Fr. Nick writes:
“You cannot serve God and mammon. ”
While our faith tells us that God is to take the first place in our lives, we know by experience that many things compete with God for that top spot. “Mammon” rears its ugly head only too often in the form of many idols: wealth, honor, pleasure, reputation, career, comfort, and convenience lure even committed Christians to worship at their altars.
In short, when we serve mammon, created goods dominate over the one Uncreated Good.
How do we turn the tables on mammon, so that God can be returned to His rightful place as the One whom we love above everyone and everything else?
This is where the virtue of Temperance can help us out. The Catechism gives a nice definition of this virtue: “Temperance is the moral virtue that moderates the attraction of pleasures and provides balance in the use of created goods” (CCC 1809).
In other words, the temperate person uses the goods of this world; he does not abuse them. He makes use of mammon; he does not serve it. As human beings with physical bodies and senses, we have to make use of created things. But what is so important—and few people truly grasp this—is that to use created goods too much or too little actually stunts our spiritual growth.
To give in to every whim of our desires, our stomachs, or our trivial wants is not just a recipe for selfishness. To do this consistently actually removes us from communion with God. Does God not want us to enjoy things or be happy? Certainly not. But when we are so busy indulging our carnal senses or our desire for pleasure, we begin to notice that our spiritual senses go to sleep.
Take the example of Thanksgiving Day in the USA (the holiday where temperance seems to go out the window): This day is often an excuse to overeat to extremes, to lounge around trying to digest it all, and then to come back for dessert later on. Personally, I have never felt ready for any activity requiring higher intellectual function—let alone meditative prayer or an act of charity—after a meal like this. One holiday is one thing. Making a habit of this kind of indulgence forms another counteractive spiritual habit: one of not pondering spiritual things, of not making time for prayer to God, of not carrying out works of charity.
Eating is not the only function that temperance influences. We also must exercise temperance in our shopping, the way we spend money, in internet use, in exercise, in work, in speech. Too much or too little in these areas can harmfully impact our lives and the lives of others. It is worth mentioning here, too, that there is a direct connection between the virtue of temperance and the virtue of chastity. The temperate person is also the chaste person.
When we’re so tied up in these “lower” goods (as necessary as they are at times), we begin to get spiritual tunnel vision. We lose sight of the bigger picture. We lose sight of who we are in God’s sight. We lose sight of His plan and His will. We lose sight of the truth about what it means to live the Christian life, a life of love of God and neighbor above all else.
St. Paul had some strong words for those who served only their selfish, carnal desires:
“For many, as I have often told you and now tell you even through tears, conduct themselves as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is their destruction. Their god is their stomach; their glory is in their shame. Their minds are occupied with earthly things” ”
For the Christian, the measure of a good life is not “whatever I want”; the standard is always the cross. Taking up our cross, as the Lord commands us to do, requires sacrifice, giving things up (even good things), loving even when it causes us pain and discomfort. The virtue of temperance helps us to keep this end in mind, to always keep an eternal perspective, not just an earthly one.
Conforming our lives to the crucified Christ is also why the spiritual tradition has always seen a value in doing penance and mortification. Penance (doing an act that causes us discomfort) and mortification (denying ourselves something good) out of love for God and in atonement for our sins is a beautiful way to practice temperance.
It is a way, as Edward Sri writes, to root out the “I want it now!” voice in each of us. We might consider taking Fridays as a day of abstaining from meat; we might fast from one, two, or three meals on a day; we might deny ourselves the pleasure of having cream or sugar in our coffee for a week; we might take a cold shower one day a week; or we may make a firm resolution to smile every day at someone who bothers us.
We must always keep in mind that these kinds of acts are meant to put us in union with God, to increase our love for Him, for His will and not our own. Temperance is not a matter of “spiritual athletics.” We are not trying to pad our spiritual resume. We exercise temperance in the body so that we can see more clearly with the eyes of the heart. When we have our spiritual eyes purified, we will see (as the Beatitude says) God Himself. And when we are able to see God as He reveals Himself to us, we will have perfected “the art of living.”
Reading plan:
Monday, February 6 – Friday, February 10 – Temperance
Monday, February 13 – Friday, February 17 - Justice