Our Mind is like a Flute
The Creator has bestowed divine beauty on us by adding, to his own image in us, the likeness of the qualities he himself possesses. This beauty brings with it other benefits with which God has generously enriched our human nature.
For instance we ought to consider our minds as far more than a gift. They are a way of sharing the mind of God. But the mind by itself, because it is incorporeal, cannot communicate with other beings: it does not have any means of displaying its proper nature.
So God created an instrument, the vocal chords which the mind strike like a plectrum, and so by using different sounds it can share its own internal world.
The mind is like a competent musician who relates with the public on the flute or the lyre. The mind is full of a thousand ideas that otherwise would remain hidden, and it lavishes them upon the minds of others in a way that they can understand by means of sound.
Therefore from the human body flows music as if the flute and the lyre were playing together, creating a unique harmony. The same lips now open, now closed, are like fingers running swiftly over musical instruments.
Gregory of Nyssa, The Creation of Man, 9 (PG44, 149)
The Importance of Keeping Healthy
When the body is ill, the soul is badly affected. In the great majority of cases, in fact, our spiritual capacities behave according to our physical condition; illness lays us low and makes us different, almost unrecognizable from when we are well.
If the strings of an instrument give a feeble or false sound because they are not taut enough, the artist has no way of displaying any particular talent: the defect in the strings defeats all skill. It is the same with the body. It can do a great deal of harm to the soul.
So I ask you: take care that your body stays fit, safeguard it from illness of any sort.
I am not telling you either to let it waste away or to let it grow fat. Feed it with as much food as is necessary for it to become a ready instrument of the soul.
If you stuff it with delicious dainties, the body is incapable of resisting the impulses that attack it and weaken it. A person may be very wise and yet, if he abandons himself without restraint to wine and the pleasures of the table, it is inevitable that he will feel the flames of inordinate desire blazing more fiercely within him.
A body immersed in delights is a body that breeds lust of every kind.
John Chrysostom, Homily on the Epistle to the Hebrews, 29, 3ff. (PG63, 207)
~Thomas Spidlik, Drinking from the Hidden Fountain: A Patristic Breviary, Ancient Wisdom for Today’s World
