The devil of acedia starts by making the soul feel the weight of time; the day seems just endless. Then the victim, prey to a sentiment of emptiness, can no longer concentrate. He waits for it to end, hoping that someone will come to lend some substance to that day. But nothing and no one comes to fill that void. Besides, who could fill it, since it is interior?
The Noonday Devil: Acedia, the Unnamed Evil of Our Times
Jean-Charles Nault
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The above explains why thoughts of acedia [despondency] can appear in apparently such contradictory ways: in the lukewarm, as sluggishness, indifference, and even depression, and in the conscientious and eager, as unrestrained activism and ascetical maximalism. If this vice is not healed by steadfast endurance and a life of discipline, combined with “tears before God” and constant short prayers, it leads to a complete standstill of the spiritual life and sometimes even suicide. Yet he who bravely and steadfastly passes the trials of this “noonday demon,” who “encompasses the entire soul and [threatens] to oppress the spirit,” emerges from these tests inwardly strengthened. Unexpectedly, those spiritual experiences from which he thought himself forever to be excluded are now revealed to him.
Dragon’s Wine and Angel’s Bread: The Teaching of Evagrius Ponticus on Anger and Meekness
Gabriel Bunge -
The inexpressible and unaccountable melancholy that oppresses you and prevents you from enjoying anything may be a test, intended to prove the firmness of your decision and the purity of your love of God.
—Elder Macarius of Optina, Russian Letters of Spiritual Direction p.43
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Repeat frequently: Thy will be done, O Lord!
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You describe how bitterly you regret the inefficacy of your prayers. Beware: to wish for consolation or revelation in prayer is a sure sign of pride. Pray humbly, in perfect simplicity, seeking salvation only through forgiveness, and having faith that God will extend to you His mercy-as He did to the publican.
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Another point of the utmost importance is that you have lately been tossed and harassed by sexual lusts. This always happens when our practices of the Prayer are beyond our abilities and capacities. Read, in the foreword to Philotheus of Sinai,” how easily the sensation of heat, caused by prayer, can turn to sexual lust, setting the blind heart on fire, filling the mind with the smoke of lascivious images and thoughts, and causing flesh to yearn for the touch of flesh.
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God gives you what is of benefit to you and not what you ask for, unless that which you ask for is of benefit to you, and this is because oftentimes you ask for that which will not benefit you.
Pope Shenouda III, A Whisper of Love: Poems, Prayers and Sayings -
Do not attempt to assess the quality of your prayer. God alone can judge its value. To us, our own prayer must always appear so poor an effort, so inadequate an achievement, that the cry of the publican spontaneously rises to our lips. [252]
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Pray simply. Do not expect to find in your heart any remarkable gift of prayer. Consider yourself unworthy of it. Then you will find peace. Use the empty cold dryness of your prayer as food for your humility. Repeat constantly: I am not worthy; Lord, I am not worthy! But say it calmly, without agitation. This humble prayer, unlike the sweet one you delight in, will be acceptable to God.
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12. LET MY PRAYER COME BEFORE YOU
Behold, O Lord, I cry out to You from the depth of my heart. I bellow out to You as a child calling tearfully to his father, his aid. Likewise, I cry out to You, O compassionate one, O Omnipotent. It is a cry for help, a cry of faith, of hope, and of need—an adamant cry. This reminds me of the Egyptian poet, who in one of his poems explained the force of this cry:
“My voice is like the cry of one sinking, hollering out to a lifeboat. He cries, cries, cries, he cries out all he can—for his life.” It is a scream, not just a cry. A cry that attracts Your gentleness, O Lord.
I cry out to You, O Lord, for You to hear my prayer, for my prayer to come before You, for You to accept it, despite my sins and unworthiness, although I sense the familiarity between us is absent. All I want is for my prayer to reach You; I leave the rest to Your love-You who do not treat me according to my sins, but according to Your mercy. We know that requests reach You, even if we do not pray, as You preceded and said, “I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. So I have come down to deliver them” (Ex 3:7-8). All this and they had not prayed yet!
“Lord, hear my voice!” (Ps 130:2). Help me feel that You have received my prayer, took note of it, and that my cry has reached Your ear; this is sufficient for me.
I pray, for You to hear my prayers; I will persist in prayer until I am certain. I am confident once You hear my prayer, You will act. For Your name’s sake, I await Your salvation. I wait until I receive Your aid, and until I earn Your forgiveness. What is this name on which I waited? Your name: the Savior. Of You, the angel of annunciation said: “And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins” (Mt 1:21). The word Jesus means Savior.H.H.
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Dialogue with the Divine
SO GOOD QUOTES 