I remember when the the show LOST finally came onto streaming services, in the splendor of all six seasons. That first evening I may or may not have watched a few more episodes than would be considered prudent. 

We’ve all been there. 

Maybe you’ve done the same—watched six episodes, instead of the two that would have been temperent. It’s 3am, and you work tomorrow. A twinge of conscience signals that something’s off. The pleasant feeling of watching a show fades in the wake of a groggy mind, the Rosary you forgot to pray in lieu of Netflix and the morning prayer you won’t say tomorrow, because you overslept, because you stayed up too late. 

Photo by Mollie Sivaram on Unsplash

It feels great in the moment, but joy never comes in the morning. It can be subtle, but the pleasure of binging the show is fleeting and there’s no sense of celebration or gratitude to God for a good thing. It’s just pleasure. . . and then a consequence. 

The taste of something good can quickly shift from gratitude for the gift to grasping after pleasure. Most of the time, it’s easy to feel when we overdue it. 

The pleasure fades. This is over-indulgence.

As we examine these experiences of gratification and enjoyment, there is another aspect of human pleasure that must be contrasted with over-indulgence. 

“Feasting.”

Isn’t feasting, in many ways, a synonym for over-indulgence? Stuffing ourselves with whatever good thing is in front of us, in the name of celebration? There are many cultural norms which equivocate a feast with excess or immoderation. 

At a wedding, there might be too much to drink but we’re celebrating, after all. Christmas dinner comes, and there might be a bit of overeating. 

You just successfully accomplished a difficult task at work and you want to treat your overworked brain with a little extra Netflix. You’re excited to spend time with your friends and you enjoy connecting, so maybe you find yourself overtalking, oversharing, and gossip starts to make an appearance. 

The Word of God clearly calls us to be a people of feasting; a people of celebration.

But Jesus also calls his followers to be people of prudence and moderation, desiring us to be filled by Him and rather than to be filled by things that ultimately leave us more empty. 

How do we reconcile the call to feast with the call to safeguard ourselves from the sin of over-indulgence?

Let’s look at how Jesus calls us to be a people of feasting. 

The Lord calls us to “rejoice, again I say, rejoice!” (Phil 4:4). He isn’t wearing a straight jacket. He hasn’t made us for a pleasureless life. Quite the contrary. 

Consider the Book of Revelation, the concluding book of the Bible. The “wedding feast of the Lamb,” the ultimate feast of feasts, is the final culmination of the Bible and the culmination of the entire Christian journey. Revelation 19 says “Let us rejoice and exult and give him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come. . . Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb!” 

Heaven - our eternal home which God has made us for - is illustrated as an endless wedding feast. 

In the book of Nehemiah, the Word of God proclaims “Go, eat rich foods and drink sweet drinks, and allot portions to those who had nothing prepared; for today is holy to our Lord. Do not be saddened this day, for rejoicing in the Lord must be your strength.” (Nehemiah 8:10) 

God invites us into the pleasures of good food, sharing drinks with one another, and the radiance that comes from feasting, in any holy form, with one another. In fact, “rejoicing in the Lord” is our “strength.” 

The call to celebrate and relish the joy of what is good in life isn’t merely a superficial after-thought. The joys of celebration revive and strengthen us as human beings.

But we are human, aren’t we? It’s easy to get distracted from what we know is good for us.

So the Lord  has given us clear boundaries regarding things like gluttony, drunkenness, imprudence and various other forms of over-indulgence. He asks us to guard against sin and to act with wisdom and prudence, in order to honor him and care for ourselves. 

Christian feasting and over-indulgence share a lot in common on the outside, but if we look a little deeper, they are very different things. 

One comes from joy and the other comes from selfish desire.

Over-indulgence is often inspired by an occupation with “me” and what I want in the moment that feels most pleasant. Feasting is an overflow of something beautiful, making my heart grow and it and it draws me to the goodness of other people and the many other good things around me. 

The difference between these two things, while sometimes hard for us to define, is that feasting draws you outward and over-indulgence pulls you inward. 

Over-indulgence tends towards self-inversion. Feasting draws us out of ourselves into a posture of connection and self-offering.

I’ll give you an example from my own life.

There are many reasons I may be drawn to overeating: sadness, addiction, enjoyment, lack of awareness, etc. Either way, the consequences of eating too much can be obviously hurtful. 

