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X Sunday After Pentecost X Sunday after Pentecost - Acedia1 In the name of the Father… Man is characterized by a three-fold love of self, neighbor and God.2 The three-fold wound of Original Sin distorts those loves,3 the resultant capital vices disposing us to commit sin, disordered acts not consistent with our true happiness which lies in cultivating - perfecting - well-ordered loves. The well-ordered love of self is distorted by the concupiscence of the flesh - by the capital vices of gluttony and lust which promise false happiness in pleasure. The perennial remedy against these carnal vices is corporal mortification, e.g., fasting. The well-ordered love of neighbor is distorted by the concupiscence of the eyes - by the capital vice of avarice which promises false happiness in possessions. The perennial remedy against this vice is liberality with worldly goods, particularly almsgiving. Arising from the wound of the pride of life is the capital vice of acedia - or sloth. Commonly understood as mere laziness or inertia, the early desert fathers rather articulated acedia as a disgust and sorrow for the monastic life and its attendant asceticism, prompting a desire to flee and return to a former life. Thus, acedia was seen as a peculiarly religious vice, a threat to a religious vocation - to a commitment of one's life to God. When monasticism reached the west, eremitical life became communal and the necessary asceticism assumed a social dimension. Consequently, acedia now manifested by distancing oneself from communal duties, e.g., common prayer or manual labor. The root, however, was still discontent with the religious identity, and therefore a relationship with God. Acedia does not always manifest itself in inactivity; sometimes it manifests in over activity, undertaken as a diversion. Thus, a monk might indulge in all sorts of distractions to avoid facing the truth about his vocation and its demands. Following the Protestant revolt and the suppression of monastic life, the concept of a vocation was extended to all forms of work. Simultaneously, the concept of acedia was stripped of spiritual commitment and identified with its most obvious symptom - laziness, so that the other manifestation of acedia - restless over-activity - became a virtue. As a result, work supplanted a relationship with God as 1 This sermon was inspired by Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies (Brazos Press, 2009), Chapter 4 – Sloth. See also by the same: Resistance to the Demands of Love - Aquinas on the Vice of Acedia, The Thomist 68 (2004), 173-204; Aquinas on the Vice of Sloth: Three Interpretative Issues, The Thomist 75 (2011), 43-64; The Vice of Sloth: Some Historical Reflections on Laziness, Effort and Resistance to the Demands of Love, The Other Journal 10 (2007). 2 Mt 22:36-39 3 1 Jn 2:16 the source of happiness, as typified by secular American culture which glorifies devotion to work and then seeks endless distraction in entertainment. St Thomas Aquinas extended acedia's dangers beyond religious life by defining it as a sorrow for the divine good within us, i.e., charity.4 Charity, which orders us to God, the ultimate end and defining reality of our lives, has a twofold act: love of God for his own sake, and love of neighbor for God's sake. The capital vice of envy is opposed to the love of neighbor: acedia is opposed to the love of God. Of all the capital vices, then, the gravity of acedia is second only to vainglory. Acedia is not the passion of sorrow - that sadness felt in the presence of an evil which cannot be avoided - but a deliberate resistance of the will to the demands of our participation in God, a resistance to our true happiness viewed as something evil to be avoided. This is because charity demands its own continual growth, and so also demands the death - through discipline and mortification - of anything which is an obstacle to that growth. A sorrow opposed to the joy which should flow from charity as its first fruit,5 acedia induces shrinking away from this discipline, this effort. It resists true human fulfilment on account of what St Paul calls the flesh prevailing over the spirit, i.e., the old sinful nature prevailing over nature regenerated by grace. Due to the effort required, the divine good can indeed appear as an evil to be resisted and avoided, in accordance with Aristotle's dictum: As the man is, so does the end seem to him. Acedia is a sorrow at - and resistance to - the essential work of transformation, sanctification, change in me, demanded by charity: it is a resistance to the demands of love. Thus, it is an inertia, a resistance - not to effort as such, but specifically the effort which is required to accept and live out the life of grace and charity. It is a sorrow for being called into a relationship with God. Thus, acedia is a spiritual vice, not a carnal one. As a capital vice, it is the source of many sins both of commission and omission. Left unchecked, acedia can lead to sins of malice, bitterness and pusillanimity - the opposite of magnanimity which strengthens us to undertake great things for God. Acedia can lead to discouragement and thence to despair. Due to the neglect of mortification, it can lead to effeminacy and sensuality, and thence to impurity. Fr Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange observes: acedia is an evil sadness opposed to spiritual joy … [it] is a disgust for spiritual things… because they demand too much effort and self-discipline… a disgust 4 ST IIa IIae 35, 2, c 5 Gal 5:22 which leads one to perform them negligently, to shorten them or to omit them under vain pretexts. It is the cause of tepidity.6 The transformation of becoming more and more like God is the work of a lifetime. For man, sanctification is an arduous - the most arduous - activity. Due to a corporal constitution, man alone is susceptible to acedia: the angels, being pure spirits, were susceptible to other spiritual vices - pride and envy - but not acedia. Strictly concerning our relationship with God, acedia analogously can enter any loving relationship, especially marriage, where oftentimes it seems easier to withdraw either through silence or distraction and useless ventures rather than to honestly address problems, problems with me. Recall: acedia [is] a threat to a… commitment of one's life… identified with distancing oneself from communal duties, e.g., common prayer or labor… The root [is] discontent with [an] identity and therefore a relationship… In the scriptures, the classic examples of acedia are Lot's wife - who longingly looked back to her life in Sodom - and the Israelites in the desert who yearned to be back among the fleshpots of Egypt rather than have God purge their disorder in the desert wilderness. The remedy for acedia - as the desert fathers knew - is perseverance and courage, staying the course, resisting the temptation to flee or take the easy way out. Their counsel to the hermits was stability of place, remaining in the cell and the battle: You must not abandon the cell in the time of temptations, fashioning excuses seemingly reasonable. Rather you must remain... exercise perseverance... fleeing and circumventing such struggles teaches the mind to be unskilled, cowardly and evasive. We too must be disciplined and not run away from our vocation. Someone burdened with acedia either slumps into despair and inactivity or stays busy with desperate measures to escape. Indeed, it is possible to have both manifestations simultaneously, as exemplified by those who will spend endless hours bemoaning the state of the Church to anyone who will listen (i.e., engage in busy distraction), but will not get down on their knees and pray or come to Mass on Sunday, or if they do, do so reluctantly and invariably late (i.e., indulge sorrowful inertia). We must be attentive to the duty of the moment and not indulge distractions. Unlike temptations from lust which must be fled, temptations from acedia demand exactly the opposite course of action, and especially in respect of prayer and contemplation. Unlike the Israelites, we must turn from 6 Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange OP, The Three Ages of the Interior Life (TAN, 1989), Vol 1, p380 that desire for a former life - the old self - and embrace some of that life of the desert - common prayer and manual labor, discipline, diligence, perseverance, courage, contemplation and silence. .
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