Jesus was in the wilderness forty days

 Mark : 1:9-15 : In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.
And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."
And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him. Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."
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This is Lenten Season again, and we are reminded to have a thought about any form of fasting, either physical or spiritual, because Jesus had fasted for forty days in the desert, and also we have to have a spiritual preparation for the upcoming Easter High Holiday.
However, if your are thinking on any kind of fasting would be great for you for any reason, think it through twice before doing anything, as you should ask your doctor and your pharmacist, whether, by medical means, your are able or allowed to fast at all.

Nonetheless and in general, health practitioners and counselors usually advise against having any overweight though being underweight is also should be avoided. Like in everything, there should be a healthy balance in weight, in diet, in lifestyle, in exercise, in talking, in being quiet, in socialization, in being alone, in working, in having a rest, in being on a journey, in staying at home, in having marital relations, in having periods of abstinence.

Just as the Greek says, Μήδεν αγαν, "not too much of anything, nothing in excess, moderation in all things". The saying is a so called Delphic Maxim, carved into stone on the front of the ancient Greek Temple of Apollo, in Delphi, the place of the oracular utterances. It is in the company of 146 other wise maxims. It is attributed either to Apollo, himself, or to the Seven Greek Sages, among whom, according to Diogenes,were Thales, Solon, Chilon, Pittacus, Bias, Myson, Cleobulus counted. Although when the same oracle in Delphi once pronounced that Socrat is the wisest man on Earth, Plato explained that it is really true because Socrat was able not to pretend to know something he did not.

Paralelly it is hinted in the book of Exodus that God chose Moses to help people escape the slavery of Egypt and utter the new age of the Ten Commandments, not because Moses knew all the knowledge of the Egyptians, but because he was the most humble person on the Earth. How extensive was the knowledge of the Egyptians? Well, they built the pyramids, those, we were not able to replicate them today, even if we would try it hard. We have been not able even just to figure it out, what was the purpose to build those giants. Nonetheless, Moses built the Ark of the Covenant whose mysterious and occasionally scary qualities are described in the Scriptures.

Some people think that humans as species, we are omnivores, thus by default, we can naturally eat anything what is edible, and there are no restrictions at all. We can eat whatever we want or what we can afford. No limits of fantasy or spoiling ourselves, when it comes to food.

However, it is obviously not the case. All scientific data suggest that our diet significantly affects our health and our life expectancy. Also all mainstream religion since their very foundations has always suggested or prescribed a diet, which has been considered holy or healthy, or a part of the sacrificial system, or just as a requirement, or as a ban or a taboo like eating pork or the holy cow or some strange seafood.

The first medical issue is the quantity. Doctors agree that being overweight for a long run has most of the time very negative impact on the body. This negative impact on the liver and the kidney, on the blood pressure and circulation, on the heart, on the pancreas, on the joints, on the metabolism in general and practically on every organ, is so profound, that obesity should be considered as a disease in itself. This consideration must not be a stigma, because obesity can be caused by several factors often independent of or beyond human will and deliberation, like merely genes, diseases like thyroiditis, side effects of prescribed medications for several mental disorders, addictions, etc.

Nonetheless, overweight also can be a result of mere overeating, and as we can see in America, overeating can be similar to a multi-generational pandemic, with a very tragic death statistics through obesity related cancer, heart diseases, severe diabetes, strokes and so on.

Most of the mainstream religions name gluttony as a major sin, and from a moral point of view they should have some points in it, because the food production was never enough to cover the full population of the Earth, or what is even worse than that, the distribution of the food supply was never that generous to be able to prevent famines nationwide hungers in several countries or to prevent class related acute food poverty.

It is very characteristic to the sinful human nature that during the Great Depression in the early 30s, food factories rather destroyed the unsold manufactured food rather than to feed the hungry of their own country, their fellow citizens. Or for example the orange harvest they were not able to sell in California they threw it into the sea. This is a kind of shame which never expires but forever hunts.

Judged from a moral point, eating more than we need is like taking more from the common table of the always hungry human family than we should. It is also true, that we eat not only for the very survival of the body, but eating is one of the pleasures in life, and cooking became a culinary art.

The Greco-Roman world was infamous of their food orgies, when they overfilled their stomachs, they used goose feathers to scratch their throats to induce the giving back of the undigested content, in order to eat again and again. Not only gross, but mocking the hungry.

The other health or moral issue is the quality of our eating habits, the content of our diet. It is not that simple as it looks like. It is there hardly a general rule we could follow blind-folded. Although biologically we are all similar to each other, but we are not completely the same. One by one, we uniquely differ from each other, as we are all unique in the sense as our irises or our fingerprints are different from each other, and so our diet, we should follow, may differ one by one, even within a family bubble.

Allegedly, in the 1880s, it happened in Transylvania, which is a multiethnic quadrant of that world, that a doctor had to visit a man with colic symptoms, in a small town. The patient was a member of a Transylvanian mountain tribe, called Szekler and made immortal by the author Bram Stoker.

The doctor prescribed a bitter tasting medicine to purge the suspected kidney stones which were causing the colic cramps in the abdomen.
However, the man spitted out the medicine, saying, hey wife, meanwhile I suffer that much, it might be my last hours, I want to eat something. There was at home a big pot of stuffed cabbage with smoked meat, and the man, like there is no tomorrow, ate the whole big pot alone. It could have been enough for a family of four. He was prepared to die, but instead he fell asleep, and next morning like a new born baby he got up and went to the doctor on his own foot for supervision. The doctor was very surprised and make a note that about this renal colic case that the cure was stuffed cabbage with smoke meat.

Next week the doctor had a homecall to a Saxon house of a man suffering from the same colic symptoms. The doctor was happy to prescribe the stuffed cabbage with smoked meat as the best medicine he knew. However the Saxon man died next day. The doctor made the conclusive note with a sad but scientific pen, that the stuffed cabbage with smoked meat is a cure for the Szekler, but it is certain death for the Saxon.

So, whatever diet we wish to follow, we have to consult first our doctor, our pharmacist, our licensed dietitians before start anything to achieve whatever. Nonetheless, this is Lenten Season again, and we are reminded to have a thought about any form of fasting, either physical or spiritual, an extraordinary season in this year, for certain, when we are really reminded not only that how fragile we are one by one, but how fragile the whole world is as one, and how dependent we are on God’s mercy and his providence.May the Lord strengthen us to be able to walk with Jesus on this Lenten, Journey of 2021, having a fast in body or only in spirit for the always greater Glory of God, Amen.