Restraint, Moderation, Fasting, Abstinence

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

GIVEN the temper of the times, we really need to incorporate these attitudes, virtues and practices into our system. In other words, we need to live temperance now that we are wallowing in a very intoxicating addicting world of the social media and the digital gadgets. We are now all too familiar with the signs of addiction afflicting people, both the young and the old.

Temperance puts our human attractions and appetites in their proper places, not by suppressing them, but rather by using and directing them to their proper ends. It checks them from their tendency to dominate us and to lead the way for us, when in fact they need to be dominated and led first by our higher faculties.

We know that our bodily powers are in great need of direction by our intelligence and will, let alone, God’s grace. On their own, they can just go anywhere and drift according to moods, fashion, popularity, but hardly by the criteria of what is good and bad, what is true and false.

We need to more aware and guarded against the dangers of the new technologies. All these new technologies instantly produce in us a tremendous amount of dopamine that is so difficult to manage, let alone, resist. And these gadgets keep on coming, each time with an improved version, with hardly any manual as to how to use them ethically and prudently.

We cannot deny that we are constantly bombarded with many material things, all offering all kinds of advantages and conveniences that, if we are not careful, can remove us from our proper path to God, to heaven, to the world of the spiritual and the supernatural.

It’s as simple as that. We now have to deliberately exercise restraint and moderation in the use of material things, otherwise we will be swallowed up by the dynamics of worldly forces that would plunge us to the big, wide and smooth road to self-indulgence, and ultimately to our perdition.

More than practicing restraint and moderation, we need to have a clear, firm and functioning idea of what the purpose of all these material amenities we are enjoying in the world today, is. Our proper focus should not be lost.

Let’s remember that all these material developments and progress we have today are meant to give glory to God and to contribute to the common good. They are meant to develop in us the real essence and the fullness of our humanity, which is love—love for God and love for neighbour, and not self-love.

That is why it becomes increasingly imperative that we be properly grounded on our faith and our life of piety, consisting of the usual things—time for prayer and meditation, offering of sacrifices, recourse to the sacraments, availing of a continuing plan of formation, development of virtues, forming our consciences, waging an abiding ascetical struggle, etc.

We have to have specific ways of living temperance in our thoughts, desires, imagination, memory, and in our speech and deeds. Temperance also in food, drinks and sex and recreation. Yes, in all aspects of our life, including our spiritual life that can also have its excesses and abuses.

To be sure, this is not punishment. Rather it is to uphold and enhance our dignity. We need to educate ourselves more effectively about this need for temperance. The youth these days should be given special attention, because they are often unprepared to properly handle the new developments and allurements of the world today.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com