about, seeing that to the best of my ability I have been commending this season
SERMON 210 123 course, have the enjoyment of it in this life; but all the same, after the solemnity of the Lord's passion we celebrate this joy for fifty days after the day of his resurrection, during which we ease off the fast, and praise the Lord with the echoing sound of Alleluia.
The daily fast
9. And so now, my dearest friends, to save you from being outsmarted by Satan, I exhort you in the name of Christ to placate God with daily fasts, more generous alms, more fervent prayers. Now is the time when married men should abstain from their wives, and married women from their husbands, in order to have leisure for their prayers;28 although they ought to do this on certain days throughout the year, and the more frequently, of course, the better; because when you have an immoderate appetite for things that are conceded you, you offend the one who made the concession. Prayer of course is something spiritual, and therefore all the more acceptable the more it lives up to its nature. But it is poured out with all the more spiritual power, the more the heart that is pouring it out is withdrawn from the pleasures of the flesh.
Moses the Lawgiver fasted for forty days, for forty days Elijah the greatest of the prophets, for forty days the Lord himself, to whom both law and prophets bore witness.29 That's why he showed himself on the mountain with these two.30 Now we, of course, are quite unable to keep up such a long fast, without taking any nourishment at all for so many days and nights, as they did; but at least we should do what we can, and try to please the Lord our God with either a daily or at least a frequent fast, except of course on the days when for various reasons Church custom doesn't allow fasting.31
But it isn't the case, is it, that just as it is impossible to abstain totally from food and drink for so many days, it is equally impossible to abstain totally from sexual relations? After all, we can see many persons of either sex in the name of Christ preserving their bodies entirely free from this sort of thing and dedi¬ cating them to God. I don't think it's asking too much to suggest that married chastity can do for the whole paschal solemnity32 what virginity can do for the whole of life.
Those who fast wrongly
10. Now there's another thing, which I ought not to have to admonish you about, seeing that to the best of my ability I have been commending this season to you as above all a time for humbling the soul; still, I cannot pass over it in silence, because of the mistaken notions of people, who never stop making us painfully anxious about you with their speciously seductive suggestions and their depraved habits. There are some people who have a way of keeping Lent that is more fastidious than religious, who investigate new flavors instead of castigating old appetites; who compete in trying to surpass the varied taste of entrees with plentiful and expensive preparations of fruit. They shrink away