Never Give Up

When the holy Abba Anthony lived in the desert he was beset by accidie, and attacked by many sinful thoughts. He said to God, “Lord, I wand to be saved but these thoughts do not leave me alone; what shall I do in my affliction? How can I be saved?” A short while afterwards, when he got up to go out, Anthony say a man like himself sitting at his work, getting up from his work to pray, then sitting down again and plaiting a rope, then getting up again to pray. It was an angel of the Lord sent to correct and reassure him. He heard the angel saying to him, “Do this and you will be saved.” At these words, Anthony was filled with joy and courage. He did this, and he was saved.[1]

Accidie (acedia) was understood as being one of the eight great vices by Evagrius.  While it is a vice which many of us have not heard by name, it is one which we often experience in our daily lives.[2] It is the angst we feel with life which makes us become apathetic, questioning why we try to do any good works. It makes us think that what we do is worthless, that whatever we wish to do, we cannot achieve, and so we are led to believe it is meaningless to try. Likewise, the thoughts which emerge from it tend to make us depressed;  in order to overcome the depression, we wander around, seeking all kinds of mindless activities, all kinds of frivolous entertainment, in order to provide for ourselves a temporary sense of pleasure which we feel releases us from the dread which covers our lives.  If we follow through with the various temptations it gives to us, we find they offer no resolution, but only add to the burden, to the accidie, we feel.

Accidie, when it is left unchecked, often encourages nihilistic despair. As a vice, it sits in opposition to charity; it makes us waste our time seeking pleasure for ourselves instead of turning around and doing whatever good we can for others. It removes from us the spiritual joy and gladness which we receive from acts of charity, so that even when we try to do some good, we end up feeling great sorrow in our walk with God. We feel rejected by God and others, and so wonder what it is we are doing. For a monk like Anthony, accidie is a great temptation because it is easy to feel as if everything in such a life is monotonous.  When all the prayer, all the spiritual battle, seems to lead nowhere but a stalemate against the powers of evil, a monk will begin to ponder what they are doing and consider the option of giving up;  they will think about leaving the monastery and returning to the world to seek the glory which can be easily attained within it. This is why it is a vice which is commonly talked about by monks in many spiritual texts, for it is a common temptation they come to face as soon as the initial joy and excitement of their profession has faded away. It should not be a surprise, therefore, when Evagrius referenced it in his works, he did so in relation to his monastic experience:

When this malicious demon seizes our soul and darkens it completely, he prevents us from praying gladly, from reading Holy Scripture with profit and perseverance, and from being gentle and compassionate toward our brethren. It instils a hatred of every kind of work and even of the monastic profession itself. Undermining the soul’s salutary resolutions, weakening its persistence and constancy, he leaves it senseless and paralyzed, tied and bound by its despairing thoughts. [3]

Nonetheless, accidie is a temptation which we all face. We don’t have to be a monk to find it destroying our spiritual life. When we find it difficult to go to church, to participate in the sacramental life, when we question what we are accomplishing by any work of virtue in a world where sin often seems to have every advantage, accidie strikes at us and calls us away from our own spiritual journey. When we seek after any form of mindless pleasure and dwell on it instead of our personal perfection, such as if we enjoy going out and watching sports, enjoy social media with all its distractions, or just feel the need to always be out and about and doing something so as not to be bored, accidie might be there working hard and fast on us to make sure we forget our spiritual life and the dwell instead in the meaningless void of everyday existence. It leaves us feeling empty, so that we are both addicted to and yet hate that the life which accidie has encouraged us to make for ourselves. We end up taking the easy way out of life; we pursue only the most immediate and accessible goods, even if they are inferior and do not satisfy us, for at least we can attain them and feel our actions have been able to achieve something for our own good. Likewise, we fear anything else is impossible and so we should not even try, or worse, we end up not caring as we give up on everything and ourselves.

The modern world is itself established in and by the accidie, explaining why the main pursuit of humanity is all the luxuries it can find, all the drugs it can employ, to cut itself off from the spiritual crisis which lies before it. Since no one particular pursuit satisfies for long, the world constantly develops and brings out new intrigues, new activities, each with the claim of making us happy, yet none of them able to satisfy our broken hearts. This is why there is the constant desire for the next best thing, the newest novelty, because there is some hope that it will at last satisfy us.