On temperance, the saints are not first and foremost theorists: they are witnesses. Before writing its definition, they lived it—in the desert, in the cloister, at the common table, in the slow conquest of their own appetites. This is what gives their words an authority that no abstract treatise possesses: when Saint Anthony calls temperance a “power” received from God, he speaks from experience; when Saint Vincent de Paul links it to freedom, he has spent his life mortifying himself; when Luisa Piccarreta hears Jesus compare mortification to “the air of the soul”[1], she writes what she breathes.
This article gathers this voice of the saints: an organized anthology, from the Desert Fathers to modern mystics, of what the spiritual masters have said about temperance. Here one will see a remarkable concordance across centuries and schools—East and West, scholastic and mystical, desert and Divine Will ultimately say the same thing: temperance is not hatred of pleasure but the free mastery of desires, which restores man to himself and makes him available to God. For the practical path—how to make it grow, by what means, avoiding which pitfalls—see the article How to Grow in Temperance; the present article listens first to what the saints say about it.
Why Listen to the Saints on Temperance?
A Virtue Lived Before It Was Defined
Temperance is undoubtedly the most misunderstood of the four cardinal virtues[2]. It is often reduced to a morality of deprivation, to suspicion of everything that brings joy, to a list of prohibitions. The saints, however, never speak of it in this way. For them, the intemperate man is not a free man who enjoys more: he is a man ruled by his appetites, “A breached city, without rampart: the man who does not master his moods!” (Pr 25:28). Temperance restores sovereignty to the heart—and that is why the saints, far from seeing it as a sorrow, speak of it as a joyful conquest.
The Catechism receives this definition from tradition, relying on Sirach:
“Temperance is the moral virtue that moderates the attraction of pleasures and provides balance in the use of created goods. It ensures the mastery of the will over instincts and keeps desires within the limits of honesty. The temperate person directs sensitive appetites toward the good, maintains a healthy discretion, and ‘does not let himself be led to follow the passions of his heart.’” — Catechism of the Catholic Church § 1809, quoting Sirach 5:2[3]
Everything the saints will say flows from this intuition: temperance is order, not mutilation; mastery, not repression; freedom, not sadness.
What Scripture Says First
Before the saints, there is the Word they meditated upon. The New Testament does not reserve temperance for ascetics: it makes it an ordinary condition for the baptized. Saint Paul sums up for Titus the entire program of Christian life, the first word of which is sobriety—in Greek sōphronōs, which the liturgical translation renders as “reasonably”:
“For the grace of God has appeared for the salvation of all men. It teaches us to renounce impiety and worldly desires, and to live in the present age reasonably, with justice and piety.” — Letter to Titus 2:11-12[4]
The same image returns in the figure of the athlete, which all the Fathers will take up:
“All athletes in training impose a severe discipline on themselves; they do it to receive a laurel crown that will fade, and we, for a crown that does not fade. […] But I treat my body harshly, I make it my slave, lest after proclaiming the Gospel to others I myself should be disqualified.” — First Letter to the Corinthians 9:25-27[5]
And Saint Peter links sobriety to vigilance against evil: “Be sober, be watchful: your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Pt 5:8)[6]. Finally, self-mastery (egkrateia) figures among the fruits of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Gal 5:22-23)[7]. Perfected temperance is thus a gift, not merely a conquest of the will: this is the point from which all the saints begin.
The Consensus of the Saints Through the Centuries
One of the most striking signs of the Catholic tradition is the concordance of its witnesses. On temperance, men separated by everything—a Coptic hermit of the 4th century, a scholastic doctor of the 13th, a mystic of the 20th—converge on a few certainties:
| Voice | Century | What it says about temperance |
|---|---|---|
| Anthony the Great | 4th | A “power” received from God to master difficulties[8] |
| Pachomius | 4th | “Master of your body, master of your heart”[9] |
| Gregory of Nyssa | 4th | Prayer is its “safeguard”[10] |
| Augustine | 5th | “Love that keeps itself whole” for God[11] |
| Thomas Aquinas | 13th | A “splendor” (honestas) that beautifies the soul[12] |
| Catherine of Siena | 14th | A virtue “bound” to all the others by charity[13] |
| Vincent de Paul | 17th | The path of interior freedom[14] |
| Luisa Piccarreta | 20th | In the Divine Will, the passions die “without combat”[15] |
This unity is not a coincidence: it is the Spirit who teaches all the same measure. Let us follow its voice, age after age.
