Denver Newsroom, May 19, 2020 / 02:00 am (CNA).- What should you be doing right now?
If the answer is “not reading this article,” you might want to keep going.
If you’re reading this article because you’re distracting yourself from something that needs to be done, you might be struggling with something called acedia.
On March 2, just before the coronavirus pandemic caused shutdowns around the world, Fr. Harrison Ayre, a priest in the Diocese of Victoria, British Columbia, started tweeting about his experience with the vice of acedia.
Acedia (pronounced ‘uh-see-dee-uh’ in English) comes from the Greek word akēdeia, meaning “lack of care.” It is closely akin to the sin of “sloth”, but it is more complex than mere laziness or boredom.
According to St. Thomas Aquinas, acedia is a kind of sadness about things that are spiritual goods, or a “disgust with activity.”
“My one-phrase definition is: the inability to choose the good,” Ayre said. “It’s an affliction of the soul that attacks desire – our desire for the good.”
It manifests itself specifically in listlessness, distraction, and wanting to avoid the task at hand, Ayre noted. Paradoxically, it could look either like sitting around and doing nothing, or busying oneself with anything and everything but the task at hand.
Ayre, who is one-half of the podcast “Clerically Speaking” and has an active Twitter following, became well-known for his tweets about combatting acedia in the past few weeks. So much so, that some of his friends have dubbed his timeline “Acedia Twitter.”
“It always was something that’s been on my heart because I would say it’s one of those things that I struggle with a lot, so it definitely comes from experience,” Ayre said.
“I tweeted something about a month ago and then…I had a couple people ask me in the DMs, ‘Can you give me some practical tips on overcoming this?’” Ayre said.
Ayre thought he would just do a thread on the topic, but because so many people were asking questions and looking for more information, he decided to keep going.
He now tweets daily tips for identifying and overcoming acedia, as well as regular check-ins with his followers, asking them how they are doing and what specific struggles with acedia they have noticed lately.
“It kind of has just taken off,” he said. “Not like ‘blown up,’ but I’d say it gets pretty reasonable engagement every day whenever I would tweet about it, so it’s obviously touching people’s hearts, which has been a good thing.”
The “noonday devil”
In a 2015 book on the subject, Fr. Jean-Charles Nault, O.S.B., called acedia the “noonday devil”, because the temptation has a tendency to strike in the middle of the day.
The phrase has been used to describe acedia for centuries.
“It’s when even your bodily tendency is to be a little bit tired and a little restless at the day,” Ayre said.
Nault likened the experience to restless monks staring out of their cells (rooms), longing for escape.
“You’re in the desert, it’s hot, you’re in your cell, and the sun’s beating into your cell, and it can be a great temptation to want to leave the duty of the moment. That’s why it’s called the noonday devil,” Ayre said.
But for people who aren’t monks, what does acedia look like?
“Let’s say you’re at work and you know that the task you need to do right now is answer those 10 emails in your inbox. That is the most important thing for you to do in this moment,” Ayre said.
“But instead, you’re like, ‘I’m going to go make those photocopies,’ or, ‘I’m going to go to the water cooler to get some water and see if anyone’s there,’ or, ‘I’m going to browse the internet for a bit,’ or, ‘I’m just going to sit here and not do anything for 10 minutes.’”
“You’re doing stuff or not doing stuff, but you’re doing all those things to avoid the task of the moment. Acedia attacks what I’d say is the giftedness of the moment.”
For parents, Ayre said acedia might manifest itself in a temptation to stay in bed when the children are up at 3 a.m.
“Acedia would say: I’m going to stay in bed. I don’t care if they’re throwing up. I’m staying in bed,” he said. Combatting that temptation would look like: “you (get up) because you love them and it’s a good thing to do for them and it’s a sacrifice for their good.”
“It’s about accepting whatever has been thrown to us at the moment and not wanting to avoid it,” Ayre said.
According to Nault, the battle against acedia is about accepting the full gift of one’s vocation in life.
“The ‘noonday devil’ can be vanquished only by accepting the love of God and the sublimity of our vocation, which, in turn, gives rise to the joy of true Christian freedom,” he wrote.
Why acedia matters in the spiritual life
Why does something that might seem like mere distraction in mundane tasks matter so much in the spiritual life?
