Some pleasures are true, others false. The only true pleasures are the ones generated by God’s grace. The exclusively intellectual pleasures consist in knowledge and contemplation, while the pleasures of the body depend upon sensation.

Further, of bodily pleasures, some are both natural and necessary, in the absence of which life is impossible, for example the pleasures of food in order to live, and the pleasures of necessary clothing.

Others are natural but not strictly necessary, as the pleasures of natural and lawful reproduction. Others, however, are neither natural nor necessary, such as drunkenness, lust, and surfeiting to excess.

One therefore that would live a life acceptable to God must follow after those pleasures which are both natural and necessary: and must give a secondary place to those which are natural but not necessary, and enjoy them only in fitting season and manner and measure; while the others must be altogether renounced.

Those then are to be considered moral pleasures which are not bound up with pain, and bring no cause for repentance, and result in no other harm and keep within the bounds of moderation and do not draw us far away from serious occupations, nor make slaves of us.

Based on Saint John of Damascus

A shot from the kitchen

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