“When I walk in the forest just before the meal, while reciting the scriptural phrase that I "meditate" for that day, spiritual joy comes over me as if by appointment.”

“In the afternoon the digestion of the meal deprives me of the incomparable lightness which characterizes the fast days.”

“When a person eats shortly before going to bed, digestion accompanies sleep. The two great physiological functions are completed together, leaving the maximum of freedom to the mind during the day.”

“In fact, according to physicians, the functioning of the digestion depends less on the brain than on hormonal mechanisms and autoregulators. However, during a fast, the digestive system gets an increasing rest. About ten hours after a meal, the contractions stop and the feeling of hunger disappears; five or six hours later the glucose stops coming directly from the intestines and begins to produce itself from the reserve of glycogen contained in the liver. From then on, the body works on itself in a closed circuit, becoming itself the source of the energy it uses. Instead of destroying an appropriating to himself nourishment taken from outside, man enters a state of nonviolence and detachment relative to the outside world.”

“Eating three times a day means takingon, almost without respite, the work of assimilation.”

“. . .fasting gives me singularly happy afternoons.”

“The discrepancy between the modern observance and the prescriptions of the Rule had struck me ever since the novitiate, and no satisfactory explanation had ever been given to me. People said that man had changed: the weakness of people's health no longer allows us to fast. Was it true?”