PSALM SIXTY-NINE

Unless a person always descends to hell in attitude and in fear, he will not be in a secure position. He who is secure is least secure, and he who is fearful and terrified is blessed, because he will be least afraid.
On the basis of this I believe that so great an abomination of guzzling and high living abounds because we are not afraid that either the spiritual or the physical table will become a snare for us. For since we do not eat the food in fear, it soon catches our soul and ensnares it in the tickling of the flesh, in talkativeness, in fickleness, and other monstrosities without number, that is, a retribution and a stumbling block. And then the eyes are soon darkened for seeing divine things. And the back, that is, the flesh, is bent down to its own lusts and other things that are in the world. But if this happens to all others with regard to their table, how much more does it happen especially to the clerics and the religious. Their table, since it is the sweat and the sins of others, must be feared with an incomparable fear, so that it does not become a snare. Truly, it will be not only a snare but rather snares. For they are entangled with both the sins of others and with their own. Oh, that we, too, would understand and be wise, and provide for our last end! For these imprecations are so abundant nowhere else, neither among the Jews nor among the Gentiles (as far as the physical table is concerned), as they are among the priests and the religious today. They, too, have been seized by the rage of God’s wrath that they neither see nor want to see that they are under God’s wrath. –Martin Luther