Over and Above All Things
February 25, 2025
Over and Above All Things
Hello! How is each and every one? Gee whiz! Time is running! Or is it we, who are running fast? The safe measure? Run at God’s pace. As He leads us, let us follow Him. Time is His and so are we. Any doubts about that? Are you God’s? Is your life, His? “What do you have that you have not received?” (1 Cor 4:7).
Now let us proceed with the 2nd part of the chapter we have started on our divine longing for well-being (From Broken Gods, Hope, Healing, and the Seven Longings of the Human Heart, Gregory K. Popcak, Ph. D. Ch 9). Let us learn lessons for our own personal situation and make the effort to go and grow in the right direction in life.
Gluttony Part II: Preciousness
Eating well is a good thing. No one disputes that good nutrition is important to our well-being. We must be intentional about what we put into our bodies. In fact, just as many disorders can be caused by poor eating habits, many health problems can be greatly improved or even eliminated altogether by eating properly. People with health problems are to be lauded if they seek the counsel of their physician or certified dietician to figure out how they can eat in a manner that can aid in their recovery.
But those people are a relatively small bunch. A much larger group of people, after reading an article or consulting Dr. Google one lazy evening in front of the computer, decide that all the problems in their life can be attributed to eating X. Or sometimes, X, Y, Z, P, D, and Q. If they could only eradicate all of these items from their diet, they would be saved. St. Thomas Aquinas referred to the tendency to be too particular about what one eats as studiose, or, in English, “preciousness,” and he considered it a type of gluttony.
Individuals who are too careful about what they eat mean well, and their intentions are very, very good. But without realizing it, they fall into the same error as those who are overindulgent. Rather than looking into the imbalance in their life that might be causing the problems from which they seek relief, they want a back door that will relive their pain. Looking for that secret health hack, they fall prey to the same belief that those guilty of overindulgence have: that salvation can come through the body.
I am now reminded of someone I know who feels deprived of many
things for several years due to circumstances beyond her control. Now that she seems free from those
circumstances, she keeps saying she is doing things out of revenge. I searched the difference between avenge and
revenge. “Avenge is a verb that
means to punish someone for a wrong, while revenge is a noun or verb that means
to harm someone in retaliation.” The
question in my mind is when one is in revenge, who is she harming in
retaliation?
And so, rather than just being intentional about what they eat, they make eating carefully a quasi-religion. Such well-meaning individuals may spend hours contemplating in the temples we know a health food and supplement store. They religiously engage in sacred reading, carefully studying health books and periodicals. They seek out experts and gurus with questionable credentials who preach a gospel of long life, health, and happiness through deprivation. The popular catechist Fr. Robert Barron, remarking on this phenomenon, noted that, in his opinion, all the Puritans, with their belief in radical self-denial, grew up to become editors of health food and exercise magazines (Barron, 2007).
The problem, ironically, is that all this deprivation is so self-indulgent. Not only can it lead us into mindlessly ignoring other very real problems that require attention in our lives; it can also put up serious obstacles to relationship as people refuse to go to other people’s homes because of what they might be tempted to eat or, alternatively, if they go out to a restaurant, they torment the poor waitress and kitchen staff and draw undue attention themselves with a laundry list of special needs. Sometimes this cult of body worship can be offensive to relationship in more serious ways, as when health and fitness guru Jillian Michaels said that she would never get pregnant because, as she put it, “I can’t handle doing that to my body” (Huffington Post, 2010). Our fascination with external appearance has made us a nation of people who are so dedicated to the cult of the body that they have forgotten that God intends the human body to be a visible sign of the love we were created to be and to give.
It would be good to chart a daily, weekly, monthly and even a yearly plan of life to find Christ, to seek Christ and to love Christ in your given situation. Adapt the plan to your personal needs, relationships and activities. Find time to talk to God and to listen to Him.
