The Sound of Music
[Dear Reader: This is the eighth in a series on the vices as the Desert Fathers understood them. If you haven’t already read them, please begin the series with parts one and two first.]
Language is a funny, fickle, often nonsensical thing. We drive on parkways and park on driveways. “Sanction” can mean the exact opposite of “sanction,” depending on whether you mean “condemn” or “endorse.” If you want to make a logician or rhetorician have an aneurysm, say “begs the question” when you really mean “raises the question.” Over a couple of decades I’ve watched from a safe distance as the word “literally” has come to mean “emphatically, but very much not literally.” Sometimes antiquated words, like “huzzah,” make a comeback; more often, it seems, very useful words fall out of common usage.
The sixth of the vices in John Cassian’s summation is “acedia,” a word unfamiliar to most English speakers. Where it is used it is almost exclusively among the religious; look it up on Wikipedia and you’ll get a heavy dose of Thomas Aquinas and of early Christian monks, including John Cassian, with a smattering of modern secular references. It is unfortunate, I think, that acedia is a word little used outside religious circles and little more inside them. It is a very useful concept which describes a significant spiritual stumbling block.
How Do You Find a Word That Means Acedia?
The word acedia is a transliteration of the Greek akadia, and like many useful words in Greek (and Latin) there is not a handy English equivalent which captures the same shade of meaning. The English translation of the Philokalia, an Orthodox devotional reader which paraphrases John Cassian’s Latin Institutes in Greek, renders acedia as “listlessness.” This is a crucial part of the picture—but only a part. By the Middle Ages acedia had largely transformed into “sloth,” which again captures a part but not the whole. Other suggestions include torpor (another word which will send most modern English speakers scrambling for a dictionary), apathy, or laziness. To these, I might add “bitterness.” Acedia includes, but is not limited to, all these things.
Cassian’s short explanation of acedia is “a wearied or anxious heart” (Institutes X.I), which, though it is not a detailed explanation, at least points us in the right direction. But with this in mind, acedia can give us some tools to address the potential spiritual components of anxiety or depression as we recognize them today, though I caution against doing so in a way that recklessly dismisses the role psychology and psychiatry may need to play in any individual case. I would also caution against linking acedia too closely with depression or anxiety, because while there is overlap they are not the same thing. In fact, for some people the effects of acedia look nothing like what most of us would consider depression. The best short explanation of acedia I can come up with is “restless discontent.” And I think our culture is riddled with it; I know I am.
As with many of the vices it is easier to understand acedia from its effects than from a definition, and Cassian’s description of acedia sounds like a study in daytime television or maybe Twitter on a really juicy day. “Once this has seized possession of a wretched mind it makes a person horrified at where he is, disgusted with his [monastic] cell, and also disdainful and contemptuous of the brothers who live with him…likewise it renders him slothful and immobile in the face of all the work to be done within the walls of his dwelling. It does not allow him to stay still in his cell or to devote any effort to reading” (X.II). Cassian further describes the sense of self-importance that fills the heart of such a monk, thinking his time wasted on menial tasks when he could be instructing others with similar wisdom and skill as the greatest of the abbas.
This restless discontent, which grows in self-consciousness even as it loses self-awareness, inevitably has consequences for the entire monastic community. The monk who has become “feckless and unstable” due to acedia forgets prayer and spiritual discipline and devolves to gluttony and laziness. He no longer performs his share of the work in the monastery, and seeks relief in empty conversation with other monks—thereby pulling them away their own duties and disciplines (X.VI). He will seek excuses to leave his own monastery to visit brothers—and, perhaps especially, sisters—in other houses to meddle in their affairs, ostensibly for the purpose of encouragement and edification but usually with the result of mooching their food or becoming entangled with someone else who is similarly restless and discontented. Cassian repeatedly stresses that all of this happens under the guise of piety, when in reality such a monk has intentionally abandoned the very path that leads to holiness (X.II.4).
Because we mistake “getting saved” with God’s ultimate purpose for us, we think we’re just fine. We do not know we are emaciated, weak and starving.
From here it is not hard to see how acedia evolved over time on lists of vices or deadly sins into “sloth” or “listlessness.” Discontentment led a monk to find his work dissatisfying, which led to idleness, which in turn amplified the discontent. A vicious cycle formed—in every sense of the word, as the root of “vicious” is “vice.” An unhealthy attitude led to unhealthy activity. In some monks this cycle might look little different than the debilitating sadness Cassian explored in the previous book, but here Cassian focuses on the unique power of acedia to turn a person into a chattering busybody who not only neglects his own duties but actively (and often unconsciously) interferes with the ability of others to carry out their own responsibilities and spiritual disciplines. Cassian himself relays how, as a young monk troubled by acedia, he was upbraided for interfering with the prayers of an abba (X.XXV), an anecdote which demonstrates how this kind of restless discontent justifies itself with pious-sounding motives. Cassian’s excuse for the interruption was to seek spiritual remedies, even though he already knew what he ought to do in the face of acedia: Pray, read, and work.
