Dear Friends,
Today’s gospel has Jesus offering a teaching to his followers that may, at first hearing, seem to be a bit much. Jesus is reacting to some of his disciples not being happy about what other people were doing in the name of Jesus. Jesus tells them not to focus on the outsiders but on themselves – if you have parts of you that sin – get rid of it! How hard should you work to change yourself? As if you were cutting off body parts!
Do we listen to the teaching of Jesus in this gospel or do we simply say that this teaching must have been from another age? Perhaps the imagery is from another time but the need to change ourselves has never gone away. So, why don’t we change? Talking with a spiritual directee recently, he was reflecting on the role that acedia was playing in his life. Perhaps this ancient vice is the reason why many of us do not really work to change ourselves.
R.R. Reno wrote an essay on acedia more than twenty years ago in First Things. I hope you find his summary insightful:
Christians have not always thought pride the deepest threat to faith. For the ancient spiritual writers of the monastic movement, spiritual apathy was far more dangerous…Evagrius of Pontus, a fourth-century monk, is one of the earliest sources of information about the desert monastic movement, and he reports that gluttony, avarice, anger, and other vices threaten monastic life. Yet, of all these afflictions, he reports, “the demon of acedia, also called the noonday demon, is the one that causes the most serious trouble of all.”
Acedia is a word of Greek origin that means, literally, without care…For the monastic tradition, acedia or sloth is a complex spiritual state that defies simple definition. It describes a lassitude and despair that overwhelms spiritual striving. Sloth is not mere idleness or laziness; it involves a torpor animi, a dullness of the soul that can stem from restlessness just as easily as from indolence. Bernard of Clairvaux speaks of a sterilitas animae, a sterility, dryness, and barrenness of his soul that makes the sweet honey of Psalm-singing seem tasteless and turns vigils into empty trials…Across these different descriptions, a common picture emerges. The noonday devil tempts us into a state of spiritual despair and sadness that drains us of our Christian hope. It makes the life of prayer and charity seem pointless and futile. In the heat of midday, as the monk tires and begins to feel that the commitment to desert solitude was a terrible miscalculation, the demon of acedia whispers despairing and exculpatory thoughts. “Did God intend for human beings to reach for the heavens?” “Does God really care whether we pray?”
…Are these temptations that afflict the monk as strange or alien as the unfamiliar Greek word, acedia? I think not. Let me update the whispering voice of sloth: “All things are sanctified by the Lord, and one could just as well worship on the golf course as in a sanctuary made by human hands.” Or: “God is love, and love affirms; therefore, God accepts me just as I am. I need not exercise myself to change.” Or: “We should not want to put God in a box, so the Christian tradition must be seen as a resource for our spiritual journeys, not as a mandatory itinerary. I can pick and choose according to my own spiritual needs.”
In our day, these temptations seem far more dangerous than Emerson’s “trust thyself.” After all, how many people, believers or unbelievers, wish to reign anywhere, in heaven, hell, or even in their own souls? Few, I imagine. Most of us just want to be left alone so that we can get on with our lives. Most of us want to be safe. We want to find a cocoon, a spiritually, psychologically, economically, and physically gated community in which to live without danger and disturbance. The care-free life, a life a-cedia, is our cultural ideal. Pride may be the root of all evil, but in our day, the trunk, branches, and leaves of evil are characterized by a belief that moral responsibility, spiritual effort, and religious discipline are empty burdens, ineffective and archaic demands that cannot lead us forward, inaccessible ideals that, even if we believe in them, are beyond our capacity.
Does any of that ring true for you? Is having a spiritual discipline or routine too hard? Do you say, God can love me just as I am, why should I work to change? Yet, Jesus taught that these spiritual disciplines matter because God wants you to be the best you can be, because God wants you to be with Him forever. Who among us would prepare for an athletic contest by eating and drinking? Would we encourage Nebraska football players to skip practice and just enjoy a few beers instead? I do not think so. Following Jesus involves a personal discipline, and acedia may be getting in the way. Ask Jesus to give you the grace to make the changes necessary to be a better disciple of his. With that grace we can cut out the things that stand in the way of being like Jesus.
Peace,
Fr. Damian