Our asceticism is not supposed to make us weary of a life that is vile. It is not supposed to make our bodies, which are good, appear to us to be evil. It is not supposed to make us odious to ourselves. An asceticism that makes all pleasure seem gross and disgusting and all the activities of the flesh abominable is a perversion of the nature which God made good and which even sin has not succeeded in rendering totally vile. The real purpose of asceticism is to disclose the difference between the evil use of created things, which is sin, and their good use, which is virtue.
