GLUTTONY

Swinish gluttony never looks to heaven amidst its gorgeous feast, but with besotted, base ingratitude, cravens and blasphemes his feeder. - John Milton

Gluttony is the excessive love of pleasure. Gluttony is characterized by disordered priorities, lack of discipline, the abuse of material things.

Far from the jolly caricature of the glutton, a person driven by the effects of this sin seem weakened, hunted, as if something were eating them. The deprivation is self generated, for gluttony is a failure of gratitude for health, for the blessings of God, and a failure of dependance upon God.

Gluttony implies a denial of awareness of the harmful effects of overindulgence upon the material needs of other people. Thomas Aquinas said, "We regard an appetite as immoderate when it departs from the reasonable order of life in which moral good is found." Gluttony is beyond the reasonable. If something is good, more of it must be better!

Gluttony demands immediate gratification. Temperance, though gratification is delayed, ensures the pacing necessary to appreciate nature's offer of abundant sensuality.

Help me hunger and thirst after righteousness for in thee I shall be satisfied.