The Voice of the Fathers and Desert Monks
It was in the desert, in the 3rd and 4th centuries, that temperance received its first great school. Far from all theory, the Fathers experienced it in its raw form: mastering hunger, sleep, and thought, to free the heart for God.
Saint Anthony the Great: Temperance, a “Power”
The father of monks does not see temperance as a constraint endured, but as a strength received—an energy that God places in man to make him invincible in the face of difficulties:
“Temperance, resignation, chastity, endurance, patience, and the like are all considerable virtuous powers that we have received from God to resist present difficulties, to face them, and to help ourselves. If we exercise and maintain these powers, we will find that nothing difficult, painful, or intolerable happens to us anymore.” — Saint Anthony the Great (c. 251–356), Apophthegmata[16]
A complete reversal of the prejudice: temperance does not weaken man, it arms him. The intemperate man is weak because he is governed; the temperate man is strong because he possesses himself.
Saint Pachomius: “Master of Your Body, Master of Your Heart”
Founder of communal monasticism, Pachomius sums up temperance in a concise formula, where mastery of the body is never separated from humility of heart:
“Be perfectly pure, master of your thoughts, master of your body, master of your heart. Let your spirit obey! Remain small in your heart.” — Saint Pachomius (c. 292–348), Counsels to a Resentful Monk[17]
The order is essential: one is “master of his body” only to become “small in his heart.” Pachomian temperance is not an ascetic performance but a humble disposition—the very opposite of the pride of the athlete who mortifies himself to admire himself.
Saint Basil: Eating “to Glorify God”
Against the rigorist temptation—that which would make eating and drinking an evil in itself—Basil of Caesarea reminds us that even the table can become a place of thanksgiving. Temperance does not forbid eating: it teaches us to eat before God:
“One must eat without, even then, letting the mind stray from the thought of God; but from the very nature of the foods and the constitution of the body that receives them, one should take occasion to glorify God.” — Saint Basil of Caesarea (c. 330–379), Small Ascetical Collection[18]
This is the exact echo of Saint Paul: “For everything that God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving” (1 Tim 4:4)[19]. The temperance of the Fathers is never a contempt for creation: it is the art of using it with thanksgiving.
Saint John Cassian: Purity of Heart, Fruit of Temperance
Cassian, who transmitted the wisdom of the Egyptian Fathers to the West, shows that mastery of the appetites is not an end: it opens the inner kingdom. Where vice is cast out, God reigns:
“Everything lies in the deep sanctuary of the soul. When the devil has been cast out and vices no longer reign there, consequently the reign of God is established in us.” — Saint John Cassian (c. 360–435), Conferences I[20]
Temperance, for Cassian, is ordered to purity of heart (puritas cordis), itself ordered to the Kingdom. One does not master oneself for the sake of mastery: one masters oneself so that God may dwell without rival.
Saint Gregory of Nyssa: Prayer, “Safeguard of Temperance”
The great Cappadocian points to the guardian of all temperance. Without prayer, self-mastery is exhausted and collapses; with it, it endures:
“Prayer is the safeguard of temperance, the correction of anger, the repression of vanity, the purification of resentment, the destruction of envy, the suppression of injustice, the correction of impiety.” — Saint Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335–c. 395), Homilies on the Our Father[21]
This is one of the most repeated teachings of the whole tradition: temperance is not primarily a matter of tense willpower, but of a life of prayer. The soul that prays holds its desires; the soul that ceases to pray lets them slip away.
