By Tom Thomas –
We are well underway into the desert season of Lent. The fasting from the worldly things that we took up enthusiastically at the beginning of the Lenten season now seem to be dragging us down. Travelling through the desert can be a lonely and a tiring experience – both physically and mentally – at times. The things of the world from which we want to abstain from during this period call out to us. We seem to hear thoughts at times like “What is the use of continuing these rigorous practises”? At these moments it almost seems that the rigorous spiritual practises we follow are in vain and can be abandoned. One has to fight these thoughts. Just as St Benedict did when he was tempted by a little blackbird. Where do these thoughts come from? What do we do to fight them?
Acedia
There is a term for this condition and it is called Acedia (pronounced asi-dee-aah).
Here is what the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) has to say about it:
“Another temptation, to which presumption opens the gate, is acedia. The spiritual writers understand by this a form of depression due to lax ascetical practice, decreasing vigilance, carelessness of heart. “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” The greater the height, the harder the fall. Painful as discouragement is, it is the reverse of presumption. The humble are not surprised by their distress; it leads them to trust more, to hold fast in constancy (CCC. 2733).
The New Catholic Encyclopaedia defines it as, “The loneliness of the hermitage in the barren desert, a body worn out by fasting, and a mind fatigued by long prayers were conditions calculated to bring on the ennui and restlessness that was called acedia.”
History
Evagrius, the monk who lived in fourth century AD was the first to compile a list of the eight temptations which, after various revisions over time, became known as the seven deadly sins against which Christians are exhorted to battle against. Acedia, which was recorded to have been mentioned by him first, is equated to sloth or laziness.
Here is what Evagrius has to say:
“The demon of acedia, also called the noonday demon, is the most oppressive of all the demons. He attacks the monk about the fourth hour and besieges his soul until the eighth hour. First of all, he makes it appear that the sun moves slowly or not at all, and that the day seems to be fifty hours long. Then he compels the monk to look constantly towards the windows, to jump out of the cell, to watch the sun to see how far it is from the ninth hour, to look this way and that.”
Symptoms of Acedia
The symptoms of the disease are restlessness, drifting and indifference, a deep feeling of “disconnectedness” with everything. But it is actually the shadow side of every commitment. In it the potentialities are negated by the yes that made one a Christian, a husband, a wife, a priest, a monk, a nun, a religious or a celibate person.
Acedia brings with it, therefore, the torture of second thoughts, daydreams of what might have been, and complaints about what is.
This spiritual malaise has these inevitable symptoms: laziness, sleepiness, melancholy, nausea, sadness and lack of enthusiasm and motivation. Acedia is a sort of asphyxiation or suffocation of the spirit that leads us to suffer unhappiness that causes so much discontentment emotionally, socially and work-related.
Remedy for Acedia
Evagrius believed that Acedia needed to be overcome by Perseverance ( cutting off such thoughts as soon as they occur) through the reading of Sacred Scripture, tears and physical labor.
He suggests in his work “Eight Thoughts”: “ Set a measure for yourself in every work and do not let up until you have completed it. Pray with understanding and intensity, and the spirit of acedia will flee from you.
Evagrius’ work was brought to the West by his faithful disciple John Cassian. Pope Gregory1, adopted these teachings of John Cassian and the noted theologian St Thomas Aquinas, refined this in the 13th Century in his seminal work “Summa Theologica ” into the seven deadly sins as we know them today. The Catechism of the Catholic Church follows this same list today with the only terminology change being “Pride” replacing “Vainglory.”
Cassian says, “Experience proves that an onslaught of acedia must not be avoided by flight but overcome through resistance.” In one of the teachings of the Desert Fathers, the instruction given to a disciple is “to sit in your cell and the cell will teach you.” At all costs one must not give way to the desire to leave the cell. The temptation to recoil into the self must be answered by a determined push outward. Because the temptation to indifference, to disconnectedness will appear to be an easy solution to the kind of vacuum one experiences in acedia. This is the time one needs to be rooted in God.
The solution that the desert fathers suggest also is to contradict sloth head-on. This is a hard teaching, but a universal one: if we give way to sloth in order to ease its pressure on us, if we allow ourselves to behave according to the feelings of inner spiritual deadness, it will only get worse.
This is an experiential wisdom coming to us directly from those great ammas and abbas of the Egyptian desert who lived their whole lives out in that harsh solitude. It is confirmed in the experience of thousands of spiritual practitioners since then. If we leave our spiritual practices to find someone to chat with in order to ease the burden of sloth, or if we indulge in fantasies about all the good works we could be doing elsewhere, or if we indulge in obsessive, negative thoughts about the community we are in, either in our families, or our particular life situations – if we idealise states of life other than our own, or if we give in to physical torpor – these will only get worse, and drive us into deeper irritation and laziness, and cause us to be busybodies. Eventually we will lose our zeal and commitment to the contemplative journey.
The Church provides a series of exercises, some simple and some complex, to enable people of all kinds to live a life in self-awareness. At its best, these spiritual exercises enabled people to remain self-aware, especially through the examination of conscience,
Abbot Christopher Jamison says, “Spiritual reading and prayer help us to recognise our demons while also helping us to contain them. As we spend time persevering in prayer and meditation, we become aware of the interior movements of the whole self, body, mind and soul.
“Our culture implies that indulging the Seven Deadly Sins is the way to happiness; more food, more things and more sex, combined with personal aggression and vanity, are the way to happiness. This is the message hitting us day by day. The good news is that most people in their heart of hearts know this message is a lie, but many lack the means to live out an alternative.
“This spiritually careless culture does not have to run our lives, however, and helping people to overcome our culture’s endemic acedia is the bounden duty of a Christian.”
(Finding Happiness, Liturgical Press, USA, 2008, p.58. )