Consider these four scenarios:
* Is going to Seoul Garden and eating till you are full and a bit beyond, gluttony?
* Is piling food on your plate during a buffet, a sin of gluttony?
* Is finishing the food on your plate even when you are full, a sin of gluttony?
* Or how about when you go over to your girlfriend/boyfriend’s place and her/his mother keeps pressing you to eat even when you are full, a sin of gluttony?

What is gluttony? Gluttony is an inordinate love of the pleasures attached to the eating of food and/or drink. Most people would agree with me that gluttony compared to the other mortal sins like the sin of rape is less severe, but however, why is a capital sin?

Gluttony is a capital sin because it generates, so to say, easily other sins, especially sin related to the body. He, who eats too much, easily lets his guard down and falls into other weakness. If these weakness are grave sins, even gluttony can be a mortal sin.

Story
There was a man who made a deal with the devil. In return for the service of the devil, the man has to choose between these three sins he needs to commit: sin of rape, sin of murder, or the sin of gluttony. Feeling that the sin of gluttony was less severe than the other two, the man chose to commit the sin of gluttony. So he went again to get himself drunk. Upon fulfilling his end of the deal, he went home; but to his greatest mistake, he went to his parents’ place instead. When he entered the bed room, he saw a woman, who he immediately went to bed with her. Little did he know that that woman was his mother. She screamed for help and resisted his advances. Hearing her screams, her husband ran up to stop the intruder. However, being in the blurry state, the son though the father was trying to hurt him. He killed his father, rapes his mother and killed her too. In this unfortunate event, the man committed the sin of rape, murder, incest, anger, and gluttony. SO DON’T PLAY PLAY HOR!

In the other hand, if the inordinate concupiscence in the vice of gluttony be found to affect such things as are directed to the end, for instance when a man has too great a desire for the pleasure of the palate, yet would not for their sake do anything contrary to God’s law, it is a venial sin.

What is considered glutinous? St Thomas Aquinas defined five forms of gluttony:
1. Eating food that is too luxurious, exotic, or costly
2. Eating food that is excessive in quantity
3. Eating food that is too daintily or elaborately prepared
4. Earing too soon, or at an inappropriate time
5. Eating too eagerly

We have two appetites:
1. Natural appetite which cannot be controlled by us since our body needs a certain amount of food to continue to live and,

2. Sensitive appetite which gives us pleasure in tasting food, what satisfies our palate and makes us like to eat.

CCC2535: The sensitive appetite leads us to desire pleasant things, things we do not have, e.g. the desire to eat when we are hungry or to warm ourselves when we are cold. These desires are good in themselves but often they exceed the limits of reason and drive us to covet unjustly what is not ours and belongs to another or is owed to him.

Ending
Once upon a time there was a little glutton who only ate sweets and candy. One day,in an antique shop he found an old magnifying glass. He liked it very much, and his parents bought it for him. He was so happy with his magnifying glass! As soon as he could, he used it to look at a little ant. It was great! The ant looked so big. But then a strange thing happened. When he took the magnifying glass away, the ant stayed the same size it had appeared through the glass.

Very surprised, the boy kept experimenting, and he found that anything he looked at through the magnifying glass would get bigger, and stay that way.

Suddenly, he realised how he could best use this special ability, and he ran home. At home he took all the candies and sweets, and he made them gigantic with his magnifying glass. Then he completely stuffed himself with them, until he could eat nothing more. However, the next morning he woke up totally swollen, a bit purple, and with a huge bellyache. When the doctor came to see him, he said it was the worst case of upset tummy he had ever seen. Night and day, the little glutton suffered so much that for a long time he didn’t want to hear mention of large amounts of food. His parents were happy about this. Thanks to their son’s latest gluttony their pantry was full of the food he could not eat. What’s more, he gave up being a glutton who only ever ate sweets and candy. He wanted nothing to do with them.

And so it was that the little glutton learned that even with the best things in life, if you have too many of them, you will end up feeling ill. He decided to keep the magnifying glass in a box until he found something that would really be worth making bigger.

How about you? What would you use the magnifying glass for?