Lent, Gluttony, and Lust

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

In this second half of the Great Fast, we hear messages reminding us of the effort we have been called to make. On the surface level, it sounds simple. It is a reminder of the three staples Jesus gives to his disciples in the sermon on the mount (Mt 6): give alms. Pray. Fast. For generations, the Church has handed these practices down to her children, in various ways and forms. The Church also knew of men and women very early on who wanted to devote the entirety of their lives to following Jesus’ way. Give alms. Pray, Fast. And to do these things 24/7. 

App-Based Spirituality

To give alms, pray, and fast  – these are ordinary activities. Today, anyone can give alms with the quick clicking of a touch-ID on their android or iphone. Anyone can pray, anywhere, at any time. And Orthodox no longer have a monopoly on fasting. Fasting has become popular, even gimmicky, for health reasons. Numerous Christians and religious organizations have rebooted fasting because they recognize its blessings. 

“We have failed”

Within the proliferation of almsgiving, prayer, and fasting is failure. We give alms, but child hunger persists in our own country while we delight in the deportation of migrants and refugees. We pray, but the powerful exploit the vulnerable one-hundredfold while the world witnesses to horrifying land-grabs and unjust and deadly wars. We fast, but we continue to live in societies where abundance is still not enough. There is no cap to wanting more of everything, and everything – literally everything and everyone – is commodified. 

Yes, I am playing the role of Lenten Debbie Downer.

We have failed. 

This message, that we have failed, is the message that the disciples of Jesus Christ need to hear in the second half of Lent. We can get perfect scores in our adherence to the ideals established by the Typikon and fall much harder and further than our ancestors. 

The Disciples’ Inability to cast out a demon

Put yourself in the shoes of Jesus’ disciples in the message from the Gospel of Mark read earlier today (Mk. 9:17-31). This man brings a child possessed by a demon so fierce that he physically crushes the child and makes him foam at the mouth. Jesus becomes frustrated by the disciples’ failure. He calls them out, referring to them as a “faithless generation,” and then tells them that these fierce spirits can only be cast out by prayer and fasting. 

Imagine how frustrated they must have felt – they had supposedly left and given up everything to learn at the feet of their rabbi and master, and they were still failing. 

So as we enter more deeply into the second half of Lent and you feel frustrated at your own failings, well, join the club. Maybe you had lamb chops and chicken wings at the buffet or forgot to say the prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian. Yeah, so what? Missing the mark on the surface-level details doesn’t get to the root of the problem. 

Our Demons: Wanting to Have It All

The root of the problem for all of us is the internal fight we are having with ourselves, the nonstop battle with our own demons that overwhelms and exhausts us. For some reason, we feel like we don’t have enough. Many of us have freezers and refrigerators full of food, and have the financial means to eat whatever we want, but we still find ourselves scrolling on Doordash and standing in the grocery store looking for more. We are looking for more, and we can get more – and we know we can. We can make a cheat day for ourselves, or maybe two cheat days. We can supersize our orders. We can say ‘yes’ to the popcorn and soda refills at the movie theater (Lenten if you go without butter, ya know). We can and do indulge the fire inside our hearts and souls that moves us to gluttony, and we can do so with perfect adherence to the letter of the Lenten law while violating its spirit. 

Lust, and Coveting Partner Upgrade

Lent brings up that other uncomfortable issue that no one likes to talk about – lust. Why is it that our eyes start to wander and entangle our imaginations so wildly during Lent? Why do we covet people we don’t even know whose appearances are so alluring? Why are we unsatisfied with what we have? Why aren’t single people okay with the single life? Why are married people tired of their spouses? Why are we bored with our friends and colleagues? Why are we constantly seeking upgrades on the people in our lives? The inner lust is not just about sexual passions – it’s about lust for stimulation of our senses. 

Anointing with Chrism: Seal of the Gift of the Holy Spirit

When we were baptized and anointed with Chrism, God put a mark of belonging on us.

It may be that we have indulged in gluttony and lust, and we might feel badly about it, and frustrated over our failures. Feeling badly about it does not make us bad. Far from it. We are not bad, and neither are people who make excuses for indulging openly in these behaviors. The source of these passions is the same for all of us. When we were baptized and anointed with Chrism, God put a mark of belonging on us – God marked us as citizens of his kingdom, as his sons and daughters – God marked us as his priests, prophets, and kings. This seal of belonging to God impels us to seek its completion, perfection, and fulfillment – and there is nothing in this world that can perfect our humanity and our experience of being humans, social humans who live in community (2 Cor. 1:22; Eph. 1:13-14). 