“I would call (acedia) the temptation of our age, because our age is very dependent on this idea of distraction – of moving my attention to something that is not what we need to do right now,” Ayre said.
And that matters for the spiritual life because “at the heart of every sin, and then every temptation, is to deny the good of a thing – its proper end,” Ayre noted.
“Gluttony comes with taking in a good, which is food, and overusing it, right? Or envy is seeing a good that has happened to someone else and then twisting it and wanting it to be your own,” he said.
“Every sin wants to twist the good, and acedia, it’s saying: ‘I don’t want to recognize the good of what I have right here, right now.’ It creates a sense of dissatisfaction of what’s been given me.”
And the present moment matters, Ayre said, because it’s where God can be found.
“Our work of the moment is the precise place that we find God…because God shows himself through things, that’s how God works. So, if we’re trying to say, ‘I’m going to distract myself, I’m going to check Instagram instead of working on my emails or my Word document or whatever’, what I’m saying is: ‘I don’t want to encounter God through my task, through the work of the moment.’”
Overcoming acedia
Combatting acedia isn’t about white-knuckling through distracted thoughts and forcing yourself back to the present moment. Ayre said that properly ordering one’s day, and giving things their proper place, can go a long way in combating acedia in one’s life.
“It’s not wrong to go on Instagram and Twitter. Obviously I don’t think that, that’d be really weird,” Ayre (@FrHarrison) said.
“But do I do that in a rightly ordered way? So, for example, I’ll do my office work for half an hour, and then I’m going to take a five minute break and check up on my texts and my WhatsApp and get those things done, and then I’m going to go back to my task.”
“Acedia really gets fought when you start to organize your day properly. It doesn’t mean we’re going to live strict monastic schedules,” he said. “But I always say: if you can find those three or four most important tasks of your day and order them properly, then everything else will fall into place around that. And you’ll stop going to your phone as much, because the reason we go to our phone is because we don’t actually see the gift of the moment.”
It’s also about making time for prayer and proper rest and leisure in the day too, Ayre said.
“Find stuff you really enjoy to do and actually give yourself permission to do it, because acedia makes us think that we can’t enjoy anything,” he said, such as reading a good book or watching a good movie or spending an hour playing an enjoyable video game.
“Acedia plagues us because sometimes we forget how to enjoy the good things of life. Choosing a good that we enjoy helps remind us of God’s goodness,” Ayre added in a May 9 tweet.
In another recent tweet, Ayre also compared overcoming acedia to a Seinfeld episode, in which George Costanza decides to be “opposite George” – he does the opposite of his normal tendencies, and is surprised to find his life improved.
“(George) meets some girls in a bar and he goes, ‘Hi, I’m unemployed and I live with my parents.’ And they loved him because he was so honest,” Ayre said.
“While beforehand, he wouldn’t have done that. He would probably come up with these weird stories about why he was staying at his parents place. And so he found that ‘opposite George’ was leading to a lot of success for him.”
Fighting acedia can be similar, he said. “Sometimes the best thing to do is to do the opposite. So if you find that you’re just slothful in general, and doing anything with remote physical activity is something difficult to do, the opposite thing to do would be to go for a walk,” he said.
When is it acedia, and when is it depression?
Acedia and depression seem to have some things in common, including a lack of desire to do one’s normal activities.
Ayre said he has been asked before about the difference between acedia and depression.
“I’m not a counselor or a clinical psychologist or something like that,” Ayre said, but “personally, I do think there sometimes can be a connection between the two… I think people ask this question because they see a real similarity between the two, and there may be even a connection at times.”
Ayre added that he has never experienced clinical depression himself, and encouraged anyone who was concerned that they might be going through something more than just acedia to talk to their priest and to a mental health professional.
“I’d say if there is almost a lack of desire to do anything in life, that’s probably a good sign that it’s deeper than acedia and that it perhaps needs medical attention,” Ayre said.
“With acedia, you’re often able to function, but maybe not function to the extent that you ought to,” Ayre said.
But depression’s symptoms will likely be more severe, he added.
If one is thinking “’I just, I can’t even get out of bed to go to work anymore.’ That’s not acedia anymore. That is a sense of, ‘I don’t have the tools necessary to get through day to day life.’”