Saint Benedict: Measure, Mother of Virtues
The Rule of Saint Benedict, which would shape all Western monasticism, is entirely permeated by discretio—the right measure, which he calls “the mother of virtues.” Benedict rejects both laxity and heroic rigorism: he wants an asceticism that is sustainable, ordered to perseverance. And he roots all effort in grace:
“Let us therefore prepare our hearts and bodies to fight the battle of holy obedience to the commandments; and for what is impossible to our nature, let us pray the Lord to deign to help us by His grace.” — Saint Benedict of Nursia (c. 480–547), Rule, Prologue, 40–41[22]
Benedictine temperance is not an exploit: it is a humble and lasting measure, which asks God for what it cannot achieve by itself.
The Voice of Saint Augustine and the Doctors
The Fathers had lived temperance; the Doctors would reflect on it—without losing any of the fervor of the first.
Saint Augustine: “Love that Keeps Itself Whole”
Augustine brings about a decisive reversal: he reduces the four cardinal virtues to forms of the love of God. Temperance, therefore, is not primarily a “no” to pleasures: it is a jealous “yes” to the Beloved, keeping the heart whole for Him:
“Temperance is love that preserves itself whole and incorrupt for the One it loves.” — Saint Augustine (354–430), The Morals of the Catholic Church, I, 15, 25[23]
Everything is said in a single phrase. The temperate person does not renounce pleasure out of disgust for life: he keeps his heart intact so as not to scatter it. Deprivation has meaning only through the love it protects—otherwise, it is nothing but sterile mutilation.
Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Hidden Splendor of the Virtue
Thomas receives and orders the entire heritage. For him, temperance concerns “primarily the pleasures of touch”—food, drink, sexuality—because these are the most natural and most vehement pleasures[24]. He calls it “the least of the cardinal virtues” by its matter (the pleasures of the body are less noble than the good of justice), but cardinal nonetheless, for it moderates the passions most deeply rooted in nature[25].
Above all, Thomas recognizes in temperance a proper beauty, an “honestas”—a moral splendor (spiritualis pulchritudo): the order that reason brings to the passions shines forth in the whole being, while disorder disfigures man[26]. Temperance, therefore, is not drab: it is beautiful.
Thomas also distinguishes the family of virtues attached to it, which helps to understand the breadth of the saints’ “voice” on this subject:
| Part of Temperance | What It Moderates |
|---|---|
| Abstinence | The use of food |
| Sobriety | The use of drink |
| Chastity / Purity | The pleasures of the flesh |
| Continence | Consent to vehement desires[27] |
| Meekness (Mansuetude) | The movement of anger |
| Humility | The disordered appetite for excellence |
| Modesty, Studiousness | Outward appearance, curiosity |
Table based on the Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 143[28]. Each saint cited in this article sheds light on one or another of these facets—proof that temperance is not one, but a whole family of self-mastery.
The Voice of the Medieval Mystics
Saint Catherine of Siena: No Virtue Stands Alone
In the Dialogue, the Eternal Father reveals to Catherine a fundamental law of the spiritual life: no virtue stands isolated. Temperance is never acquired alone; it draws and is drawn by all the others, in the bond of charity:
“To one I give charity, to another justice, humility or a lively faith, prudence, temperance, patience or fortitude. […] As soon as the soul possesses a virtue which it practices and develops preferentially, that virtue naturally draws the others; for all the virtues are bound by the bonds of charity.” — The Eternal Father to Saint Catherine of Siena (1347–1380), Dialogue, VII, 10[29]
A tremendous practical consequence: one does not have to wait to be temperate in order to love, nor to have mastered everything in order to advance. It is enough to cultivate one virtue preferentially—and it will draw the others after it. Temperance grows with charity, never apart from it.
The Imitation of Christ: “Restrain Intemperance”
The most widely read book of Catholic spirituality after the Bible gives temperance a place as the gateway: it is through it, through mastery at table, that the battle over everything else is won:
“In the morning, form your resolutions; in the evening, examine your conduct. […] Like a courageous soldier, arm yourself against the attacks of the devil. Restrain intemperance, and you will more easily restrain the other desires of the flesh.” — Thomas à Kempis (c. 1380–1471), The Imitation of Christ, I, 19[30]
The Imitation also links mastery of desires to interior peace—a central theme of the whole tradition: “It is by resisting the passions, and not by yielding to them, that one finds true peace of heart. […] As soon as a man begins to desire something in a disordered way, immediately he becomes restless within himself.”[31] Temperance, therefore, is not the enemy of happiness: it is its condition. The intemperate man is never at peace; the temperate man rests.
