do not give yourself up to food; / for overeating brings sickness, / and gluttony leads to nausea. / Many have died of gluttony, / but he who is careful to avoid it prolongs his life.”

Luke 21:34–35
  “But take heed to yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a snare; for it will come upon all who dwell upon the face of the whole earth.” The Greek word used here for “dissipation” is
kraipále
, which can be translated more literally as “surfeiting,” a fancy word for
“overdoing it” with food and drink. Christ teaches us here that people who are focused on sensuality will be unprepared for that sudden and unexpected moment when they die and stand before Christ the Judge to render to him an account of their lives (Matthew 25:31–46; Luke 12:16–20; Romans 14:12).

1 Corinthians 6:12–13, 19–20
  “‘All things are lawful for me,’ but not all things are helpful. ‘All things are lawful for me,’ but I will not be enslaved by anything. ‘Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food’—and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.... Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”

Romans 13:11–14
  “Besides this you know what hour it is, how it is full time now for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed; the night is far gone, the day is at hand. Let us then cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and
make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires
” (emphasis added).

Further Reading:
Deuteronomy 21:20; Proverbs 21:17; 23:19–21; 28:7; Matthew 11:19; Luke 7:34; Romans 12:1–2; Galatians 5:19–21; Titus 1:12

CCC,
1866, 2290, 2535

CHAPTER 25

Do Catholics “Keep Christ on the Cross”
?

Many non-Catholics have an aversion to crucifixes. While they have no problem with an “empty cross,” some (Protestants, for example) object to the crucifix because it depicts Christ dying on the cross. “Christ isn’t on the cross anymore,” they say. “He’s reigning gloriously in heaven. So why emphasize his death?” This is a reasonable question, and it deserves a reasonable answer.

Let’s start by recognizing that Catholics emphasize both the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, not minimizing or downplaying the importance of either. In our manger scenes, stained glass windows and statues, we also depict the Lord as a baby in the manger, as a toddler in his mother’s arms and as a young man teaching the rabbis in the temple. Each of these stages of the Lord’s life is worthy of depiction. But the
focal point and purpose
of Christ’s Incarnation and ministry is his death on the cross. As he himself said, “For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth” (John 18:37).

On his popular TV show,
Life Is Worth Living
, Archbishop Fulton Sheen summarized the reason for using a crucifix instead of an empty cross: “Keep your eyes on the crucifix, for Jesus without the cross is a man without a mission, and the cross without Jesus is a burden without a reliever.”

Isn’t it true that when you see an empty cross, your mind automatically “sees” Christ there? After all, we recognize that the cross only has meaning because Christ died on it for our salvation. Catholics use crucifixes to avoid what Saint Paul warned about—the cross being “emptied of its power” (1 Corinthians 1:17).

Christ’s supreme act was to die on the cross as atonement for our sins. His Resurrection was proof that what he did on the cross worked—he conquered death—and it demonstrated beyond any doubt that he was who he claimed to be: God. The Crucifixion was the act that changed history. The Resurrection demonstrated the efficacy of that act.

By his death on the cross, Christ conquered sin and death, redeemed the world, opened the way of salvation for all who would receive it and reconciled his people with the Father (Ephesians 2:13–18; Colossians 1:19–20). That is why the crucifix is such a potent reminder for us of what he did on our behalf that dark afternoon on Calvary.

“Jesus told his disciples, ‘If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me’” (Matthew 16:24; see Matthew 10:38). True, resurrection and glory await all those who follow Christ faithfully—but we will only arrive there by traveling the way of the cross.

Saint Paul emphasized the Crucifixion, saying, “When I came to you, brethren, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God in lofty words or wisdom.
For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified
” (1 Corinthians 2:1–2, emphasis added).

And in 1 Corinthians 1:18–24 Saint Paul said, “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.... [I]t pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom,
but we preach Christ crucified
, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (emphasis added).

In Galatians 6:14 he proclaimed: “But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”

And lest anyone imagine that the early Christians did not focus their minds on Christ’s death on the cross, consider what Saint Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:26, where he again emphasizes the Crucifixion: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”

Recall the scene of the Crucifixion: Some in the crowd present at Calvary shouted at Christ as he was dying,
“Come down off your cross!”
(see Matthew 27:40; Mark 15:30). What a strange and sad echo those words find today in objections to the crucifix as a reminder of Christ’s sacrifice.

We Catholics should strive to emulate Saint Paul’s resolution to “know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2; see 1 Corinthians 1:17–18).

One way to deepen your appreciation of what Christ did for you on the cross is to stand or kneel before a crucifix while prayerfully reading the Gospel accounts of the Passion. Ponder also these poignant words:

Victim of love, in manhood’s prime

            Thou wilt ascend the Cross to die:

Why hangs the Child before His time

            Stretched on that bed of agony?

‘No thorn-wreath crowns My boyish brow

            No scourge has dealt its cruel smart

In hands and feet no nail-prints show

            No spear is planted in My heart.

‘They have not set Me for a sign,

            Hung bare beneath the sunless sky,

Nor mixed the draught of gall and wine

            To mock My dying agony.

‘The livelong night, the livelong day,

            My child, I travail for thy good,

And for thy sake I hang alway

        Self-crucified upon the Rood.

‘To witness to the living Truth,

        To keep thee pure from sin’s alloy,

I cloud the sunshine of My youth;

        The Man must suffer in the Boy.

‘Visions of unrepented sin,

        The forfeit crown, the eternal loss,

Lie deep my sorrowing soul within,

            And nail My Body to the Cross.

‘The livelong night, the livelong day,

            A Child upon that Cross I rest;

All night I for My children pray,

            All day I woo them to My breast.

‘Long years of toil and pain are Mine,

            Ere I be lifted up to die,

Where cold the Paschal moonbeams shine

            At noon on darkened Calvary.

‘Then will the thorn-wreath pierce My brow,

        The nails will fix Me to the tree;

But I shall hang as I do now,

            Self-crucified for love of thee!’
¹

(Henry Nutcombe Oxenham, “The Child-Christ on the Cross” [1819–1888])

Further Reading:
Matthew 10:37–39; 27:37; Luke 23:38; John 3:1–4, 9 (compare with Numbers 21:8–9); 19:19; Romans 6:1–10; 1 Corinthians 1:10–13; Galatians 2:20; 3:1; 5:24, 6:14.

CCC,
421, 469, 550, 555, 618, 766, 921, 1182, 1375, 2427, 2543