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.
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It would be wise for the Bishops to avoid endorsing politicians. Politicians lie. Neither party deserves an endorsement.
“Neither party offers a platform”. Sigh. Really? If the church bent over backwards any further to avoid being critical of leftist democrats it would split in half. The most clearly dangerous ideas attacking religion and freedom for individuals in general come from the left. One need only view the history of religious suppression in other nations as they followed the path to socialism and then communism. Its true that neither party is specifically Catholic as this is a secular society, not a religious one. Yet the very reason for this article is the recent loosening of laws saying churches had no right to speak out pro or con regarding politicians whose interests conflicted with any church. Lets notice that this loosening came during a republican administration. Its CERTAIN it would not have happened in a democrat one. Ditto the revised Roe v Wade decision.
Maybe it would be smart of the church higher ups to point out to their congregations which party is the more freedom and religion friendly. But then again so many church higher ups mistake socialism for Christianity. No matter. Some of us, at least, actually CAN see reality when it is right in front of us.
@LJ, great comments!
If facts mattered, there’d be no Democrats … And many fewer clergy.
My friend, don’t forget what the far right Nazis did to religion. Let not history repeat itself.
More NDS…Nazi Derangement Syndrome.
Br. Jaques, try harder.
An ignorant statement. The Nazis were socialists. Socialism is a left wing ideology, not a right wing ideology.
they were tyrants – like building all those concrete bunkers with slave labor
Didn’t we help some of them to S America?
It’s best to stick to principles that never change, rather than to politicians and parties that will betray your trust.
Dear, dear bishops at the USCCB: The People of God have superceded your failed leadership. They’ve taken matters of politics into their own hands. They hardly pay attention to you, if you haven’t noticed.
Vox Populi, Vox Dei, eh?
No, you surely don’t mean that, because — whatever your politics — your side does not always win, and you would not want to say that it was God’s will for your side to lose.
Maybe Vox DiogenesRedux, Vox Dei was what you had in mind?
No. Vox populi, vox Dei is not what DioRe wrote. Neither did DioRe purport, suggest, insinuate, or otherwise imply that he speaks for anyone other than himself.
The ‘People of God’ is ‘defined’ in Gaudium et Spes. Highly recommended reading.
Your statement is parallel to the claim by the Beatles that they were “more popular than Jesus”. The claim was made before I was born, but I never much doubted it. So much the worse for popular opinion! Popular opinion 2000 years ago was, “Crucify Him!” It’s not much different today.
Disappointed by this, with hope that local bishops will see through the progressive perspective of the USCCB. Why wouldn’t we want priests citing defiance of Catholic social doctrine by calling out those candidates who promote abortion, euthanasia, homosexual relations and so on.
Stephen: Did Jesus, St. Peter (our first Pope) or St. Paul say one word against the evil Roman Empire that eventually brutally killed them?
“Church will not endorse candidates…”
Send that memo to Tobin and Cupich and McElroy and Stowe. I am sure that will be news for them
@jpfhayes, AMEN!
A memo to Burk and Strickland might also be in order. Just saying! 🤔
Dormez-vous, Frere Jaques?
Retired members of the hierarchy and those who hold no governing post in a US diocese are not considered active members of the USCCB. Cdl. Burke and Bp. Strickland need no memo. You, however, do.
Good one!
While the USCCB’s reaffirmation of its stance not to endorse political candidates is consistent with canon law and Church tradition, it highlights a deeper pastoral failure: the widespread malformation of Catholic consciences. Many Catholics, influenced by a narrow reading of pro-life teaching, are not truly pro-life in the holistic sense but merely pro-birth or anti-abortion. This reductionist view neglects the Church’s full vision of a consistent ethic of life—from conception to natural death—that includes care for the poor, the marginalized, migrants, the elderly, the environment, and all victims of injustice. In failing to seriously teach and apply Catholic Social Teaching, especially in election seasons, the USCCB has left voters unequipped to exercise informed prudential judgment—the moral reasoning that weighs not only a candidate’s position on abortion, but the full range of life issues. True conscience formation demands helping Catholics discern which candidate or party best reflects the widest range of life-affirming principles, not just anti-abortion rhetoric. Without this, many Catholics vote based on a single issue, often ignoring policies that harm life after birth. If the Church refuses to endorse, it must all the more boldly educate and form—lest Catholics vote in ways that contradict the Gospel’s call to protect all human life and dignity.
Right, Deacon Dom. The Democrats’ murdering of more than a million children a year for the past fifty-two years is offset by the Republicans’ canceling of the school lunch program.
I got it.
So the experiment is complete. It’s undeniably true, there is no issue so evil or insane that it will convince Catholics not to vote for Democrats.