John Tauler: Pruning the Vine
The great Rhenish preacher gives temperance its most accurate image: not the hateful uprooting of life, but the pruning of the vinedresser, who cuts away the wild shoots so that the good wood may yield pure wine:
“The vinedresser will soon go to prune the wild shoots in his vineyard. If he did not do this and left them on the good wood, his vineyard would yield only sour and bad wine. So must a man worthy of the name do: he must prune himself of all that is disorder, cut away bad faults.” — John Tauler (c. 1300–1361), Sermon 7[32]
The image is exact: the vinedresser does not cut out of hatred for the vine, but out of love for the fruit. Temperance removes the superfluous not to impoverish life, but to make it fruitful.
The Voice of the Modern School
Saint Vincent de Paul: Temperance, the Path to Freedom
No one has stated more clearly that temperance liberates. According to the anthology Saint Vincent de Paul par ses écrits, Vincent teaches that mortifying one’s passions is not to diminish oneself: it is to gain rest and independence of heart—the mortified soul would always be content with whatever happens to it, asking for nothing and refusing nothing[33].
He adds the great law of the union of prayer and self-mastery—one never goes without the other:
“Prayer and mortification are two very closely united sisters, one never goes without the other. Mortification comes first, prayer after […]. If you want to become daughters of prayer, you must learn to mortify yourselves.” — Saint Vincent de Paul, ibid.[34]
And he reminds us, against any illusion of instantaneity, that temperance is the work of a lifetime: “Mortification, like the other virtues, is acquired only by repeated acts.”[35] No spectacular heroism: the patient repetition of small acts.
Saint John of the Cross: Every Renunciation, Out of Love
The Doctor of Carmel lays down the golden rule that prevents temperance from degenerating into rigorism: every renunciation of sensual pleasures must have as its sole motive the love of Christ and the imitation of His life. To renounce without love purifies nothing; to renounce out of love transforms everything:
“For this, you must have a continual desire to imitate Christ in all your actions, conforming yourself to His life, which you must meditate upon in order to know how to imitate it and to behave in all things as He Himself would behave.” — Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591), The Ascent of Mount Carmel, I, 13[36]
This key is decisive. Without it, mortification becomes pride or sadness; with it, it becomes love. The entire voice of the saints on temperance converges here: moderation has value only by the love it serves.
The Warning Against Two Excesses
The saints are unanimous in avoiding two symmetrical pitfalls. The first is intemperance, the flesh in command; the second, more subtle, is rigorist insensitivity—the contempt for created goods that God has made good, the false mortification born of disgust. Saint Thomas calls it a vice, not a virtue, for it contradicts the order willed by God[37].
Certain expressions of saints—such as the one attributed to Saint Benedict Joseph Labre, “chastise the body by fasting and abstinence […]”[38]—belong to a heroic vocation reported at second hand, and must be read in the light of Benedictine moderation and Salesian gentleness, neither as an established maxim nor as a common norm. The rule remains that of Saint Basil and Saint Paul: to use created goods “giving thanks”. Saint Martha Robin herself warned that one advances more surely “in overcoming our nature” by charity “than by the secret satisfaction of fasting on bread and water”[39]. True temperance is not the hardest: it is the most well-adjusted.