Corona and acedia: How the “new normal” impacts distraction
When the coronavirus pandemic shut down most of the United States and the world, nearly everyone’s daily routine was dramatically upended.
Non-essential workers either worked from home or were laid off. Essential workers kept at it, albeit with either adjusted commutes or schedules or safety protocols in place. Almost all businesses including bars and restaurants and hair salons, were closed.
Busy people who normally had lots of places to go and things to do suddenly found themselves with something they hadn’t had in a while: time.
“I think for most of us, we probably fell into it in a pretty extreme way for about that first month,” Ayre said. “I think it was the fog of the moment. We didn’t know what to do with our lives. We didn’t know what to do with this time. The future is uncertain…and you just wander throughout the day and you do your things but you don’t have a real target of life. So I think in that sense it was bad.”
But people adjusting to working from home or going out far less have “time and space to get our lives in order,” he said.
“I’m hearing people say they’ve been attacking acedia now by picking up a chore every day. Whereas before, they didn’t have time to pick a chore every day. Or they’re cooking more because they’re not running to five different appointments at night, so they’re not just grabbing McDonald’s quickly as they’re running to the next thing.”
“They’re having time to do the things that are necessary in life; the busyness stopped. When we were so busy, we were not able to see what is essential,” he said. Ayre said he is hearing from families that they are realizing the slowness of life right now has actually been very good for their kids as well.
“I’ve heard from families saying, ‘I never realized I didn’t have to take the kids to three things every night.’ And they love it. They love the slowness. Their kids are playing on the front yards again, and the kids are happy.”
Ayre said he hopes that one lesson people are able to take away from the extra time they have been given during this pandemic is the need to contemplate God and what is most essential in their lives, which is in itself a big step in fighting acedia.
“I really hope and pray that we can learn our lesson from this, that we don’t need to be this busy. And then when you start to choose these essential things, acedia will rip itself from your life, because you’ll see – I’m doing what is essential. And a full life makes it easier to choose the good and see the good. It’s like that meme, right? ‘Nature is healing itself.’ In a way, it is.”
For those looking to dive deeper into acedia, Fr. Ayre recommended Nault’s book, as well as “Acedia and Its Discontents: Metaphysical Boredom in an Empire of Desire” by R.J. Snell, and “Acedia & Me” by Kathleen Norris.
[…]
Our pastor actually leads the faithful in praying St. Michael and memorare.
Ours, too, along with a prayer for St. Joseph to intercede for us.
What’s going on with you Catholic media you – CATHOLIC WORLD REPORT – people that you show NO OUTRAGE at the damage this Cdl. Cup-sick has done to our beloved Church?. Why are you not shaming him for the heretic he is? When I asked this same question of one of our ‘better’ bishops his answer: ” You don’t understand Michael, they have all the power.” I told him (and Archbishop Chaput before him, of Saint John Vianney’s response:” Anyone who is tolerant of evil when there is cause for holy anger is an immoral man” You Catholic World Report media -types are acting immorally in your lack of HOLY ANGER. Are you not aware ( you E.W.T.N , you Relevant Radio folk and all of you in the Catholic main-stream media.) how faithful, informed, catholic’s everywhere are seething at your lack of action in this regard? Your good Father Fessio said years ago; ” When I die I want there to be blood on my sword.” Hear, Hear! ! But that won’t ever happen unless you take the sword out of it’s sheath. ” If the bugle sound isn’t clear then how can the troops know to prepare for battle? ” You can’t just leave it all to Michael Voris ( God bless him ) and Fr. James Altman, our hero .and the model priest of our times.
Apparently you’re not familiar with CWR…
Blaise setting things a-blaze… Micro-management – – mitres 30 yrs behind…
Dominus flevit!
Father Zuhlsdorf has posted the original video and an update with a message from the Pastor, Father John Trout. The realist in me thinks that this might be more damage control for the diminutive Cardinal Archbishop since the Lightfoot debacle.
UPDATED – VIDEO: Priest announces he and people have been forbidden to say St. Michael Prayer and Hail Mary after Mass.
Seems like micromanagement to me. Why prohibit or discourage heartfelt prayers after Mass? It’s useless because it just alienates parishioners and reflects poorly on diocesan leadership.
