In Pursuit of the Good, Do Not Be Diverted By An Imitation of the Good

In Pursuit of the Good, Do Not Be Diverted By An Imitation of the Good February 22, 2011

She [Amma Syncletica] also said, ‘There is grief that is useful, and there is grief that is destructive. The first sort consists in weeping over one’s own faults and weeping over the weakness of one’s neighbours, in order not to destroy one’s purpose, and attach oneself to the perfect good. But there is also a grief that comes from the enemy, full of mockery, which some call accidie. This spirit must be cast out, mainly by prayer and psalmody.’ [1]

While are called to have sorrow for our sins, we must be careful and not turn such sorrow into accidie. This is a kind of spiritual weariness where our sorrow turns into despair, leading us to feel as if nothing we do matters, making us careless and slothful. When we feel this way, we must overcome it by giving thanks to God, looking to the good God has given us. Our sorrow is meant to reform us, not to make us give up on life; it is meant to make us thankful to God and to experience the joy of forgiveness. True sorrow cuts allows us to see the good God has given us and to allow us once again to engage it, to make it our own; accidie tries to cover up that good, to make us think there is no good left in us, and that there is no chance of reform.

Sorrow is not the only thing which can be diverted. All virtues can be used against us, if we follow them inappropriately. How often, for example, do we see people who suffer false humility, who, in their belief that they have become humble, actually have great pride? Virtue is a good if followed holistically, but when followed unholistically, it turns us away from the good because it gathers itself in itself, making itself an end in and of itself unrelated to any other goods. This is not to say virtues are not, in a way, ends which we should pursue: they are, but they must only be seen as relative ends, and a virtue must not be made from the relative good it is to an absolute good which it is not. We can struggle for purity like the Pharisees and ignore what it is that makes us pure, love.

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing” (1 Cor. 13:1-3-).

If it is not love which motivates us, if it is not love which is the foundation of our goodness, it then is some false concept, some ideology, which we use to guide our actions, an ideology which can never appreciate the real because it covers it up with a mental construct which claims to be the real. As Paul points out, we can do what seems great to others, without love, it really is nothing, it is fake, it is unreal. We often try to justify ourselves by saying what it is we do is good, but, as Paul points out, if we do it without love, it really is not the good which we claim it to be. For example, if we try to speak out against the sins of others, are we really doing it for their own good, or for some other reason? The desert fathers point out our concern should be with our own sins, our own way of life; if we want to help others overcome sin, we do so, not by constantly denouncing them to their face, but by loving them, by welcoming them, by showing hospitality to them. If we want to preach to others, we best do so with our actions. By living a simple, holy life, showing love to all who come to us, our example will resonate far more in the hearts of those who come to us than any word which we might speak. When we feel tempted to judge those who come to us, we must remember, it is not for us to judge them, but to help redeem them, following the example of our Lord, Jesus: “I did not come to judge the world but to save the world” (John 12:47b). If we love them, we will, of course, weep over the ways them harm themselves, we will pray for them for their reformation, but we will not judge the spiritual state of their soul: we might know the objective reality of their actions, but the internal, subjective dimension lies beyond us to know, to know the full impact of their way of life on their souls.

We must strive for virtue in our life, but we must not let our pursuit get misdirected by some pale imitation of the virtue we seek. We must struggle to do what is good, but we must remember, it is not a struggle we accomplish all on our own. We must remember the help God gives us, and praise and thank him for it. This is what keeps our heart pure, full of the love needed to prevent us from following an illusory imitation of the good.


[1] The Sayings of the Desert Fathers. Trans. Benedicta Ward (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1984), 235.


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