The Voice of the Divine Will: Luisa Piccarreta
In the writings of the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta (1865-1947), Jesus takes up and brings to its summit all the teaching of the saints on mastery of the passions. For those discovering these writings, a word is needed: to live in the Divine Will is not only to do God’s will by obeying His commandments—it is to receive as a gift to live His very life and to act in it; no longer merely to obey as a servant, but to remain as a child within the very acting of the Father. He first makes it a matter of the soul’s breathing:
“Mortification must be the air of the soul. By the air the soul breathes, one can tell whether it is healthy or sick. If a person breathes the air of mortification, everything in her will be purified; all her senses will sound in harmonious accord. But if she does not breathe the air of mortification, everything in her will be discordant. […]” — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, vol. 3, 16 February 1900[40]
Mortification here is never destruction, but fruitfulness: “My daughter, mortification is like a fire that dries up all the bad humors in the soul and floods it with a humor of holiness, giving birth to the most beautiful virtues.”[41]
But the unique contribution of the Divine Will lies elsewhere, and it is striking. Where all the saints describe a struggle against the passions, Jesus reveals to Luisa a state where this very struggle ceases—not through laxity, but because the light of the Divine Will dissolves the passions at their root:
“By being in my Will, you will no longer need to fight your passions and to be always at war with them. […] When one lives in my holy Will, the passions die gently, without struggle and without noise. They lose their life by themselves. For, before the holiness of my Will, the passions do not dare to show themselves.” — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, vol. 4, 23 December 1900[42]
One hears in it as an echo of the word of Saint Anthony—“nothing will be difficult for us”—and of the teaching of Saint Vincent on the rest of the soul: a simple consonance between witnesses, not the fulfillment of an announced promise. Perfect temperance is no longer a struggle, but a peace: that of a heart so filled with God that disordered desires find no place there. “Before the holiness of my Will, the passions do not dare to show themselves.”
What the Saints Teach Us, in Summary
Beyond the diversity of voices, four certainties return like a refrain.
Temperance is a Liberation
From Saint Anthony (“a power”) to Saint Vincent and his being in freedom, all refuse to see temperance as a diminishment. The slave is the intemperate one, “commanded” by his appetites; the free man is the temperate one, who asks for nothing and refuses nothing. Self-mastery does not imprison: it sets free.
It Is Born of Love, Not of Contempt for the Body
Augustine (“love that keeps itself whole”), John of the Cross (the imitation of Christ as the sole motive), Basil (eating “to glorify God”): the temperance of the saints is never a hatred of the created. It protects a love. Cutting away the superfluous only makes sense in order to keep the heart whole for God—otherwise, deprivation is sterile.
It Never Stands Alone
Catherine of Siena said it for all time: the virtues “are bound together by the bonds of charity.” One does not become temperate by aiming at temperance alone, but by loving; and temperance, in turn, keeps prudence clear, fortitude just, justice pure. That is why no one should wait to be perfect before beginning: it is enough to cultivate one virtue, and it will draw the others along.
It Is Maintained by Prayer
Gregory of Nyssa (“safeguard of temperance”) and Vincent de Paul (prayer and mortification, “two sisters”) say the same law: self-mastery is not a matter of willpower alone. The soul that prays holds its desires; the soul that ceases to pray lets them slip away. Temperance is received on one’s knees before it is won standing.
Christ and Mary, Sources of All Temperance
All the saints only point back to a single Master. Christ inaugurates his mission with a sovereign act of temperance: after forty days of fasting in the desert, he answers the tempter who proposes he turn stones into bread: “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Mt 4:4)[43]. His whole life will be this perfect measure: neither the off-putting austerity of John the Baptist, of whom it was said he “had a demon,” nor complacency—but a man who eats and drinks with sinners without ever ceasing to be master of himself.
Mary, the “Most Prudent Virgin,” is the perfect model of this measure: preserved from original sin from the first instant of her conception (Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus, 8 December 1854; cf. Lk 1:28; CCC 490-493), she is the heart fully turned toward God, in whom nothing disordered ever had a place[44]. In echo—and in echo only—of this faith defined by the Church, one may bring alongside it the word received by Luisa: before the holiness of the Divine Will, the passions “do not dare to show themselves”[45]. Toward these two converge all the voices gathered in this article: temperance is not a sad morality, but the face of Christ gradually being formed in the baptized—a heart free, peaceful, and whole, “who keeps itself for the One it loves.”
