Most people, until they begin to deprive themselves, have little awareness of how indulgent our senses can be in satisfying our immediate desires. This is particularly true of pleasures in food, which makes food a good place to start in the matter of ascetical restraint. Restricting ourselves to eating only at meals and taking nothing else in between, tempering our intake, not always choosing in accord with preference, mild steady fasting in predictable routines-these are hardly extreme measures. But quickly they begin to teach us how to say “no” to desires that would otherwise be indulged without a thought. These lessons of self-denial, first learned in physical privations, can carry over for use into many areas of the spiritual life, especially in exercising charity or conquering pride, but also in the life of prayer when prayer is difficult, as we shall see. The power to command, and the strength to refuse, are indispensable for virtue but are essential as well for contemplative life, as we will also see. All self-denial becomes a form of dying to self, which in itself is a core principle of spirituality, but it also fosters a vibrant will that is able to give freely and generously to God. The interior freedom to love without restraint depends on embracing an ultimate spiritual principle that “He must increase, but I must decrease” (Jn 3:30), as Saint John the Baptist famously taught, and without which there is no open path to God. –Saint John of the Cross: Master of Contemplation by Father Donald Haggerty