Why doesn’t Cardinal Cupich lead the prayers himself, or make any effort to pray the rosary publicly with his parishioners at the Cathecral?
St. Paul teaches that Christians have “the mind of Christ.”
His Eminence Cupich has “the mind of McCarrick.”
It certainly stands to reason that a lot of the current Catholic hierarchy wouldn’t much like parishioners praying to St. Michael. As for poor Mr. Love who wonders what those who recite this prayer are asking to be protected from, apparently he has never heard the prayer, because it is self-explanatory.
That’s what I was thinking; also, EWTN does this after most masses – “protect against wickedness and snares of the devil.” etc..
(Sigh.)
Cupich’s approach to building unity is unbelievable. Absolutely comical.
It reminds me of the old satirical comment on corporate management…
“Notice to all employees: The beatings will continue until morale improves.”
This article concerned me deeply. First, Mr. Love asked, “what are they praying for?” when reciting the prayer to St. Michael. When Pope Leo XIII directed this prayer at the end of Mass, it was because God had showed him a vision of a conversation God had with the devil asking for more time to gather souls. The devil is running out of time and he knows it. The Church is in a crisis and the world is in the worse state it has ever been. The devil is a real threat to the Church and to each individual. In addition, we as Catholics are encouraged to pray for global catastrophes and problems as a parish and as an individual. However, we all should have our own personal relationship with our Lord and Savior and should be encouraged to pray to Him for personal reasons at ant time…in church or at home. In addition, the Mass was over when the two prayers were being prayed, so why all the concern? After Mass is over there is the soft “hustle-bustle” of people leaving the church, talking, cleaning up pews, etc, and people still are able to have the mind-set for personal prayers. Also the Church has taught me my whole life to have a special devotion to Our Blessed Mother. Even Jesus thought highly enough of her to take time while He was dying on the cross for us, to give His mother to us for protection and source of multiple graces. She has been sent by God multiple times in apparitions to warn us that God is displeased about the state of mankind, while she has been giving us directions on how to change…prayer, penance, sacrifice, fasting, and saying the rosary. I personally feel that one Hail Mary prayer at the end of Mass to ask Our Lady’s help is pleasing to her Son, Jesus.
Parsing is the fallback of the disingenuous. It is grievously evident in the statements recorded in this report. It serves no purpose but to magnify the theological disorder current in our Church, a disorder magnified frequently by the Cardinal himself and by his confreres in the school of deconstructionism. This is exactly where the reputation of episcopal untrustworthiness is generated. A Catholicism which articulates “…what are they praying for protection from?” is in the deepest sense clueless and fraudulent. It is not only tragic but scandalous that we find ourselves in this condition.
CWR – Nice job of creating more division., making a volcano out of a fly speck. I would expect this article from the Washington Post . Now you too?
You’re either willingly dismissing or are willfully ignorant of the fact that the diminutive Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago has a lengthy, well documented dossier of creating division, Jerry. Which is it?
Jerry –
I think that the point being made is that “His Eminence” is the divisive figure.
It’s a healthy thing to talk about Bishops who behave improperly.
The following, which Carl Olson wrote back in 2015, might prove to be edifying:
A Tale of Two Bishops
One Mad Mom weighs in as well:
Cardinal Sit-It-Out Cupich
This is just consistent with a lot of the nonsense during the “pandemic” if you don’t have your pass you can;t come to mass etc…
a little confusion at the end of a parish mass over supplication prayers is not the end of the world – the Bishop should not even comment on it – don’t we want priests who can think on their feet?
My parish in Alexandria VA began saying the prayer to Saint Michael after Mass during the time of the 2002 DC sniper. For several weeks during that time, I recall saying the prayer every time I was out in the open – putting gas in my car, walking a zigzag line into the grocery store, not letting my child out in public. The prayer to Saint Michael comforted me then and even though I no longer live in VA, I continue to recite the prayer almost every day.
Cupich. Enough said.
The same rightist conservative CNA -and also CWR, making a mountain out of a molehill if it concerns Pope Francis and his loyal cardinals and bishops. If those pro-pre-Vatican II mass who criticize the Vatican II mass as celebrated without regard for the rubrics, they should applaud the Cardinal for he is simply upholding the liturgical rules. Prayers like these are not part of the liturgical celebration and can be recited only privately and after the mass itself. Damn if you do, damn if you don’t.