To Go Further
- How to Grow in Temperance — the practical path: the nature of the cardinal virtue, its parts, its two counterfeits, the concrete means used by the saints to make it grow, and its fruits.
- What Do the Saints Say About Fasting and What Do the Saints Say About the Struggle Against Gluttony — temperance applied to the table.
- What Do the Saints Say About Chastity and What Do the Saints Say About Purity of Heart — temperance applied to sexuality and to the gaze.
- What Do the Saints Say About Detachment — cutting at the root the attachment to created goods, the radical path of temperance.
- What Do the Saints Say About Gentleness — temperance applied to anger, a major annexed virtue.
- What Do the Saints Say About Prudence, What Do the Saints Say About Justice, and What Do the Saints Say About Fortitude — the three other cardinal virtues, sisters of temperance.
Notes and References
Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta (1865-1947), The Book of Heaven, vol. 3, 16 February 1900: “Mortification must be the air of the soul. By the air the soul breathes, one recognizes whether it is healthy or sick. If a person breathes the air of mortification, everything will be purified in her; all her senses will sound with the same harmonious tone. But if she does not breathe the air of mortification, everything will be discordant in her. […]” Entry of 16 February 1900, French trans. Lumen Luminis (GE – La Volonté Divine), vol. 3; text verified verbatim in the complete French text, page not re-verified.
1 40Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1805, quoting the Book of Wisdom 8:7: “Four virtues play a pivotal role. For this reason they are called ‘cardinal’; all the others regroup around them. They are: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance.”
2Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1809, quoting Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) 5:2: “Temperance is the moral virtue that moderates the attraction of pleasures and provides balance in the use of created goods. It ensures the mastery of the will over instincts and keeps desires within the limits of honesty. The temperate person directs his sensitive appetites toward the good, maintains a healthy discretion, and ‘does not let himself be led to follow the passions of his heart’ (Sir 5:2; cf. Sir 37:27-31).” Official French edition, Mame/Plon, 1992.
3Letter to Titus 2:11-12, official liturgical translation (AELF). The Greek sōphronōs (“with sobriety, temperance”) designates precisely the virtue of temperance as the program for ordinary Christian life.
4First Letter to the Corinthians 9:25-27, official liturgical translation (AELF): “All athletes impose upon themselves a rigorous asceticism [Gr. egkrateuetai, ‘exercise self-mastery’].” Classic Pauline image of temperance as the training of the Christian athlete.
5First Letter of Saint Peter 5:8, official liturgical translation (AELF): “Be sober [Gr. nēpsate], be watchful.” Sobriety is explicitly linked here to spiritual vigilance against evil.
6Letter to the Galatians 5:22-23, official liturgical translation (AELF): “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-mastery [Gr. egkrateia].” “Self-mastery” (formerly translated as “continence”) is named among the fruits of the Spirit, taken up in Catechism § 1832. Perfected temperance is thus a gift.
7Saint Anthony the Great (c. 251-356), Apophthegmata / Sayings, collected in the Philokalia of the Neptic Fathers, Éditions du Cerf, 2019, vol. A1, no. 3, p. 44: “Temperance, resignation, chastity, endurance, patience, and their like are so many considerable virtuous powers that we have received from God to resist the difficulties of the moment […]. If we exercise and maintain these powers, we will find that nothing difficult, painful, or intolerable will henceforth happen to us.”
8 16Saint Pachomius (c. 292-348), Counsels to a Resentful Monk, ed. Saint-Léger, 2017, p. 31: “Be perfectly pure, master of your thoughts, master of your body, master of your heart. Let your spirit obey! Remain small in your heart.”
9 17Saint Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335–c. 395), Homilies on the Our Father, Sources Chrétiennes, Cerf, 2018, p. 305: “Prayer is the safeguard of temperance, the correction of anger, the repression of vanity, the purification of resentment, the destruction of envy, the suppression of injustice, the correction of impiety.”
