“Living completely for God. Little by little chiseling away those things that you’re attached too.” Friar Anthony
I’m trying to slow down my sugar intake dramatically. On most days, I drink 3-4 cups of coffee with each cup having 60-70 grams of sugar in it. That doesn’t include the amount of creamer I drink with each cup also. So I’m cutting that down and today was the first day. I drank 1 cup of coffee with 50 grams of sugar in it. I notice no change in my demeanor except I feel more sluggish right now – 4pm – than usual. I think I drink this coffee and sugar concoction out of habit, mindlessly drinking as I work. But I have to chisel away these things…for my health…but mainly because I am attached to them.
I recently was reminded of the great saying, “Health is wealth.” And it is true, to a degree. But health is in second place to the ultimate and true wealth which is faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Read about the great saints throughout history and their lives attest to that. Many of them lived hard and difficult lives – oftentimes by choice. Eating little, sleeping on the ground or on a plank of wood. To this day I think that most if not all Franciscan monks sleep on bags of straw. They wake up in the middle of the night (appx 12:30am) to pray.
So to many of the saints health was irrelevant, they didn’t strive for it at all. They did everything for our Lord Jesus Christ. St. Francis of Assisi apologized to his body before he died, for all the torment he put it through.
I try to read two “Saints of the Day” (on the Laudate App) each morning. Seeing when they were born and when they died, not many make it to 60 years old. I think the aforementioned St. Francis lived to be 44.
So what to do? Look at each day as a great blessing, truly a day to worship God and do His work. Your time is short. Momento mori, ‘remember you must die’. Your health will fail, it will come faster than you think. You must live rightly right now. There is no time to wait. All the things that so many people of the world are focused on are irrelevant, they are but “strings which tie us to this world.” So get rid of your attachments, like for me, sugar. “Living completely for God. Little by little chiseling away those things that you’re attached too.”