The spiritual ascetic St. John Cassian (360 – 435 AD), a contemporary of St. Augustine and influential intellectual resource for St. Benedict, once defined acedia as a “weariness or distress of the heart…. It makes the man [in this case, a monk] lazy and sluggish about all manner of work that needs to be done.” It was seen as spiritual lethargy, an interior shortcoming that stymied religious development.
Acedia later came to be associated with the English word “sloth,” although this is more often taken to mean simple indolence, laziness or idleness. It also of course lends its name to an unenergetic arboreal mammal that sleeps away a disproportionately high percentage of its life and has incredibly low levels of movement and activity.
Dante scholar Mark Musa claims, “Sloth was the most feared monastic sin in the Middle Ages because it hindered the devout from conquering the self and seeking God.” It is an unrelenting and willful gloom and despondency, and its resulting idleness can lead famously to “the devil’s workshop.”
Aquinas related this sin to “bitterness” (amaro) because those in its grips interiorized their wrath, locking it up in their hearts and poisoning themselves. In the Inferno, the slothful are submerged in the filthy river Styx, gurgling out the explanation for their punishment: “Sullen were we in the sweet air that by the sun is gladdened, bearing within ourselves the sluggish fume; now we are sullen in this black mire.”
The slothful of every generation reject Hilaire Belloc’s famous quip, which Dante’s victims bring to mind: “Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, There’s always laughter and good red wine. At least I’ve always found it so. Benedicamus Domino!” When I was Cardinal Avery Dulles’ assistant, I was invited to enough Jesuit preprandial cocktail socials to know that many of today’s religious are not tempted toward such a rejection.
Last Sunday, the third of Advent, was Gaudete Sunday — one of only two Sundays of the year when the church celebrates in rose-colored vestments. Laetare Sunday in Lent is the other. Both of these days are focused on active joy, the supernatural antidote to sloth.
Last week we heard the prophet Zephaniah pronounce “Shout for joy, O daughter Zion. Sing with exultation, daughter Jerusalem… For the Lord, your God, is in your midst.” And Paul, while chained in a dank ancient prison, realizing he is likely soon to be decapitated, mindbogglingly instructs us “Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: Rejoice!”
Such exhortations remind us not to become drowsy in the world, while awaiting the Master’s return. This most joyous time of the year, when we reunite with family and friends and revisit with celebration God’s dwelling in our midst, is a perfect opportunity to examine with honesty the torpor which has settled on us in the last year, to exorcise the smoke of sloth that has sullied our hearts and decisions, and to rededicate ourselves to the rewarding work that is living the Christian life.
Michael M. Canaris is an administrator at Fairfield University’s Center for Faith and Public Life and is on the faculty for the Department of Philosophy, Theology, and Religious Studies at Sacred Heart University.
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