On Gluttony and Drunkenness

-St. Basil the Great

The Christian life is uniform, beloved! It has one single aim: the glory of God. “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor 10:31), says Paul, speaking in Christ. The life of worldly people, on the contrary, is manifold and varied, changing countless times to suit the occasion. But if we too become subject to the same, and to the best of our ability seek only what serves our whims and present ourselves as such, I fear that in reality we may be found building what we are destroying, and that by the very thing in which we condemn others we may condemn ourselves: living a hypocritical life, always putting on a different mask—except perhaps that we do not change our clothes when we find ourselves among the proud.

If even that is shameful, how much more shameful is it to alter our table for the sake of sensuality! When, wishing to please your brother, you change the table by offering a multitude of varied dishes, you actually condemn him for gluttony and pour reproach upon him for belly-madness, exposing his sensuality by the very preparations you have made. For what fellowship have we with a profusion of dishes? Has a guest arrived? If he is your brother and shares the same purpose in life, he will recognise his own table in yours. What he left at home he will find with us. Is he weary from the journey? We give him only as much as is sufficient to relieve his fatigue. Has someone come from a worldly life? Let him learn by our deeds what words could not teach him, and let him receive an example of contentment in food. Let the memory of a Christian table and of unashamed poverty for Christ’s sake remain with him. If he pays no heed to this but rather mocks it, he will not trouble us a second time.

To go about seeking and enquiring after things invented not for necessary use but for wretched sensuality and ruinous vainglory is not only shameful and contrary to the goal set before us, but also does great harm: when those who live in luxury and place their whole happiness in filling their belly see that we too are distracted by the same cares that occupy their own minds. Even when we take food, our mind must not be idle from meditation upon God; rather, the very nature of the food and the structure of the body that receives it should become an occasion for glorifying God, because the different kinds of food suited to our bodily nature have been wisely devised by Him who governs all things. Let one single hour be appointed for eating, and even that hour so brief that out of the twenty-four hours that make a day scarcely one is spent on the body. In the remaining hours the ascetic must labour at things that pertain to the mind.

Whoever accepts this excellent counsel will turn all his effort toward the soul, keeping it pure and sincere. As for the body—whether it is worn down by hunger, struggles with cold or heat, is seized by sickness, or suffers violence from someone—he will give it little care; even if he sees his life in danger, he will not be afraid. But if someone wishes to spare the body as something acquired solely for the soul’s need and as a helper for life on earth, even then he ought not to be greatly concerned with pleasing it, but only to preserve it with moderate care for the sake of the soul’s service, keeping it healthy—yet never allowing it to grow wanton from over-feeding. In this way he will make it obedient to himself, light for the journey to heaven, and above all capable of fulfilling its duty.

On the contrary, whoever daily allows his body to gorge itself like an untamed beast will at last lie useless upon the ground, weighed down by the heaviness of the flesh and sighing in vain. And when he is brought before the Master and, after examination, is unable to render the fruit of what he has done in this life, he will weep bitterly and be cast into outer darkness, ever turning his reproach upon the desires and deceits that robbed him of the time of salvation—yet his tears will profit him nothing. “For in hell who shall confess to Thee?” (Ps 6:6), says David to the Lord.

The belly is treacherous in its agreements, an unreliable storehouse: if you put much into it, it keeps only harm and does not preserve what was entrusted. Thus all that we have devised for food and drink—all the wealth spent beyond need to gratify an ungrateful belly that retains nothing—when will it ever be truly ours, even if the belly is filled without ceasing? All of it, which at the moment of tasting gives us a brief sweetness, we soon expel with care, as though resenting the excess; for if food remains long in the belly we feel great danger to life. Over-eating has caused death to many and has been the reason they tasted nothing more. The power that sustains the living creature can easily digest moderate food and turn it into the substance of the body it nourishes, but when it cannot bring a multitude of dishes to that end, it produces many kinds of disease. Satiety is the beginning of madness, for luxury, drunkenness, and excessive eating quickly give rise to every form of bestial incontinence. From this men become like frenzied horses because of the madness that sensuality has wrought in their souls.

