The Beauty of Fasting and the Example of Samson

Because the table was defiled by the mixing with those sacrificing to idols, they ate only seeds. There was also wine poured out for the libation and all meat because of the previously stated reason.

As they were forced by the one presiding to partake in what was being offered to them, lest perhaps their beauty be changed into deformity from self-restraint, and thus that person's reproach and punishment might become the unsightly and unhealed state of the youths; 'Spare us,' they say, 'so that we may not appear less honorable to the King of the revelers, nor shall our faces be rejected, nor will you approach as if presenting to him deformed servants.' For the Artisan of our formation will give grace and will teach through experience, that God is the caretaker of our beauty and fasting is the attendant of the sought-after elegance. And that which has indeed happened. For the youths exceeded all and they all emboldened the meat-eaters.

And what of Samson? Immediately from milk he was not taught to fast in such a way as it was fitting for the child, having been suckled by his mother, to abstain from wine and to guard against all luxury? And who was strong like him? And who was the left-handed one so famously named? He alone was a worthy combatant against every arrangement of wars, and an innumerable multitude he turned back by power; he who, having lacked sword or spear, but ascending upon the jawbone of a donkey, destroyed warlike men by using only the bone.

So then also you were hoping and you shall be strong; with readiness and with power you shall become; give ear to the learning of the hidden things and forget food, just as the people following Jesus, being instructed in word and deed. Let us, the incontinent and the pleasure-loving, Greeks and Jews, not fast in vain and for no end; for they are vainly penalized for what they do not eat, except as a zeal for the matter, which is fitting for the serious.

For Christians, precision in conduct and dignity in philosophy are proper, to whom the pure and true word of piety is present. But those who practice moral discipline apart from this seem to me to be working like those building a house without a foundation or launching a ship without it being steered. Such Hebrews are ill-known. And laughter falls heavily upon me when I behold them, unendurable, wandering around the white mortars with amphorae, a mockery of Moses, a shame to the prophets.