In the last post, I related how acedia is truly the disintegration of the human person. Quoting from a Benedictine abbot, Jean-Charles Nault O.S.B., who wrote a thesis called The Noonday Devil: Acedia, the Unnamed Evil of our Times (from which I quote entirely in this post series), I related three categories where acedia manifests itself:
1. In the disintegration of the human person
2. In the spatial dimension, specifically instability
3. In the temporal dimension, specifically durability
Today we will break down how acedia manifests itself through instability. While the first category likely affects non-believers, atheists and nihilists, these last two categories are more likely to be manifest in the life of the intentional Christian - people like you and like me.
The characteristic of acedia, instability, breaks down into four manifestations:
1. The perpetual need for change
2. Flight from self and flight from God
3. The rejection of one's own greatness
4. False humility and sadness over good
1. The perpetual need for change
Abbot Jean-Charles calls this the "frenzy of novelty." There is a constant need for change or newness in one way or another.
As soon as someone has obtained what he desires, he wants something else, just as children do. Someone begins reading a book but does not finish it; someone else enrolls in a course but stops going to class, and so on. Could we not...describe this constant search for change as a "passing through"?...Passing through is a continual gliding from one thing to another, on the horizontal level, which can degenerate into a craze for traveling, constant moving about, or instability.
Being still is an abhorrence because there is a constant need for activity, action, going and doing; there are always new ideas, new things and new projects that are begun but never finished. It is a flitting from one thing to another or one place to another through travel. Once the stimulation of change and action stop, a boredom and unease settle in.
Might not the culture of "channel-surfing" be one sign of this acedia? [Or, I might add, scrolling social media feeds and internet surfing and clicking] Besides a simple desire to see everything at once, hopping from one program to another is the manifestation of a radical instability of the human being, who is always tempted by easy access (passing through) to goods that are immediately available, instead of the costly but constructive effort of passing beyond, with a view to attaining a goal, an end. Acedia results in the disappearance of major life projects and commitments that require self-giving and even self-sacrifice.
We see a weakening of the will as a result of all of this; a giving in to every whim and desire which profoundly weakens our ability to practice self-renunciation which is so essential to the interior life of a Christian.
2. Flight from self and flight from God
One no longer knows how to be alone. Furthermore, he is afraid of being alone. For in solitude one discovers what one is like, with no cosmetics or mask; one is forced to confront one's misery, spiritual and moral poverty. I do not play a role for long when I am alone, since there is no one to observe me expect myself...Then I see myself as I am, and this spectacle is unbearable! Acedia is thus a flight from self.
We might note that while many may be alone physically, they may yet still remain distracted by the many technological instruments which abound around us. Acedia may turn a person to these when one is by oneself in order to avoid introspection and facing the true state of oneself.
Or, an absorption in such technologies or the constant need for activity and novelty can also be a flight from God...
But is it not also a flight from God? Indeed, sometimes we get the impression that acedia is instead a search for oneself and flight from God. Ratzinger again puts it well: "The nature of acedia is the flight from God, the wish to be alone with oneself and one's finiteness and not be disturbed by the presence of God."
3. The rejection of one's own greatness
One of the "offspring" of acedia, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, is pusillanimity, which is a "smallness" of a soul that shrinks from noble or arduous tasks (for example, they might shrink from the call to sanctity and holiness by a false humility which makes them believe, "Me? Be a saint? Yeah right...."). This is a vice opposite of the virtue magnanimity, which is greatness of soul; or a soul having great desires (like the desire to become a saint).
[Pusillanimity] is the inability to believe in the greatness of the vocation to which God is calling us: to become sharers in the divine nature.
Pope Benedict XVI comments that modern man today lacks courage to be receptive to this call:
He wants to be "more realistic." Metaphysical inertia would on this account be identical with that false humility that has become so common today: man does not want to believe that God is concerned about him, knows him, loves him, watches over him, is close to him.
Isn't this the mindset of the typical Christian today? They believe, but don't actually believe. So tragic to miss and downplay such a lofty calling! How mediocre of a life, otherwise!
The first source of acedia is a lack of magnanimity - a quite forgotten virtue that is based on the correct view of the dignity of our human vocation: the man who claims to be a "realist" refuses to believe that he is destined to live in God and with God. Thus despair arises from a hatred of man, and this hatred often assumes the form of a supposedly scientific reduction of his humanity to the animal state: man is ape that walks upright.
On the opposite spectrum, we can say that culture today also falls into the sin of presumption: He wants to "be like God" without God or against God.
Presumption and pusillanimity are precisely the two vices that St. Thomas opposes to the virtue of magnanimity, one by excess, the other by defect.
4. False humility and sadness over good
Read this slowly...
The rejection of man's greatness and the vocation to which he is called may be hidden subtly behind a semblance of (what seems to be) humility: one asserts he is not worthy of God's love. But such a reaction manifests, once again, a perspective that is excessively man-centered; in reality, God is the one who loved us first (1 John 4:10), without any merit on our part (Romans 5:8). God's love does not depend on our personal sanctity; rather, our sanctity depends on God's love for us and should be our free and loving response to it. This is why the semblance of modesty is, in reality, the worst form of pride, which refuses to accept the infinite so as to be content with what is within its reach. This is the temptation to "be reasonable."
One thinks:
"I could never attain perfect beatitude in heaven!"
"I could never become a saint!"
"Perfection? Yeah right!"
Therefore...
...one lowers the object of their desires and becomes content with "bestial happiness"...
...or, the things of this world - fleeting and passing pleasures; money, wealth, prestige, travel, luxuries, entertainment, pleasurable food and drink, and the like. Their efforts become focused on these things rather than striving for that union with God, day in and day out. Their enjoyment rests in these base things, rather than God alone.
This rejection of one's own greatness can also manifest subtly by the sadness over the good that one sees others do. When someone does something good or does some virtuous act, and another person experiences some kind of disgust or bitterness toward them after seeing them act or be as such, it is the sin of rancor, a "daughter" of the vice of acedia.
Saint Thomas explained that acedia was a pernicious sadness because it is a response to good and not to evil. Now it may happen that one becomes sad, not over a brother's fault, but on the contrary over his virtues, because they show us our own negligence; the faults of our brethren, on the contrary, often elicit a secret complaisance, for they seem to legitimize our own defects.
Yes, we know we are not making efforts toward our own sanctity like we ought to; and seeing this quality in another pangs their conscience. This is rooted in the vice of acedia!
Perhaps these manifestations will give us some things to reflect upon in our own lives. Next, I hope to cover the third and final area acedia may manifest in our lives: the temporal dimension, specifically, durability,