How Not to Exceed the Proper Measure of Food

Both duties must be kept in the same way and with equal care. We ought to keep most scrupulously to the proper allowance of food for the sake of our abstinence, and in the same way, out of love, to show courtesy and encouragement to any of the brothers who may arrive. For it is utterly absurd, when you offer food to a brother, or rather to Christ himself, not to share it with him, but to keep yourself a stranger to his meal. So we will keep clear of fault on either side if we follow this plan. At the ninth hour we eat one of the two biscuits that make up the proper allowance fixed by our rule, and keep the other back until evening, expecting that something like this may happen. Then, if any of the brothers comes to see us, we may eat it with him, and so add nothing to our own usual allowance. By this arrangement the arrival of our brother, which ought to be a pleasure to us, will cause us no inconvenience, since we will show him the kindness that courtesy requires without relaxing anything of the strictness of our abstinence. But if no one comes, we may freely take this last biscuit as ours by our rule. And by this frugality of ours, since only a single biscuit was taken at the ninth hour, our stomach will not be overloaded in the evening. That is often what happens to those who, thinking they are keeping a stricter abstinence, put off their whole meal until evening. For having only just eaten keeps our mind from being bright and keen in both our evening and our night prayers. So at the ninth hour a convenient and suitable time has been allowed for food. At that hour a monk can refresh himself, and so find that he is not only fresh and alert during his night vigils but also perfectly ready for his evening prayers, since his food is already digested.

With such a banquet of two courses, so to speak, the holy Moses feasted us. By his present learned speech he showed us the grace and power of discernment, and by the discussion held before, he showed us the method of renunciation and the end and aim of the monastic life. So he made clearer than daylight what until then we had pursued only with fervor of spirit and zeal for God, but with our eyes closed. He made us feel how far we had wandered until then from purity of heart and the straight line of our course. For the practice of all the visible arts of this life cannot possibly stand without an understanding of their aim, nor can it be taken in hand without a clear view of a definite end. [a]