One can say that every state of sadness in the soul is in every circumstance a sign of demonic activity. ‘Everything that causes distress and sadness comes from the demons,’ reiterates this great elder [St. Barsanuphius].
Mental Disorders & Spiritual Healing: Teachings from the Early Christian East
Jean-Claude Larchet
Category: DESPONDENCY
-
-
Sadness (lupe) appears to be a state of soul which, beside the simple meaning of the word, involves discouragement, debility, psychic heaviness and sorrow, dejection, distress, oppression, and depression most often accompanied by anxiety and even with anguish.
This condition can have many causes, but it always involves a pathological reaction of the soul’s irascible (thumos) and/or despairing faculty (epithumia), and as such is essentially tied to concupiscence or anger. ‘Sadness,’ Evagrius tells us, ‘tends to come up at times because of the deprivation of one’s desires (steresis ton epithumion). On other occasions, it accompanies anger. But it can also be a result of the direct action of demons on the soul, or it may even arise for no apparent reason.
First Cause—The Frustration of Desires
Evagrius tells us ‘Sadness is formed from an unsatisfied carnal desire.’ St. John Cassian likewise notes that sadness ‘sometimes results when we see ourselves deceived with regard to some hope,’ and that one of its chief kinds follows from ‘a desire that has been thwarted.’ In that ‘every desire is tied to a passion,’ every passion is prone to produce sadness. According to Evagrius: ‘whoever loves the world will often be sad.’
Mental Disorders & Spiritual Healing: Teachings from the Early Christian East
Jean-Claude Larchet -
First of all we observe that they [the Fathers] ate and slept very little.
Mental Disorders & Spiritual Healing: Teachings from the Early Christian East
Jean-Claude Larchet -
“…He worked not because he had to do so to eat, but ‘just for the sake of purging his heart, firming his thoughts, preserving in his cell, and conquering and driving out acedia.”
Mental Disorders & Spiritual Healing: Teachings from the Early Christian East
Jean-Claude Larchet -
Manual labor is also among the remedies prescribed by the Fathers. It helps the individual to avoid the boredom, instability, torpor, and sleepiness that together form one aspect of this passion.
Mental Disorders & Spiritual Healing: Teachings from the Early Christian East
Jean-Claude Larchet -
And again he advises: ‘When the spirit of acedia arises in you, do not quit the house or evade the struggle.’ St John Cassian similarly advises that one must fight against the spirit of acedia so that one is not ‘driven out from the bulwark of the monastery and depart in flight, even for a seemingly pious reason.’
“…and gets in the habit of finding its consolation in the face of this onslaught by visiting a brother, although it will be all the more painfully vulnerable not long after.”
Mental Disorders & Spiritual Healing: Teachings from the Early Christian East
Jean-Claude Larchet -
It is important that a person gripped by sadness not become withdrawn, which would favor the advance of this illness, but be open about his condition and disclose his thoughts to those more spiritually advanced and speak to them about it.
Mental Disorders & Spiritual Healing: Teachings from the Early Christian East
Jean-Claude Larchet -
On the contrary, association with others in this situation allows for a more rapid healing than does solitude, insofar as it constitutes for the individual a test in which he directly confronts the difficulties which are the source of his sadness, and so is more easily and rapidly cured.
Mental Disorders & Spiritual Healing: Teachings from the Early Christian East
Jean-Claude Larchet -
True, acedia especially affects those who strive to submit themselves to a regular spiritual discipline. For this reason they have limited their exterior activities and movements to what is strictly necessary, and seek the greatest possible silence and solitude.
Mental Disorders & Spiritual Healing: Teachings from the Early Christian East
Jean-Claude Larchet -
Acedia can also affect their activities and especially their work which no longer gives them any sense of satisfaction. This leads them to seek out other forms of employment which they think will be more interesting and make them happier…
Mental Disorders & Spiritual Healing: Teachings from the Early Christian East
Jean-Claude Larchet
SO GOOD QUOTES 