We hardly think anything about this vice, but how easily it underlies so many other sins of today. In a recent book I just finished, The Noonday Devil: Acedia, the Unnamed Evil of Our Times, written by a Benedictine monk, an abbot of Saint-Wandrille monastery, it was well-argued that acedia could very well be the subtle underlying vice of the times we live in today, giving way to many other sins and vices, including lust. He traces the history of the study of this vice in its seed form from the times of Aristotle and Plato, to the early desert Fathers where it started to become more clearly recognized, to St. John Cassian and Aquinas and explains how it's been largely misunderstood in modern times and has been reduced in its meaning today. Today, acedia has warped into sloth which many simply equate with laziness - physically or spiritually. Thankfully, Abbot Jean-Charles Nault comes to give us a fuller understanding of this vice and its many manifestations. I don't recall the last time I've ever highlighted and taken notes in a book this much because it was just so enlightening!
St. Thomas Aquinas defines acedia as "sorrow at the good and disgust with activity." Aquinas takes this primarily from St. John Cassian who gives the first complete list of capital sins (which includes acedia); and St. John Cassian found the roots of his list from the desert father, Evagrius.
Abbot Jean-Charles Nault breaks the manifestations of acedia down into three principal areas, then breaks each area down further:
1. The disintegration of the human person
2. The spatial dimension: Instability
3. The temporal dimension: Durability
Today, I will try to summarize just the first area and cover the other two later.
Disintegration of the human person
This would be the most tragic and radical manifestation of this vice. He further breaks this category down into specific manifestations (quotes are from the book):
1. The loss of meaning in life
Remember that St. Thomas Aquinas presented moral action as being directed toward a goal: the vision of God and participating in His own life. This final goal is what gives action its meaning, its sense, so that this action can become an anticipation of beatitude and a preparation for it. From this perspective, acedia is the temptation to make nonsense out of the moral life.
Under the influence of acedia, the things we do in life, in essence, have no final purpose - they make no broader sense out of the bigger picture of life. Nor do they have any transcendental meaning. "Your life makes no sense," is the only logical, final conclusion.
From here, he argues how one is then tempted to nihilism:
This is a genuine hatred of being, a dislocation of the human person from the universe of being....it creates a spiritual depression. Indeed, nihilism deems reality to be unintelligible, devoid of sense in itself and for itself: the very concept of truth is rejected as non-sense [and] denies that there is a dynamic of human life.
He goes on....
...Acedia, in Aquinas' view, prevents any orientation toward the find end; nihilism confirms this and goes even a step further: it purely and simply denies the possibility of an end. Acedia manifests the will to be rid of God; man wanted to advance his self-creation, but it only led to non-sense.
In other words, acedia manifests itself by taking away our purpose in life. Our actions make no sense because they are not directed toward a final purpose - it's a collection of random, disconnected acts that lose an ultimate meaning. Because of this lack of meaning, it leads to nihilism - nothingness. Everything means essentially nothing because there is no supernatural meaning that transcends this life. Hence, the spiritual depression and vacuum.
This logic leads to the second manifestation of acedia in the disintegration of the human person:
2. The temptation to despair
When the meaning of life is lost, depression and then despair step in - a terrible "offspring" of this vice. There is an incredible lack of hope:
St. Thomas shows that the root of despair is to be sought in acedia. Acedia is a lack of love, the lack of the great Love [our Lord]; it shatters the impulse of hope and threatens to lead to the rejection of life itself. It is a real flirtation with death....It is the source of the despair of our contemporaries, who think it would be better not to exist: it is truly that sin against the Holy Spirit which refuses to receive Love and forgiveness.
Remember St. Thomas Aquinas' definition of acedia: Sorrow at the good and a disgust with activity. When one is repugnant toward the good (including the ultimate spiritual good - God Himself), one will do all to avoid this reality (because admitting that there is an ultimate spiritual good - God, heaven and the beatific vision - means that now one has a responsibility toward it, which is an aberration to the creed of today's culture: "Do what thou wilt"). But acedia, which leads one to dismiss this, forces them to construct their own reality and meaning about life, which is always very limited by one's knowledge, experiences and ignorance; it lacks a definitive goal for their actions. Acedia tries to get one to avoid the "bigger questions" about life and turn him away from the possibility of a meaning that transcends this short life and spans into eternity. This is why a loss of meaning in life, depression and despair are always the rotten fruits of acedia.
In my next post, I hope to touch upon the spatial dimension of the manifestations of acedia - instability - and share what Abbot Jean-Charles relates about it. The next two realms of acedia are likely the more common ways we'll see this vice manifested in the life of the Christian. Stay tuned!