Murdering babies, allowing terrorists to enter across our open borders, legalizing drugs, sexualizing children, promoting sodomy, denying the existence of women — nothing on this list has impacted Catholics’ insistence on voting for Democrats.
You’re known as ‘Deacon Dom’ hereabouts. But, I have to say, you sound more like a bishop.
And — trust me — that’s not a compliment.
brineyman, well said. My guess he’s bucking for a promotion in the ranks. Who knows, maybe even Pope Francis II.
No one is really expecting the Catholic Church to endorse one political candidate or another. Why, the Church hierarchy has a difficult enough time speaking in one voice about Church Teaching let alone weighing in on the merits of political points of view.
I think the IRS ruling simply was addressing something about allowing political candidates EAQUAL ACCESS to Church membership on Church property to propose their ideas. This is something the protestant churches have been doing for a hundred years but the Catholic Church unwilling so as not to jeopardize their sacrosanct tax-exempt status. Once again, the USCCB seems quite adept at obfuscation.
An most unexpected exhibition of wisdom.
Perhaps more of a rice bowl issue that funds initiatives dear to their progressive hearts. The traditional Church enjoy few if any similar revenue streams. One would think that the Church should have a funding stream, strictly charitable donations from within the Church and reject all federal and state revenue with their terms and conditions which is politics at the grass root level.
To understand the USCCB politics, follow the money.
AFCz: You speak more common sense than most of us are acquainted with these days. Thanks.
The USCCB may have made its best decision ever. Otherwise, the divisions among them will dethrone what little credibility and authority they still retain. I’m praying for a saint to emerge from among them……waiting…waiting…waiting…
meiron: A saint among them will appear only when they show a willingness to die for the Faith. When was the last American bishop martyred?
Deacon,
I didn’t know of any off the top, so I asked AI. It replied with Oscar Romero. Discounting that as a technical error, I kept reading, and discovered this fellow named Francis Xavier Ford.
He was a Maryknoll missionary, a bishop, imprisoned and martyred in China in 1952.
meiron, yes, he was American but martyred by the ChiComs. That said, in 250 years we’ve never had an American bishop martyred in America. We did have a Bishop from NY who was imprisoned for his ProLife activities. I guess they didn’t think to kill him in prison.
This is welcome news!
(“Church will not endorse political candidates despite IRS shift.”)
Thank you bishops!
May St. Thomas More intercede for the Catholic Church – political candidates and non-candidates – Catholics one and all.
I am saddened and ashamed to read some of the ultra-snarky, uncharitable and judgmental comments from some of my fellow Catholics who apparently think their “version” of Catholicism is the one and only true version of the faith. Those who take offense at the statement, “Today in the United States, neither political party offers a platform that would serve as a foundation for a true home for faithful Catholics,” show their reluctance to discern the truth about current USA politics. Certainly there were and are Democratic policies that bear much criticism, but to deny that the current MAGA administration is undertaking a variety of cruel and unjust programs that cause much pain and suffering is to look away from the truth. As I see it, the collective wisdom of our US Bishops far supersedes the holier-than-thou musings of some of those snarky commentators on this site.
per Catholic.org: (this priest spoke against tyrants) …….Parishioners offered to escort Father Jerzy by car back to Warsaw, but he was used to being followed and it was late. He and his bodyguard would go alone. The secret police overtook them on a deserted road about a half hour from the town. They held the bodyguard at gunpoint. The captain dragged Father by the cassock to the Fiat. “What are you doing, Gentleman? How can you treat someone like this?”
In a cold fury, the kidnappers beat him with fists and clubs, smashing his skull and face. Unconscious, he was bound, gagged and thrown into the trunk. As they headed for a lonely stretch of woods, the bodyguard hurled himself from the Fiat in a desperate attempt to escape. He made it to a nearby workers hostel and quickly raised the alarm. When they reached the hospital emergency ward, another squad of secret police and a state prosecutor were waiting to take him away. But for the authorities it was too late. The bodyguard had already alerted the Church.
The secret police Fiat sped on with Father Jerzy in the trunk The captain’s men were arguing now, and downing quick shots of vodka. The kidnappers were so terrified that they would be identified that they wanted to leave the priest in the woods. “No,” said another angrily, “the priest must die.”
With the bodyguard’s escape, news of the abduction had swept across Poland. Shock and outrage were nationwide. The parish church overflowed with thousands of people. Every night, larger crowds came to the Masses, praying for Father’s deliverance. Massive security forces surrounded the Warsaw steelworks, where the men were praying at work. Throughout Poland, there were mass meetings in factories and spontaneous prayers in schools. The national crisis mounted. Other churchmen denounced the kidnapping, but Cardinal Glemp refused to comment. The Holy Father declared himself “deeply shaken,” condemning the shameful act and demanding Father Jerzy’s immediate release.
