Becoming a Community of Disciples

Chapter 6: Spiritual Teachings – Virtues and Discipline

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primal disobedience happened to man from no other source than through self-indulgence (cf. Gen 3:6). 11 Indeed, the whole life of the saints and of the Lord himself while placed here in the flesh, what else do they put before us than examples of self-control? 12 Moses is said to have persevered without slackening in continual fasting and prayer before God for forty days and to have merited to hand down to the human race the aid of the Law (cf. Deut 25:33). 13 Elijah too is said to have been counted worthy of the vision of God when he himself continued for a like space of time abstaining from food (cf. 1 Kings 19:8). 14 And the merit of Daniel and the three youths before God, when they gained the victory over all their enemies and over the tyrant himself, it came from no other source than self-control (cf. Dan 1:6–16; 3:24–28). 15 Why, John’s entire way of life was self-control (cf. Matt 3:4). And it was by this means that the Lord too disclosed the first beginnings of his manifestation (Matt 4:2). 16 Yet by self-control we do not mean complete abstinence from food—this would indeed be the violent dissolution of life— 17 but that self- control which is consistent with the necessary but not superfluous sustenance of life, when we avoid what is gratifying and fulfill solely what necessity requires for the body. 18 In sum then: abstinence from all that is demanded by passionate desire is the virtue of self-control. 19 And so virtue therefore is disclosed not only in regard to the pleasure of food, but also when we abstain from all those things in which we may take delight but by which we are wounded in soul.