Colleen Orchanian

My dad was an all-or-nothing kind of guy. If he was interested in something, he never took it slowly. When he began running, he did marathons. When he heard about intermittent fasting, he started by fasting for three days at a time. He never tested the water first. Just jumped in completely.

I am a bit like him, especially with spiritual things. When my faith journey was ignited in my forties, I read a ton of books, listened to countless CDs on apologetics, attended Bible studies, anything to feed what seemed to be an insatiable thirst for knowledge. When I began to volunteer at church, I didn't just join one group, I became part of ten groups. Then I took a part-time job at church, which was supposed to be ten hours a week, but I typically worked 30 or 40. I loved what I was doing and wanted more and more. I was a spiritual glutton.

Spiritual gluttony is the opposite of sloth, one of the seven deadly sins. Sloth is when we don't pay attention to our spiritual life. We are bored with it. Spiritual gluttony is the opposite extreme. We overdose on it.

You might wonder how it is bad to pay too much attention to our spiritual life. After all, isn't that what we are called to do as Christians? Put God first? And yes, it is. But sometimes we are chasing after something that is not God.

Here are some examples of spiritual gluttony.

Devouring information. This was my failing when I had a renewal of faith. I wanted to know everything. I wanted to be able to defend my faith to those who were doubters or anti-Catholic. I wanted to know how to find things in the Bible. I wanted to understand what the Church taught and why. And so I fed my mind. This was good, but my desire was not God. It was knowledge, information, and ammunition for a debate. I could debate with the best of them, but there was little charity in my approach. I was filling my head with wonderful information, but my heart was not being transformed, and it really needed some transformation. God could work with this gluttony for information, but it was a slow process. Satan can use this "information junkie" phase to keep us from growing closer to God.

Chasing feelings. Sometimes we have an experience of God that is visceral. We FEEL God in our hearts, in our bodies, in our minds. We experience the Holy Spirit's presence like the Apostles on Pentecost. There is an energy that is real. And we want that feeling back, so we seek out experiences, techniques, and people who can help us get that feeling again. There are many problems with this.

1. We seek avenues that are forbidden to Christians as ways to "feel God." New age practices are very popular, and many have an element of Christianity or words that make it seem like it's okay, but it's not. The source of the feeling is not God.

2. We may come to believe that we don't have faith if we don't feel it. That belief is contrary to the definition of faith. What might happen is that we don't have good feelings when we pray, so we think it's not fruitful. Then we pray less.

3. We try to manipulate God to give us a mystical experience, but we cannot manipulate God.

4. We become addicted to the pleasure itself and not to the One who is the source of the pleasure. And that's the real problem.

Satan wants us to focus on our feelings because feelings can deceive us. God never does that.

Feeding Our Appetites. We chase after the things we like, our preferences. But we want to be led by the Holy Spirit and not by our appetites. For example, when I go to a Catholic bookstore, I don't buy one book; I buy ten. I'm not going to read ten books, but they all look so good. I don't discern which two or three books God wants me to get and grow with. Then I get frustrated because I have these books and not enough time to read them, or I skim a book that is meant to be read slowly and absorbed so that I can be transformed. I have a banquet of rich food, and I'm gorging myself and wasting so much. That's a form of gluttony.

Disordered use of time. This has always been my struggle. I keep adding things to my plate without discerning if it's God's will. That's how a 10-hour-a-week job became full-time work. My pastor sat me down and ordered me to cut back or else. I wanted to work less because I had family responsibilities, but I didn't know how to get free of the things I had taken on. I needed a boss to set me straight.

The problem I had was a disordered use of my time. My priorities were out of order. I neglected my family to serve the church. Lots of people in ministry do this. And we often don't realize that it's a spiritual attack. We think we're doing God's work, and we are. But what is supposed to come first? What is the right order?

Here's what we know.

1. Worship God & Pray. This differs from serving God or going to Bible Study, or reading about God. It's the reason the Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt—so they could worship God. That's how important it is.

2. Our primary vocation. If I have children, if I have a husband, if I have an ailing parent, that's next. If I am the breadwinner for the family, work is my next priority.

3. Serving others/Our apostolate. We are called to serve others, but not before we serve our family.

4. Personal Growth. This is when we go on retreat, attend workshops and studies, read, listen to podcasts, get spiritual direction, and go on a pilgrimage. We want continuous spiritual growth, and that takes attention. But it's fourth in line.

The attack of spiritual gluttony leads us to put these four areas in the wrong order. When I was hungry to learn, that was all I did. When I wanted to serve, that was all I had time for. God wants things rightly ordered. The devil doesn't.

How do you know when you're experiencing this attack? According to Fr. John Bartunek, if you are spiritually balanced, it should lead to internal peace and external generosity. If that's not what you are experiencing, you may be under attack. God wants to transform us, and we desire that as well. Spiritual gluttony will never achieve that transformation. So if you keep feeding yourself and don't see transformation, you may be under attack.

If you are pigging out spiritually, slow down. Discern what the Holy Spirit wants for you right now. What is the next step in your journey? You don't have to take it all in today. Christian maturity is a slow process and a good one. Let God lead the way.

Questions for prayer:

1. Where do you have a tendency to spiritual gluttony? Why is this attack working with you? What might Satan's goal be in attacking you this way?

2. How well-ordered are your priorities? If they are not properly ordered, what can you do to set things right?