If I am eating out of a desire to cover a feeling I am uncomfortable with, the focus of the eating pulls me deeper and deeper into my own needs, rather than the self-love that would allow me to care for myself, so that I can be ready to care for others. Even if there are understandable reasons for over-eating, it is pulling me into myself, rather than out of myself.

At a party, if I overeat, I become increasingly aware of my own physical discomfort and I may become tired or bloated and unable to offer the best version of myself to those around me. I become increasingly self-inverted. 

On the other hand, I am at a restaurant celebrating my Dad’s birthday and we have purchased a beautiful spread of fresh, Mediterranean food. Instead of fixating on what I can get out of the food before me, the food, in all of its wonderful pleasure, becomes a conduit of shared joy. I don’t overeat, because I’m not looking to misuse food as a mask for uncomfortable feelings or as an avenue of my selfish desire for pleasure. Rather, the pleasure of food becomes a reflection of the love I have for my Dad. 

Which brings us to why this vision of feasting is so, so important to our walk with Jesus. 

Because we are made for love and love requires us to reach out of ourselves.

Love is contrary to over-indulgence. When we feast, our hearts grow in their capacity to love and to be loved. Feasting is an expansive experience because of how celebration elevates and rejuvenates us and draws us into joyful connection with other people.

When I’m eating dinner to celebrate someone I love—like my dad—I am acting from a place of love and gratitude, rather than from the instinct to merely gratify my senses. From that place of freedom, I find myself naturally reaching out of myself in deeper connection with those around me. 

Feasting also gives us “a taste of heaven on earth.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that “Heaven is the ultimate end and fulfillment of the deepest human longings, the state of supreme, definitive happiness.” (CC 1024) When we feast, we find ourselves sensing the kind of peace, contentment, joy and deep fulfillment that is promised to us in full when we arrive in Heaven. 

There’s a reason we often think “this is a little piece of Heaven,” when we have an experience of wholesome celebration. The experience isn’t laced with any negative consequences; its such pure sweetness, as we will experience in full, when we reach our Eternal home! 

When we feast, we also enjoy the same God-given gifts that are misused in over-indulgence. And when we feast, we are able to experience pleasure in a way that reflects the endless and life-giving nature of Heaven, rather than the fleeting and inevitably harmful consequences of over-indulgence. 

Of course, there are boundaries that guide our relationship with pleasure. We can see that in the way Jesus asks us to practice, temperance, prudence, chastity, etc. However, these boundaries that the Lord has provided for us are not designed to reduce joy. Rather, these boundaries reveal to us how the things which are most pleasurable to us in this life can be received in a way that breathes life into us, rather than slowly sapping our energy, our life, our health, our freedom, etc. 

Questions to help discern feasting vs. over-indulgence: 

Consider those pleasures of life that you are particularly drawn to: I love good food. I love entertainment and I love a good party. I love a perfectly made gin and tonic. I love the sensory overload of my favorite artist playing the best music I’ve ever heard.

Am I approaching this pleasure with a heart that is open to receiving joy? Or am I acting on the impulse to experience pleasure, divorced from the Spirit? 

  1. Does this expand my heart? Or does this shrink it? 
  2. Am I hiding from something or entering into something good in a deeper way?
  3. Will this wound me in the long run? Or will it breathe more life in my soul? Because joy never wounds us. 
  4. Am I fixated on myself right now, or am I looking to celebrate in connection with others?
  5. Will this give me a glimpse of heaven, or will it lock my eyes on earth a little bit more? 

There is a fine line between all of this. It's a question of nuance. 

It’s not always as simple as “should I take one piece of cake, or two?” It’s about the posture of our hearts. It’s about knowing where our desires are rooted so that we can experience life in the richest way possible, as God has intended.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus says: “I came so that they could have life — indeed, so that they could have life to the fullest.” 

This is what it’s all about. Jesus came so that you could live life to the fullest. He came so that we can all live life to the fullest! 

As we ask the Holy Spirit to transform our relationship with this God-given, genius thing that we call “pleasure,” we are buoyed by the truth that Jesus isn’t a minimalist. He’s a God of joy and he wants us to have life in the fullest form possible. 

He’s beckoning us towards Heaven. Will we accept the challenge?