Resting in Contentment
According to Cassian, the Thessalonian letters are a veritable handbook on dealing with acedia. Drawing from 2 Thessalonians 3, he explains how verse 11 is Paul’s diagnosis of the Thessalonians’ acedia and its effects: “He says here: ‘We hear that some of you are walking in disquietude.’ And he at once adds a second malady, which lies at the root of this disquietude: ‘not working,’ and a third disease as well, which springs from this like a kind of shoot: ‘but acting as busybodies.’ (X.XIII). In describing people so engaged, Cassian frequently employs the adjective “disorderly.”
By way of remedy, Cassian emphasizes each separate component of Paul’s instructions in 1 Thessalonians 4:9-12. Each person should first “make an effort to be quiet,” which Cassian interprets as an admonition against dwelling on rumors and spreading them with thoughtless chatter. Second, each is to “pursue your own affairs,” which is to say we should not be busybodies who insert ourselves into affairs in which we have no legitimate concern. Third, each is to “work with your own hands,” which Cassian links to Paul’s commands elsewhere to “eat your own bread” as opposed to conniving ways to freeload off of others. Fourth, each is to “walk honorably for the sake of outsiders,” always mindful of the effect our lives and conduct have on those who do not know Christ. Finally, “desire nothing of anyone,” not viewing other people as a means to personal gain via minimum effort. It is a very simple summation of a maturing walk with the Lord and its visible results. To “abound all the more” in “the love of the brotherhood,” we must mature in these practices and the attitudes they are intended to foster (X.VII.2-3).
An essential part of the remedy, according to the Desert Fathers, was productive, meaningful work, which provided both for the monk’s necessities of life and also, crucially, a means of showing generosity to others. Cassian notes that this was especially important for young monks, but also that older and more mature monks never outgrew the need for it. Pursuing generosity out of the fruits of one’s own labor is an antidote to restless discontent, which is demonstrated by the kind of thinking and activity (or inactivity) that acedia inspires in a person: “He will, instead, inevitably be dishonorable in his search for the necessities of life, giving himself to flattery, pursuing the latest tales, and seeking opportunities for connections and gossip, thus preparing himself the means of entry and the wherewithal for getting into other people’s homes…you see how many conditions sprout from one disgraceful vice, and how serious and wicked they are” (X.VII.5-6).
Such descriptions can help us to diagnose where such restless discontent may have taken root in our own minds and hearts, and to be motivated to turn to the virtues of patience and generosity instead. By God’s grace, patience allows us to remain content with the circumstances in which God has placed us, through which he also promises to walk with us. As I often reminded my son as he faced the rigors of Coast Guard basic training, “the way out is through.” Patience also allows us to deal gracefully and lovingly with brothers and sisters who are themselves mired in acedia, while firmly guiding them towards maturity.
Generosity gives a higher purpose to our labor, one which takes our focus off our own sometimes-troubling circumstances and instead seeks to bless others. Work is vital to combat acedia, but Cassian emphasizes that why we work is especially important: “More blessed than the poverty of the receiver is this generosity of the giver, which does not come from money that has been stored up through lack of faith or confidence, and which is not dispensed from the accumulated hoards of avarice, but which is offered from the fruit of one’s own work and from loving toil.” (X.XIX).
Our Daily Bread
My own reflection on this is that acedia is an old-fashioned word which describes a widespread and serious modern issue. The adage says that the Devil’s greatest victory is convincing the world he doesn’t exist; more and more I believe the same is true of acedia. However, as with all the vices, greater understanding of what trips me up spiritually has been an encouragement to me. As with all the vices, recognizing them for what they are points me to the God who is the source of all that is good and the virtues he invites me to embrace.
“But we urge you, brothers, to [love one another] more and more, and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one. ”
1 Thessalonians 4:10-11
Though Cassian does not come right out and say it, I see in his discussions of Paul’s instruction that “if anyone does not want to work, neither may he eat” the hint of a valuable spiritual principle. Cassian generally dwells on the physical application of this instruction that we do today, so that idle busybodies will at least be motivated to work “by nature’s needs and by a fear of present ruin” (X.XII). But I see a hint of moral interpretation at work here as well: A person not willing put forth any effort towards spiritual maturity will inevitably starve spiritually.
The problem we face today, especially in evangelical circles, is that we have little concept of what spiritual maturity looks like and have little hunger for it. Because we mistake “getting saved” with God’s ultimate purpose for us, we think we’re just fine. We do not know we are emaciated, weak and starving. And so our faith remains very self-centered and “Thessalonian,” lacking in patience, generosity, and humility. For this reason I think it is worth considering the ways in which I am restless and discontented. It helps me to focus my prayers accordingly, that by God’s grace the seeds of acedia will be revealed in my heart and mind for what they are, and that awareness results in a hunger for Christlike patience and generosity to grow in me.
With that in mind, I think the remaining vices (vainglory and pride) will further reveal obstacles which stand in the way of God’s will being done in my life, and how by God’s grace they can be overcome.
The Friday Blahg 