Augustine in His Own Words (continued)
The Bishop 95 (10) Certain people observe Lent more like gourmets than religious, seeking out new flavors instead of curbing old passions. They compete in topping the varieties and flavors of tasty dishes with lavish and expensively prepared fruits. They may shun as unclean the platters which meat has been cooked on, but they do not shun luxurious excess in their flesh's belly and gut. They may fast not to cut down their usual overeating by tempering things, but to bloat their immoderate desires by holding off a while, for when the time for eating comes, they stampede to well-stocked tables like cattle to troughs, overstuffing their bellies and getting heartburn from too many courses. And lest they become jaded by this abundance, they indulge their palates with lots of imported spices, artfully prepared. In the end, they eat so much that even by fasting they can't digest it all.
(11) Then there are those who give up drinking wine, only to go out searching for liquors fermented from other fruits—and not for their health's sake but for the sheer pleasure of it. It's as though Lent were not for the observance of a genuinely humble piety, but an occasion for new types of selfindulgence. If your stomach can't tolerate drinking water, stick with moderate table wine. That would be better than seeking out rare liquors which neither wine dealers nor winepress have ever seen. What could be more absurd? That a time when the flesh should be reined in more strictly is used to procure tasty delights for the flesh so that one's lusty palate doesn't want Lent to come to an end?25
Vengeful Piety
Augustine's parishioners could hold bitter grudges and pray bitter prayers for divine vengeance. From Sermon 211: (1) It is human to get angry. Would that we did not have this power! It is human to get angry; but your anger ought not, like a tender young twig, to be watered by suspicions and finally grow into a tree of hatred. . . . (7) I know that each day people come, bend their knees, touch the earth with their foreheads, sometimes moisten their faces with tears, and in all this humility and distress say: "Lord, avenge me! Kill my enemy!"26
25. S. 210.10–11 (PL 38:1052–53); my trans. 26. S. 211.1–7 (PL 38:1054–58); trans. Muldowney, FOTC 38:109, 115.