Our Blessed Father held in great esteem the Gospel maxim, _Eat such things
as are set before you_.[1] He deemed it a much higher and stronger degree
of mortification to accommodate the tastes and appetite to any food,
whether pleasant or otherwise, which may be offered, than always to choose
the most inferior and coarsest kinds. For it not seldom happens that the
greatest delicacies--or those at least which are esteemed to be such by
epicures--are not to our taste, and therefore to partake of them without
showing the least sign of dislike is by no means so small a matter as may
be thought. It incommodes no one but the person who so mortifies himself,
and it is a little act of self-restraint so secret, so securely hidden from
others, that the rest of the company imagine something quite different from
the real truth.
He also considered that it was a species of incivility when seated at a
meal to ask for some dish which was at the other end of the table, instead
of taking what was close at hand. He said that such practices were evidence
of a mind too keen about viands, sauces, and condiments; too much absorbed
in mere eating and drinking. If, he added, this careful picking out of
dishes is not done from greediness or gluttony, but from a desire to choose
the worst food, it smacks of affectation, which is as inseparable from
ostentation as smoke from fire. The conduct of people who do this is not
unlike that of guests who take the lowest seats at the table, in order
that they may, with the greater _éclat_, be summoned to the higher places.
The following incident will show his own indifference. One day poached
eggs were served to him, and when he had eaten them, he continued to dip
his bread in the water in which they had been cooked, apparently without
noticing what he was doing. The guests were all smiling. Upon discovering
the cause of their amusement, he told them it was too bad of them to
undeceive him, as he was taking the sauce with much relish, verifying the
proverb that "Hunger is the best sauce"!
[Footnote 1: Luc. x. 8.]