Caput XXXII. De acedia
The Wound of Acedia
Acedia is described as a harmful plague that numbs the soul, extinguishing joy in spiritual work and charity toward others while inflaming restless desire.
Acedia is a plague that proves deeply harmful to those who serve God: while a person is idle, he grows numb with carnal desires, takes no joy in spiritual work, finds no delight in the longing of his own soul, and is not cheered by helping a brother in his labor — but only craves and longs for things, and his restless mind runs through everything.
Acedia Scatters the Monk
Acedia drives monks from their cells and into vice, and when it besieges the mind it stains it with miseries and teaches it to do evil.
It is this vice that especially shakes monks out of their cells into the world, and throws them out of regular monastic conduct into the precipices of vice. When it besieges a wretched mind, it stains it with many miseries, and it teaches it to do many evil things.
The Bitter Fruits
Acedia produces a catalogue of vices including drowsiness, laziness, instability, wandering, weariness, grumbling, and idle talk.
From acedia is born drowsiness, laziness about good work, instability of place, wandering from place to place, lukewarmness in laboring, weariness of heart, grumbling, and idle talk.
The Remedy of Zeal
Acedia is overcome through reading, good work, longing for future blessedness, confession, stability, craft, and prayer; the devil more easily tempts the idle than those engaged in good work.
It is overcome by zeal for reading, by persistence in good work, by longing for the future rewards of blessedness, by confession of the temptation one carries in mind, by stability of place and of one's own resolution, and by practice in any craft or labor, or by urgency in prayer and vigils, so that the servant of God may never be found idle. The devil finds a place to tempt more easily in a person whom he finds engaged in good work than in one whom he finds idle and doing nothing good.
Read the original Latin
Acedia est pestis, quae Deo famulantibus multum nocere probatur, dum otiosus homo torpescit in desideriis carnalibus, nec in opere gaudet spirituali, nec in desiderio animae suae laetatur, nec in adjutorio fraterni laboris hilarescit: sed tantum concupiscit et desiderat, et otiosa mens per omnia discurrit. Haec est quae maxime monachos excutit de cella in saeculum, et de regulari conversatione ejicit eos in abrupta vitiorum. Quae cum miserabilem obsidet mentem, multis eam inficit miseriis, quae multa docet mala. De qua nascitur somnolentia, pigritia operis boni, instabilitas loci, pervagatio de loco in locum, tepiditas laborandi, taedium cordis, murmuratio et inaniloquia. Quae vincitur per studium lectionis, per assiduitatem operis boni, per desiderium futurae praemiorum beatitudinis, per confessionem tentationis, quam in mente habet, per stabilitatem loci et propositi sui, atque exercitium cujuslibet artis et laboris, vel orationum et vigiliarum instantiam, ut nunquam otiosus inveniatur servus Dei. Difficilius invenit diabolus tentandi locum in homine quem in opere invenit bono, quam in eo quem otiosum reperit et nihil boni agentem.
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