10 21Saint Augustine (354-430), De moribus Ecclesiae catholicae (The Morals of the Catholic Church), I, 15, 25: Augustine reduces the four cardinal virtues to forms of the love of God — “temperantia est amor integrum se praebens ei quod amatur”, “temperance is love that keeps itself whole and incorrupt for Him whom it loves.” Latin reference text on augustinus.it.
11 23Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 145, a. 1-2 and q. 141, a. 2, ad 3: temperance possesses an “honestas” — a moral beauty or splendor (spiritualis pulchritudo) — because the order that reason brings to the passions shines forth in the whole being; disorder, on the contrary, disfigures man.
12 26The Eternal Father to Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), The Dialogue, VII, 10: “To one I give charity, to another justice, humility or a lively faith, prudence, temperance, patience or fortitude. […] As soon as the soul possesses a virtue which it practices and develops preferentially, this virtue naturally draws the others; for all the virtues are bound by the bonds of charity.”
13 29Saint Vincent de Paul (1581-1660), teaching reported in paraphrase (indirect attribution) according to the anthology Saint Vincent de Paul par ses écrits, Médiaspaul, 2003, p. 94: mortifying one’s passions would make the soul free and give it rest, making it content with whatever happens to it. As the reference to the critical edition (Coste: volume, letter or conference, date) has not been identified, the saying is not given in quotation marks.
14 33Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, vol. 4, 23 December 1900: “By being in my Will, you will no longer need to fight your passions and always be at war with them. […] When one lives in my holy Will, the passions die gently, without struggle and without noise. They lose their life by themselves. For, before the holiness of my Will, the passions do not dare to show themselves.” Entry of 23 December 1900, French trans. Lumen Luminis (GE – La Volonté Divine), vol. 4; text verified verbatim in the complete French text, page not re-verified.
15 42 45Saint Basil of Caesarea (c. 330-379), Small Ascetical Collection (Asceticon), Abbey of Bellefontaine, 2013, p. 84: “One must eat without, even then, letting the mind stray from the thought of God; but from the very nature of food and the constitution of the body that receives it, one should take occasion to glorify God.”
18First Letter to Timothy 4:4-5, official liturgical translation (AELF): “For everything that God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for then it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.” Verse directed against a false spirituality (encratism) forbidding marriage and certain foods as evil in themselves. Scriptural foundation against rigorism.
19Saint John Cassian (c. 360-435), Conferences I (of Abbot Moses), Sources Chrétiennes 42 bis, Cerf, 2008, p. 113: “Everything lies in the deep sanctuary of the soul. When the devil has been cast out and the vices no longer reign there, consequently the reign of God is established in us.” For Cassian, mastery of the appetites is ordered to puritas cordis, purity of heart, the goal of all monastic asceticism.
20Saint Benedict of Nursia (c. 480-547), Rule, Prologue, 40-41: “Let us then prepare our hearts and bodies to fight the battle of holy obedience to the commandments; and for what is impossible to our nature, let us pray the Lord to deign to help us by His grace.” The Rule makes discretio (right measure) “the mother of virtues” (ch. 64), rejecting both softness and heroic rigorism.
22Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 141, a. 4-5: temperance concerns “primarily the pleasures of touch” (circa delectationes tactus), and among these, the pleasures “of food and of generation”, because these are the most natural and the most vehement. Reference edition: Summa Theologiae, Éditions du Cerf.
24Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 141, a. 8: temperance is “the least of the cardinal virtues” by its matter, but it remains principal (cardinal) because it moderates the passions most deeply rooted in human nature. Cf. I-II, q. 61, a. 2.
25Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 143 and q. 155: continence is attached to temperance as an annexed virtue; in the fully temperate man, the appetite itself is calmed, whereas the continent still experiences strong desires but does not yield to them.
27Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 143, a. 1: Thomas distinguishes the subjective parts of temperance (abstinence, sobriety, chastity) and its annexed parts (continence, gentleness/meekness, humility, modesty, studiousness), each applying the “right measure” to its own matter.
28Thomas à Kempis (c. 1380-1471), The Imitation of Christ, book I, ch. 19, 4: “In the morning, make your resolutions; in the evening, examine your conduct […]. Like a courageous soldier, arm yourself against the attacks of the devil. Restrain intemperance, and you will more easily restrain the other desires of the flesh.”
30Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, book I, ch. 6, 1-2: “As soon as a man begins to desire something in a disordered way, immediately he becomes restless within himself. […] It is by resisting the passions, and not by yielding to them, that one finds true peace of heart.” Temperance is presented here as the condition for interior peace.
31John Tauler (c. 1300-1361), Sermon 7: “The vinedresser will soon go to prune the wild shoots in his vineyard. If he did not do so and left them on the good wood, his vineyard would produce only sour and bad wine. So must a man worthy of the name do: he must prune himself of all that is disorder, cut away bad faults.” The Johannine image of the pruned vine (Jn 15:2) serves here as a figure of temperance.
32Saint Vincent de Paul, conference 37 to the Daughters of Charity, “On Mental Prayer”, 31 May 1648 (critical edition Coste, vol. IX, p. 427; English trans. CCD, vol. 9, p. 336): “Prayer and mortification are two very closely united sisters, one never goes without the other. Mortification comes first, prayer after […]. If you want to become daughters of prayer, you must learn to mortify yourselves.” Cited from the anthology Saint Vincent de Paul par ses écrits, Médiaspaul, 2003, p. 93.
34Saint Vincent de Paul, letter no. 1933 to Pierre de Beaumont, superior at Richelieu, 3 October 1655 (critical edition Coste, vol. V, p. 436; English trans. CCD, vol. 5): “Mortification, like the other virtues, is acquired only by repeated acts.” Cited from the anthology Saint Vincent de Paul par ses écrits, Médiaspaul, 2003, p. 95.
35Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591), The Ascent of Mount Carmel, book I, ch. 13: the saint teaches that all renunciation of sensual pleasures must be motivated by “a continual desire to imitate Christ in all your actions, conforming yourself to His life”, “who in this life had and wished to have no other taste than to do the will of His Father.” Mortification is ordered to love, not to contempt for the created. Éditions du Cerf, Complete Works.
36Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 142, a. 1: insensibility (insensibilitas) is the vice by defect opposed to temperance: to refuse without reasonable cause the pleasures necessary for the preservation of nature, or to despise the created goods that God has made good. It is a vice, not a virtue, for it contradicts the order willed by God.
37Saint Benedict Joseph Labre (1748-1783): language reported at second hand, cited from Albéric de Palmaert, Living the Gospel with Benedict Joseph Labre, Téqui, 2019, p. 99: “Our heart must be all of bronze for ourselves […], chastise the body by fasting and abstinence, and subdue all the inclinations of corrupt nature.” No primary source identified: to be read as the language of a heroic vocation of mendicant-pilgrim, neither as an established maxim nor as a common norm.
38Venerable Marthe Robin (1902-1981), Journal: December 1929 - November 1932, Éditions Foyer de Charité, 2012, p. 35: “Let us work without ceasing, without stopping, to overcome our nature, and we will advance more quickly on the beautiful path of God than by the secret satisfaction of fasting on bread and water.” True mortification is interior before being bodily.
39Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, vol. 3, 28 January 1900: “My daughter, mortification is like a fire that dries up all the bad humors that are in the soul and floods it with a humor of holiness, giving birth to the most beautiful virtues.” Entry of 28 January 1900, French trans. Lumen Luminis (GE – La Volonté Divine), vol. 3; text verified verbatim in the complete French text, page not re-verified.
41Gospel according to Saint Matthew 4:1-4, official liturgical translation (AELF): after forty days of fasting in the desert, Jesus answers the tempter: “It is written: Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Christ inaugurates His mission by a sovereign act of temperance and abstinence.
43Pius IX, bull Ineffabilis Deus, 8 December 1854: the Virgin Mary “was preserved free from all stain of original sin” from the first instant of her conception; cf. Lk 1:28 (“Hail, full of grace”, AELF) and CCC 490-493. Magisterial and scriptural foundation of the Immaculate Conception—distinct from any private revelation, which can only echo it.
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