Therefore, O man! Do not weaken your body with excess of sleep, baths, and soft beds, keeping ever in mind the prophet’s words: “What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the pit?” (Ps 29:10). Why do you guard what must soon perish? Why do you stuff and fatten yourself? Do you not know that the fatter you make your body, the heavier a prison you prepare for your soul? Great bodily strength is an obstacle to the soul’s salvation. The belly must be served only for need, not for pleasure—as do those who seek table-preparers and cooks, scouring land and sea as though paying tribute to some cruel master. For this reason they are wretched because of their cares, suffering no less than those tormented in hell, feeling no consolation—who quench fire, draw water with a sieve, and try to fill a leaky barrel with water, yet see no end to their labours.

Just as thirst makes drink sweet and preceding hunger makes a meal pleasant, so the eating of food is sweetened by fasting. For when fasting is set in the midst and puts an end to constant satiety, the taste of food long denied becomes delightful. Therefore, if you wish to prepare a table that is truly desirable to you, give it variety through fasting. But you who always eat sweet foods imperceptibly make them tasteless and destroy their sweetness by excessive craving. For there is nothing so desirable that continual enjoyment does not breed disgust; what comes rarely brings the greater delight.

For this reason the prophet laments those who, at the break of day, search out where they may find a feast, who go about taverns and drinking-houses, urging one another to drink, spending all their soul’s care on this alone. Their eyes have no time to look up to heaven and behold its beauty; as soon as day begins they adorn their banquets, showing zeal and diligence in preparing cups, arranging vessels for cooling wine, goblets and chalices as though on some stage or marketplace, so that the variety of vessels may satisfy their insatiableness and the changing and exchanging of cups may prolong their drinking sufficiently. Order is invented in disorder, arrangement in absurdity. From this arise disputes about drinking more abundantly, quarrels and fights when they try to outdo one another in drunkenness. The devil is their contest-master, and sin is the prize of victory. Whoever drinks the most wine gains the victory over the other. They contend with one another and avenge themselves upon themselves. Everything is filled with madness, everything with confusion: the defeated drink on, the victors get drunk, the servants mock. The hand grows weary, the mouth refuses more, the belly is bursting—yet the evil does not diminish. Wretched body, loosened from its natural strength, is flooded because of immoderate drinking and cannot bear the violence done to it.

Pitiful spectacle! A young man in the flower of age, strong in body, distinguished in military rank, is carried home by strangers’ hands, unable to stand; he does not walk on his own feet. A man who ought to be feared by enemies becomes a laughing-stock for children in the marketplace. He is felled without weapons, killed without enemies. A warrior in the prime of youth is worn out by wine and ready to suffer from enemies whatever they wish. Who is responsible for these evils? Who invented them? You have made your banquet a defeat; you have destroyed the flower of youth with wine. You invite him to supper as a friend and cast him out dead, having taken his life with wine.

In what, then, O man, do you differ from irrational animals? In the gift of reason, by which, having received it from your Creator, you were made lord and master of all creation? But whoever deprives himself of reason through drunkenness “is likened unto the beasts that have no understanding and is made like unto them” (Ps 48:13). Nay, I would call even the beasts themselves less senseless than those who remain in drunkenness; for all quadrupeds and known wild animals have fixed seasons for mating, whereas those whose soul is overcome by drunkenness and whose body is filled with unnatural heat are aroused at every hour to unclean and shameful unions.

Just as water is contrary to fire, so immoderate drunkenness destroys reason. What animal is so weakened in sight and hearing as the drunkard? Do drunkards recognise their own? Do they not often go to strangers as though to their own? Do they not frequently leap over shadows as though over ditches and ravines? Their hearing is filled with a roaring and crashing like the surging sea; the earth seems to them to spin, the mountains to whirl. Their sleep is heavy, unbearable, threatening strangulation—truly neighbour to death; their waking is more insensible than sleep itself. Sleeplessness fills their whole life: though they have neither garment nor food for the morrow, they reign as kings, command armies, build cities in their drunkenness, and distribute great sums of money.

What are you doing, O man? A slave flees from a master who beats him, yet you remain constantly with wine that ever strikes your head.

The best measure in the use of wine is bodily need. But when you transgress that limit, tomorrow you will come heavy-headed, belching, sick with headache, breathing out the stench of rotted wine; everything will seem to whirl and turn about you. When the membranes of the brain are filled with the smoke that rising wine exhales, the head both feels unbearable pain and, unable to stay upright upon the shoulders, sways and totters this way and that.

