Enjoying life and enjoying the summer

Here is what St. John Crysostom thinks about drinking wine.

For wine was given us of God, not that we might be drunken, but that we might be sober; that we might be glad, not that we get ourselves pain. ‘Wine,’ it [the scriptures] says, ‘makes glad the heart of man,’ but you make it matter for sadness; since those who are inebriated are sullen beyond measure, and great darkness over-spreads their thoughts.

It is the best medicine, when it has the best moderation to direct it. The passage before us is useful also against heretics, who speak evil of God’s creatures; for if it had been among the number of things forbidden, Paul would not have permitted it, nor would have said it was to be used.

And not only against the heretics, but against the simple ones among our brethren, who when they see any persons disgracing themselves from drunkenness, instead of reproving such, blame the fruit given them by God, and say, ‘Let there be no wine.’ We should say then in answer to such, ‘Let there be no drunkenness; for wine is the work of God, but drunkenness is the work of the devil. Wine makes not drunkenness; but intemperance produces it.

Do not accuse that which is the workmanship of God, but accuse the madness of a fellow mortal. But you, while omitting to reprove and correct the sinner, treatest your Benefactor with contempt!’ - (“Concerning the Statutes,” Homily I, in Shaff, D.D., LL. D., Philip. A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. New York: The Christian Literature Company, 1889., p. 335)