After ten days of waiting, the nation’s patience ran raw. Authorities dispatched large security forces and imposed emergency measures in cities and towns. The last Sunday of October, a record 50,000 people engulfed the parish church at a cold, outdoor Mass for the Homeland. They listened to a tape of Father Jerzy’s last sermon. They hoped and prayed to see him again.
When smiling security officers pulled the battered corpse of Father Jerzy from a reservoir on the river Vistula, about eighty miles from Warsaw, it was tortured beyond recognition. A sack of rocks hung from his legs. His body had been trussed from neck to feet with a nylon rope so that if he resisted he would strangle himself. Several gags had worked free and lay across his clerical collar and cassock, soaked with the priest’s vomit and blood.
Officially, Father spent less than two hours with his kidnappers, but his torture was much too extensive and systematic to have in inflicted in that brief time. Family members present at the autopsy described a body covered head to foot with deep, bloody wounds and marks of torture. His face was deformed. His eyes and forehead had been beated until black. His jaws, nose, mouth were smashed. His face was deformed, and both hands were broken and cut, as if the priest had been shielding it from blows. His fingers and toes dark red and brown from the repeated clubbing. Part of his scalp and large strips of skin on his legs had been torn off.
The autopsy showed a brain concussion and damaged spinal cord. His muscles had been pounded again and again until limp. Internal injuries from the beatings had left blood in his lungs. One of the doctors that performed the post-mortem reported that in all his medical practice he had never seen anyone mutilated internally. The kidneys and intestines were reduced to pulp, as in others cases of prolonged police torture in Poland. When his mouth was opened, the teeth were found completely smashed. In place of his tongue, there was only mush.
A group of priests tried to identify the body, but could not recognize their friend. Identification was finally made by Father’s brother from a birthmark on the side of his chest. Making the full autopsy report public was deemed too explosive by regime and Church officials, who continue to suppress it. Church and independent sources familiar with the report have said it details an even more horrifying picture suffered by the defenseless priest.
“The worst has happened,” declared Lech Walesa, Solidarity’s leader. In Rome, the Holy Father reacted with shock, following the news late into the night. At the parish church in Warsaw, a priest made several attempts to get the mourning population to say the Our Father. When he reached “Forgive us as we forgive those who trespass against us” the congregation refused to pray with him. It took several more attempts before the people would utter that line, and when they did, they prayed it with great force.
Just as was feared, when the state trial was held for the perpetrators, only the mid-level criminals were sentenced. Those who masterminded the plot got off scott-free. Because they were afraid that Father Jerzey’s final resting place would become a shrine, the state officials pressured his parents to bury him in their distant village. The faithful demanded a huge funeral and that he be buried in the parish cemetery. It was the pleading of Father’s mother that he be buried at the parish church in Warsaw.
Father’s mother had continued to wear a red shawl as long as she believed her son was alive. Now, for the funeral, she wore her black shawl. On the day of the funeral ten thousand steelworkers in hard hats marched past secret police headquarters, chanting “We forgive,” “Greetings from the underground,” and “No freedom without Solidarity.” Half a million people filled the streets leading up to the parish church. Scattered throughout were the forbidden Solidarity banners of factories, schools and offices from every corner of Poland. One read “A strike at the heart of the nation,” another proclaimed, “But they can’t kill the soul.”
Father Jerzy knew that his death would have immense power. “Living I could not achieve it,” he once said when the danger rose. The parish church, Saint Stanislaw’s has become a national shrine. As of the writing of this piece by James Fox in 1985, and unending river of pilgrims flow past Father’s grave. Great mounds of flowers are put there. Even communists visited the grave. A thousand-man volunteer force guards the church yard in teams around the clock.
The murder of the holy, defenseless priest emboldened the populace and encourage many conversions and vocations. All the while the regime continued to defame the priest.
Today, Poland, as the rest of the former Iron Curtain countries of Europe, is a free country and a proud ally of our own country. The enemies of Christ rule Europe no more.
***Author’s note: It was by chance that I was looking for reading material when I happened upon this Reader’s Digest of May, 1985. I could not sleep thinking that Father Jerzy’s story must be made widely known. The title of the original article was “Do you hear the Bells, Father Jerzy?” The author of the piece is John Fox.
Father Jerzy, may you rest in peace.
More nonsense from our spineless American bishops. OF COURSE they will continue to endorse political candidates, in the same manner as they have been doing for the past 50 years at least. They will continue to glad-hand, chuckle, laugh, and pose for photographs with every scandalous “catholic” politician on the left. They will continue to excuse every pro-death, anti-family and anti-religious vote and policy of the “catholic” Democrats. They will continue to scold every Catholic Republican politician for imaginary offenses against Catholic teaching. The political positions of the Catholic bishops of America will continue to be crystal clear and unmistakable. They will ALWAYS have the backs of their Democrat Party financiers.