Any idea what “Ite, missa est” means, Charles?
Charles Panata, I am one of those “rightest conservatives” who is fed up with the Vatican Church. They created a different religion that sickens me. Before, during, and after Mass, it’s a free for all for Modernists. Except for Trads. This new one, that of forbidding to pray a prayer considered pre-Vatican ll. It is asked what it is we are praying for deliverance from. We pray for the deliverance of the likes of Cardinal Cupich, and all those who are out to do away with the true Church. We have been coerced to follow and obey their heretical ways and accept the banal ways of the New Church. Doesn’t the Vatican ll prohibit this type of coercion? Yet that’s what has been done for 60 years. Didn’t you know that we are living in the days of the worse major problems in the Church right now? Do you imagine that we Traditionalists are stupid? Think again. We are supposed to follow Vatican ll when those giving us this order are the ones who reject the whole of Vatican ll and make up their own Council as they go along. One of the Major principles of the Council being violated against Trads is “Religious Freedom”.
Charles Pinata, As a Trad I proclaim according to Vatican ll, Religious Freedom! We are ordered to accept the whole of the Council.” What the Council said has now backfired on them.
Independent of whatever the facts are in this case, there is no such thing as a “rubric” that mandates Catholic anti-Catholic bigotry.
I don’t understand what the Cardinal’s issue might be?? Both of these prayers are quite short and would not interfere with anyone’s wish to pray quietly once completed. Gabby parishioners might be the bigger issue following Mass. At my parish the Rosary society prays immediately following a weekday Mass. So here you won’t have any quiet for 25 minutes at least. My guess is someone with an “in” complained to the Cardinal. But I can’t imagine anything stranger than a Cardinal asking the faithful NOT to pray. Especially in this day and age when the country is falling apart. Maybe the Cardinal cannot think of things to pray for, but I sure can!!
Cupich knows who his real boss is. Satan is not happy with the St. Michael Prayer and the Ave Maria.
…And do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls
Anen.
“Hatred of the traditional Holy Mass is inspired by the Devil who seeks our spiritual death”-Cardinal Robert Sarah
I would add the same applies to those seeking to ban traditional Catholic prayers and devotionals like the Rosary, Ave Maria and St. Michael prayer. Since these prayers (especially the last one) are designed to protect us from the Evil One, only those who are in service of the Evil One would be opposed to their continued use.
What an incendiary headline! I wonder what is inside the article!?
“The pastor of the church, Father John Trout, issued a statement saying this is not true.”
“CNA asked Torres-Fuentes in an email who gave him the directive to cease the Prayer to St. Michael and the Hail Mary after Mass, but received no response.”
“After contacting other priests in the diocese, CNA found that there was no directive sent to all parishes in the diocese referring to the recitation of the Prayer to Saint Michael or the Hail Mary following Mass.”
What a sham of a website you guys run, LOL! **Almost** makes me feel sorry for ol’ Blase. Can you excise the ‘report’ from your URL?
Blase will gladly sell you the Brooklyn Bridge, Joseph and I’d wager that you’d eagerly write him a check.
“The mass is complete in itself. It does not need additional prayers added to it.” This statement was made by the Bishop of Hamilton, New Zealand in the 1980’s when a similar controversy broke out in my parish there. He also stated people that if people wished, they could have a prayer service 15 minutes after the end of mass thus allowing those who wished to leave to leave and not “force” them to attend a prayer service they didn’t want to attend.
It is really not clear what this article is attempting to report. At this point there is no evidence the Cardinal did in fact do what is being claimed or alleged. The priest responsible for the initial claim will not respond to CWR … How about wait for his response or at least gather more facts on this incident before reporting? Rather than a litany of he said, she said …
“The priest responsible for the initial claim will not respond to CWR.”
No, to Catholic News Agency. This is a news brief, produced by CNA, published by CWR.
“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like the pagans, for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” Mt 6.5-8
So David, based on your remark you obviously reject the Ordinary Form with all of its accompanying vocal participation from the laity and prefer the Extraordinary Form where the laity is almost entirely silent for the entire Mass, correct?
Where two or more are gathered in My name…