Do not stimulate your appetite!

Fr. George Dorbarakis | January 9, 2026

 

"Avoid as a plague the places of falls. For when there is no fruit before us, our appetite is not so easily aroused."

(St. John Climacus, Discourse 3, 10)

 

"Desire comes from sight" — an old saying that records what happens with human nature: what I have before me awakens my desire to taste it. And not only sight — though primarily that — but the other senses as well: when they are stimulated, they inflame desire in man. Is that not the very foundation of the science of advertising? They place the product before you, beautifully wrapped, beautified to the highest degree, vivid, even adorned with appropriate music, and even though you don’t need it, they entice you to take it, to try it. They make you consider it necessary in your life. Because they have studied human psychology. Because, in the end, they know you.

Do not overestimate your strength, then. It is not by chance that Scripture and the entire Patristic Tradition proclaim that the Christian “practices self-control in all things.” Self-control, as restraint, as the constant regulation of our desires, is a universal virtue that runs through the believer’s life daily and always: first in the eyes, and then in all the senses. Therefore, where there has been a fall, do not go again. Or if you happen to be there out of necessity, be on guard. Do not expose yourself. Especially when you know that what has happened once can easily happen a second and third time. For habit, which is a second nature to man, contributes to this condition. As the patristic saying puts it: “Do not grow accustomed to defeat in war. For habit is a second nature.”

The reverse, however, is also true. Since we are provoked to desire through our sight and through whatever the place of a fall brings to our memory, let us choose those places, those situations, those people who provoke us toward the good. Saint Epiphanius used to say that even the mere sight of the Holy Scripture, for example, urges us toward the good. How many times has an image of Christ, of the Theotokos, or of a saint moved us to desire to pray? How many times has a sanctified place — a church, or even more so, a monastery — led us to compunction? And further: how many times has an encounter with a genuine person of God given us the occasion for repentance and inner transformation?

 

Greek source: https://metemorfothis.blogspot.com/2026/01/blog-post_10.html

Reposted from: https://pgdorbas.blogspot.com/2026/01/blog-post_59.html