By directing its power toward destruction of this support on which the sinner’s selfishness has established itself and rests, divine, salvific grace carries out the following to awaken the sinner from his slumber: He who is enslaved by pleasing the flesh shall fall ill, and by weakening the flesh, shall give the spirit freedom and power to come to its senses and become sober. He who is preoccupied with his own attractiveness and strength shall be deprived of this attractiveness and kept in a state of utter exhaustion. He who finds refuge in his own power and strength shall be subject to slavery and humiliation. He who relies greatly on wealth shall have it taken from him. He who shows off great learnedness shall be put to shame. He who relies on solid personal connections shall have them cut off. He who counts on the permanence of the order established around him shall have it destroyed by the death of people he knows or the loss of essential material possessions. Is there any way to sober up those kept in the bonds of indifference through outward happiness other than by sorrows and grief? Isn’t our life filled with misfortunes so that it may assist with the divine intention of keeping us sober?
Each destruction of the supports of indifferent self-indulgence constitutes a turning point in life, which, because it is always unexpected, operates in an overwhelming and salvific manner. The sense that one’s life is in danger operates strongest of all in this respect. This sense weakens all bonds and kills selfishness at the very root; the person does not know where to run. The sense of total abandonment is of the same character and special circumstance. Both sense leave a person alone with himself. From himself, the most miserable of creatures, he immediately turns to God.
—St. Theophan the Recluse, The Path to Salvation: A Manual of Spiritual Transformation
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The divine grace that is everywhere-present and fills all things directly inspires the spirit of man, impressing thoughts and feelings upon it that turn it away from all finite things and toward another better, albeit invisible and mysterious world. The general characteristics of such arousals are dissatisfaction with oneself and everything pertaining to oneself, and anguish over something. The person is not satisfied by anything around him; not by his accomplishments or possessions, even if he has incalculable wealth; and he walks around as if heart-broken. Because he finds no consolation in visible things, he turns to the invisible, and receives it with a readiness to acquire it for himself sincerely and to give himself over to it.
—St. Theophan the Recluse, The Path to Salvation: A Manual of Spiritual Transformation
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“…he couldn’t understand why he was feeling happy and sad at the same time.”
Fantasies and other Extraordinary Illusions
Echoes In A Mystical Mind, Inspiration for the Intellectual -
We see here that Evagrius presents the person afflicted with acedia as a “run-away”, as a deserter who flees the spiritual battlefield. As a remedy for it he prescribes perseverance, which very often consists of remaining physically in one’s cell, whatever the cost, since physical stability is designed to support the stability of the heart.
The Noonday Devil: Acedia, the Unnamed Evil of Our Times
Jean-Charles Nault -
We can classify here also the constant tendency to consider most attractive those pursuits that take one far from home or from one’s city. Here again we find the last daughter of acedia, instability, who thinks that by changing where one is, one can change who one is.
The Noonday Devil: Acedia, the Unnamed Evil of Our Times
Jean-Charles Nault -
—garrulousness: man flees thought so as to take refuge in speech; and curiosity: since he has lost his perspective on eternity, he compensates by a perpetual search for substitutes. Such garrulousness and such curiosity about other people’s business are the sign of a lack of substance in one’s own personal life. While focused very often on the faults of others, these gossips become set in their own mediocrity.
The Noonday Devil: Acedia, the Unnamed Evil of Our Times
Jean-Charles Nault -
The ancients knew too that one way of overcoming acedia [despondency] is to ridicule it by continually postponing flight until later; this is how one manages to remain faithful for one’s whole life!
It was said of Abba Theodore and Abba Lucius, both from Ennaton, that they spent fifty years ridiculing their own thoughts by saying: “After this winter we will depart from here.” And when summer returned, they would say, “After this summer, we will depart from here.” And that is what they did their whole life long, those memorable Fathers.
The Noonday Devil: Acedia, the Unnamed Evil of Our Times
Jean-Charles Nault -
“Regardless of my transient joys, I am never free of a feeling of melancholy which somehow forms the base of my heart.”
—Frederic Chopin, from Franz Liszt’s Frederic Chopin, trans. Edward N. Waters (Collier-Macmillan, 1963)