Francis came to counseling with a host of professional and personal issues. An attorney in group practice, he was “encouraged” to seek help by his partners. Colleagues said that Francis was insufferable in the break room because of his constant lecturing of staff about the various ways their lunches were poisoning their bodies. He would even criticize clients’ eating habits, which led to several complaints to the senior partners in his firm.
Francis’s marriage was also a shambles. He was so particular about his meals that his wife gave up trying to cook for him, and he rarely ate with the family, preferring to eat his own meals that he specially prepared for himself, or get takeout from a local restaurant that had items he would eat. Because of this, he often got home after the children were in bed. Because he was also training for a marathon, he spent a great deal of time on the weekends doing practice runs. All of this prevented him from having much of a relationship with his children at all. His wife often complained about being a single mother, and his children were suffering because of his absence.
Francis admitted to a counselor that he was very anxious, “high-strung” as he put it, and that he tended to react very strongly to even the smallest frustrations. He said that the other day, when his secretary was busy, he had to get a client file himself. That small incident snowballed, and he spent the day cataloging in his head all the different ways people tended to disappoint him. He often had difficulties getting to sleep because of such thoughts.
When the counselor asked about his relationship to food and exercise, Francis admitted that he had started eating the way he did to address his anxiety, and he felt that exercise was good for working out stress. In fact, the only time he didn’t feel anxious was when he was exercising.
Asked by the counselor about goals, Francis surprised the therapist by ignoring all the emotional, relational, and professional complaints and asking, instead, for help to overcome his “addiction to diet soda.” Francis said this was the one thing about his diet that he couldn’t get a handle on and that he felt guilty about it. He felt sure that if he could stop putting those chemicals into his body, he might not be so anxious and stop feeling like a failure—at least when it came to his health and fitness, of which he was otherwise quite proud.
Francis is driven by good intentions. Tormented by the anxiety that rules his life, Francis is simply trying to find relief, but while diet and exercise can play an important part in finding relief from anxiety, he has simply transferred his anxious style of thinking and behaving to something he has total control over: the way he eats and exercises. Instead of dealing with the multiplicity of concerns and troubles in his professional, relational, and emotional life that are undermining his well-being, he is looking for salvation though his body and, in doing so, creating even more problems for himself.
Francis’s case is extreme, but preciousness about one’s diet isn’t just limited to health and fitness issues. One study showed that despite the pile of evidence indicating the value of family meals, many parents forgo family meals because they are not always able to afford the more expensive organic foods they would like to be able to serve their families (Bowen, Elliott, and Brenton, 2014). This rather misses the point of family mealtime; the opportunity for communion and communication should be the star, not what’s on the plate.
Although it is important to take care of our bodies, our bodies cannot save us. Focusing on our bodies alone—either the pleasure they feel through overindulgence or the sense of control we can gain from depriving ourselves—cannot even produce a sense of well-being if we ignore other, significant areas of concern in our lives. So what is the answer?
What is the answer? I am sure you and I find ourselves in some areas tackled above and we see some familiar faces fitting more or less in the shoes of Francis and his wife.
Again as
always let us talk to God in the quiet moments we have set for our conversation
with Him in prayer about the above thoughts, ideas and situation we find
ourselves. Let us be vulnerable, objective,
simple, truthful and sincere. Go to the
deepest root of our fears and concerns.
Let us foster that longing to find answers to those fears and concerns
and to have the courage to accept and acknowledge them. Ask for help and support in putting things
right in your life and relationships.
Sounds easy
but truly requires a lot of humility which can be drowned by love for what God
wants, love for oneself for God and love for the others for the love of God and
self.
Be assured
of the thought that you and I are together in this project. It is a longing that is very much yours as it
is mine. Each one of share in that
divine longing for well-being.
See
you in the next post, “May tomorrow be a perfect day; may
you find love and laughter along the way; may God keep you in his tender care;
‘til He brings us together again.”
Affectionately,
Guadalupinky
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