Intemperance in lusts clearly springs from wine as from some fountain, and together with it enters shamelessness—a disease that drunkards inflict upon the female sex more savagely than any madness of irrational beasts. For beasts know the limits of nature, but drunkards in the male sex seek what is female, and in the female what is male. Therefore drunkards, having destroyed their soul and been wounded by every kind of defilement, corrupt even the very composition of their body: not only do they waste and ruin themselves by the excess of lust that inflames them to fornication, but by the very weight they carry a rotten, stinking body deprived of life. Their eyes are bleary, their complexion pallid, their breath laboured, their tongue slack, their voice unclear, their legs unsteady like an infant’s; vomit flows from excess as from lifeless things. They are pitiable for their lust, and even more pitiable than those tossed in the deep who, when waves clash with waves and submerge them, are not permitted to escape the storm. Even storm-tossed ships, when overloaded, are lightened by necessity through casting out cargo; so too these men must vomit forth their burden. By spewing and retching they barely free themselves from the weight—thus far more wretched than sailors, for sailors blame winds, sea, and external obstacles, whereas these voluntarily draw upon themselves the storm of drunkenness.

The demon-possessed is worthy of pity, but the drunkard, suffering the same affliction yet wrestling with a self-chosen demon, deserves no pity. They even concoct certain remedies against drunkenness—not to avoid any harm from wine, but to be able to keep drinking without cease. And there is no end to this evil, for wine of itself stretches toward more. It does not relieve need but introduces an unavoidable demand for yet more drink, inflaming drunkards and ever drawing them to desire greater quantities. Just as clefts in the earth seem filled while streams flow into them but remain dry once the flood has passed, so the mouths of drunkards appear somehow full and moist while wine is poured in, yet a short time later become dry again.

In every way, therefore, we must abstain from whatever disturbs the mind. For when much wine is poured in, it enters like a tyrant who has stormed a city’s fortress and, sparing no unlawful command, raises uncontrollable tumults in the soul from its very summit. First, having subdued the reason, it overturns and casts down the whole order instilled by teaching; it arouses senseless laughter, a rebellious voice, insolent fury, unbridled desires, lust, and frenzy for every kind of unlawful pleasure. Therefore it is said: “Let not the strong drink wine” (cf. Prov 20:1, 31:4–5)—that is, neither those entrusted with any authority or governance of the people, nor those who arey are strong in body because of youthful age. For such men are by nature inclined to anger; and when wine further inflames them, they redouble the burning fuel and raise a yet greater flame.

A ship excessively overloaded is heavy and easily perishes; in the same way, bodies that overburden themselves beyond measure with luxurious foods for the sake of pleasure sink in the abyss of destruction. Why then, O man, do you draw Cain’s curse upon yourself, trembling and shaking throughout your whole life? A body that has lost its natural strength of necessity quakes and trembles. How long will your drunkenness continue? Beware lest you turn from a man into stinking filth; you have so mingled yourself with wine and rotted with it through daily drunkenness, reeking of wine—corrupt wine—like the most worthless of vessels.

If drunkards will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:10), do you, drunkard that you are, imagine that approaching a fast will bring you any benefit? Drunkenness deprives you of the heavenly kingdom—what fruit, then, can fasting bear for you? Do you not see that the most skilful horsemen, when the time of the race draws near, prepare their horses by withholding food? Yet you deliberately weigh yourself down with satiety; and a belly burdened with food is fit neither for running nor even for sleep, for abundant food allows no rest but forces the sleeper to turn now to the right side, now to the left.

Do not, therefore, let drunkenness be your guide to fasting. Through drunkenness there is no entrance to fasting; one cannot approach righteousness with the aid of deceit, nor purity by intemperance; nor, to say it briefly, virtue through vice. Drunkenness leads to intemperance, while fasting is reached by modest sufficiency. The athlete sharpens himself before the contest, and he who wishes to fast prepares himself by abstinence. So that you may not become an avenger of fasting or one who deceives the Lawgiver, at least for these five days abandon drunkenness. In vain do you labour when you afflict the body yet give the soul no consolation for its hunger. Drunkenness does not receive the Lord; it drives away the Holy Spirit. Smoke drives away bees, and drunkenness disperses the gifts of the Spirit.

Therefore, that we may not suffer this, let us cease serving the ungrateful belly, that we may be accounted worthy of eternal blessings in Christ Jesus our Lord, with whom to the Father, together with the Holy Spirit, be glory, honour, dominion, and majesty, now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.