THE HUMAN APPETITE

THE HUMAN APPETITE — and there are many — divide and weaken us by our refusal to search for and practice virtue. Extensive drinks and foods have weighed us down and wounded our society, but so have our intemperate use of multimedia technology and the many broken families that now litter our societal landscape. We are forever connected, busy, and preoccupied, yet lonely, discouraged, and even hopeless. The unrelenting pressures we face leave not one instant of quiet and solitude. The paradox is that our souls crave that silence, despite relentlessly refusing to look for and embrace it; instead, we busy ourselves so much that time escapes us, and so we are left empty. John of the Cross, a 16th-century doctor of the Church, writing on the danger of divided desires, proposed that: “Weakness and tepidity is another kind of harm the appetites produce in a man. For the appetites sap the strength needed for perseverance in the practice of virtue.”