I have been considering the 14th step on John’s Ladder, Gluttony. When we think about this step, we realize that gluttony considers high-quality food, or eating meat five days a week, to be something to which it is entitled. This passion of gluttony therefore distorts the balance e of the Church’s discipline of fasting and feasting in moderation. A gluttonous soul looks forward more to a banquet at Pascha than it does to the powerful life-shaping celebration of Christ’s Resurrection. It turns the church year into an endless cycle of gluttony and deprivation, binging and purging.

The Church’s tradition of fasting exists to restore balance between body and soul, between penitence and rejoicing, between us and the world around us. If fasting from food is, as the Eastern Church teaches, only the means to an end and not the end in itself, then so too feasting with food is only the means of enhancing our joy; it should not become the center of our celebration.

I think that this is a very important notion. Fasting is not an end unto itself. Fasting does not make God love us any more than He already does. Fasting is a discipline to help us come to a true recognition of God’s love for us. Unfortunately I think that many people have the wrong notion about fasting. God doesn’t need us to fast! It does not change His disposition to us in the least. Fasting is meant to help us change our understanding of the relationship we have with God.

St. John is therefore careful to endorse moderation in both feasting and fasting. Moderation is the key to any true spiritual development. We must always strive to seek the middle way. God doesn’t need us to become fanatics. He needs us to do those things that lead us to Him.