Vice: Gluttony
Petition: Lead us not into temptation
Gift: Understanding
Virtue: Purity of Heart
Beatitude: Vision of God
Hugh considers gluttony and lust to be excessive, disordered expressions of valid natural appetites. Gluttony, says Hugh, “is the temptation by which the enticement of the flesh, often through the natural appetite, strives to drag us to excess and unwittingly subject us to pleasure, while it flatters us that these things are obvious necessities.” Its remedy begins, therefore, with an attempt to discern the point at which these natural appetites exceed the “the measure of necessity.” Without supernatural aid, however this is impossible. And so, the soul prays, with apparent appositeness, “do not permit us to be lead into temptation,” to which request is given the spirit of understanding. The gift “cleanses and purifies the heart” and “brings about in the interior eye luminosity and serenity by the cognition of the word of God, healing it like a liquid eye-salve, so that it may also be made perspicacious for the contemplation of divine beauty.” In this way, “purity of heart is born” which merits the vision of God.
Material from Jeffrey P. Greenman, Timothy Larsen and Stephen R. Spencer, editors, The Sermon on the Mount: Through the Centuries from the Early Church to John Paul II (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2007) 75-76.
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