This desire is holy because God put it in us.

We need to eat to live. The human race will cease to exist if we don’t reproduce. The desire that fuels hunger and human companionship – it’s sacred. This desire for perfection, to really be the humans that God is calling us to become – his holy people, his royal priesthood, his fellow lovers of humankind – this desire is holy because God put it in us. We see a sign of godly desire when the sharing of food builds and sustains community. Abundance, eating until you’re full, is not bad when it is shared with others, especially those who do not have access to food abundance. Love, shared physically between a husband and a wife, becomes holy when that love is given and received. 

The use of food, commodities, and sex for hoarding, for manipulation, as a tool to rule over others, as a means of using others for your own pleasure – these lead to the kind of failure that fits this paradigm. Hungry people are neglected when we take food out of their mouths and use precious energy scheming up meal combinations we falsely believe will satisfy us. A sexual relationship with another person that is for short-term satisfaction and is not in a bonded communion where two lives are truly shared, carrying one another’s crosses – ultimately inflicts harm on the person who was coveted. And in the process, we who indulge these passions and allow the fire to burn in an uncontrollable rage – we essentially make ourselves into self-serving monsters, increasingly embittered because no amount of food consumption and sexual exploits can fill our hearts with love. 

The Secret Workshop of our Hearts

Many of our societal, even global catastrophes fall on us because we are so busy pursuing very short-term satisfaction through food and drink and sex AND power – lust for power is perhaps the most vicious of these demons! – that we neglect the vulnerable around us. Yes, they hunger for food and drink, and yes, they too desire the experience of the five loves of “what is your love language” – but we’re so busy, running to and fro with incredible energy in “the secret workshop of our hearts,” as St. Basil says, serving only our own needs, and forgetting that nothing of this world can complete God’s work in us – we forget the least of our brethren (Mt. 25:31-46). We forget and neglect hungry children; we forget and neglect refugees and immigrants; we forget and neglect the people in our midst fighting some pretty dark demons who would welcome a few minutes of our time – they are neglected and become victims of our insatiable appetite for completion that nothing of this world can deliver. 

So here we are, 2025, and Lent is moving quickly to its completion. We are failing and we have failed. So what, then – should we just quit? 

Fighting the Good Fight

No. God calls us to fight the good fight, to be like our father and patriarch Jacob who wrestled even with him, in our pursuit to become his holy people (Gen. 32). Take stock of your lives. Do you need four cokes a day? What can you do to live simply and share the stuff that just sits in your freezer with the hungry? Are you bored with your spouse and finding yourself wondering about someone else? Think about the best times you have had with your spouse, the most recent conversation that fired you up – engage them with a new energy, share the love God has put in you with them. Are you single, tired of scrolling through random faces on an app, and feeling sorry for yourself that God hasn’t waved his magical wand to find you a partner? Consider the people who are in your life now – do they love you? Could someone benefit from a few minutes of your time? Is being single killing you? 

Part of fighting the good fight is recognizing that God has already given us plenty, often more than we need, because our God shares his abundance with us. Another part of fighting the good fight is accepting that the fulfillment put into us, that we seek, comes only from God and cannot be found in the world. Our task is to take a vacation from the “secret workshop of our hearts,” that place where we devote all of our energy to figuring out how to get the things and the people and the prestige that will fill our hearts. That workshop leads to gluttony and lust.

To quote St. Pimen, “Blessed are you for having wept over yourself in this lower world.” We are indeed on the journey to receiving the promise of the resurrection, to meeting God for eternity – and that journey is quite bumpy and difficult.

If we really want to love ourselves – to do “self-love” in a Christian manner- let’s open our eyes, our hearts, and our lives to the least of the brethren in our midst and throughout the world. And let us share the abundance of the life God has given us with them – not for our glory, but to send glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Resources:

Saint Basil. Ascetical Works. Trans. Monica Wagner. The Fathers of the Church series, 9. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1962.

Stewart, Columba. Cassian the Monk. Oxford Studies in Historical Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Taft, Robert. “Lent: A Meditation.” In Beyond East and West: Problems in Liturgical Understanding, 2d rev. ed., 73-85. Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute, 2001.