Saturday (Rom. 14:19–26; Mt. 6:1–13. For the Fathers: Gal. 5:22–6:2; Mt. 11:27–30)

“Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal. 5:24). Today this order has been reversed: the flesh is crucified, but not with its passions and desires—rather, by its passions and desires. How greatly the body is tormented today by gluttony, drunkenness, fornication, dancing, and revelry! The most heartless master does not torment his lazy beast so cruelly. If the flesh were given freedom and reason, its first cry would be against its mistress—the soul—for having unlawfully interfered in its affairs, for having introduced into it passions alien to it, and for tormenting it in the fulfillment of those passions. In essence, the needs of our body are simple and dispassionate. Look at the animals: they do not overeat, they do not sleep beyond their need, and having satisfied a bodily need in its proper time, they remain calm for the rest of the year. It is only the soul—having forgotten its higher aspirations—that has fashioned from the body’s simple needs a multitude of unnatural cravings, which have become by their excess unnatural even for the body itself. In any case, however, in order to cut away from the soul the carnal passions it has grafted onto itself, it is necessary to crucify the flesh—but in precisely the opposite sense: that is, by not giving it its fill even of what is needful, or by satisfying its needs to a far lesser degree than its nature demands.