Our help is in the name of the Lord, made heaven and earth. Today, this evening we will talk a bit about Asidia. Does the word mean anything to you? Akadia or Asidia. That is a Greek word that has been in monastic literature forever. And it's oftentimes translated as what would it be? It's what we pray at Compline where you have that little litany in Compline in Psalm 90 on the four devils There's the devil at the night, and the devil in the morning, and then there's the devil that comes around at noonday.

[01:05]

Is that correct? Okay, there's four devils in that psalm, and this is the one that always appears in the light of day. Now, normally, when we talk about temptations, and normally when we talk about devils, we're talking about some kind of shadowy existence, and the devils like the nighttime, and they like sort of half-darkness and stuff in monastic literature. But this devil likes the noonday, and he attacks us when the sun is in the middle of the sky. In Greek and also in English, Kathleen Norris wrote a 500-page book. Did you read it? The book is called Assyria and Me. It's 500 pages long. There's been psychologists, a Jewish psychologist, wrote a study of about 500 pages, saw somebody, a psychological study on Assyria.

[02:16]

Now, what would it be in English? It would be indifference. It would be tiredness. It would be boredom. It would be the midlife crisis, which is not just for people in their 40s. It would be sort of disinterest It's not melancholy. And it's not sadness in itself. When you don't care that you don't care. Yeah. And I... There's... We prayed a song yesterday morning from Lodz.

[03:24]

That was an interesting morning Lodz psalm. We prayed 887 and it ended with my one companion is darkness. The poet was probably describing not just melancholy and not just kind of a... a barrage of things that were happening in his life at that time. But he may have been suffering from a certain spiritual dryness and maybe even acedia. And I would say, and this is very personal to me, Psalm 39. I find acedia in this psalm. The beautiful thing about this psalm is the poet talks about it And if you can name something, if you can put a name to something, then that something does not have power over you.

[04:26]

If you can really diagnose your physical or moral or spiritual theological illness, that illness is not going to take over in our lives. And that's the thing with Assyria in this psalm, I would say. It's really a very beautiful psalm. The images will remind us of the first psalm that we read, which is Psalm 90, about life is a passing shadow, and here today and gone tomorrow, and time is running out. Let's read the first nine verses of Psalm 39. I'm in Psalm 39. And the first nine verses, what does it say? I said, I will watch my ways, lest I sin with my tongue.

[05:27]

I will set a curb on my mouth. Dumb and silent before the wicked, I refrained from any speech. But my sorrow increased. My heart smoldered within me. In my thoughts a fire blazed up. I broke into speech. Lord, let me know my end, the number of my days, that I may learn how frail I am. You have given my days a very short span. My life is as nothing before you. All mortals are but a breath. Mere phantoms, we go our way. Mere vapor, our restless pursuits. We heap up stores without knowing for whom. And now, Lord, what future do I have? You are my only hope. From all my sins, deliver me.

[06:27]

Let me not be the taunt of wounds. The poet is hurting, but he doesn't know why. He confronts that an empty life, a life that he perceives as empty. It doesn't have to be empty. But the one good thing about this devil, the one tool of this devil is to make us think what is not real. The poet is living a tense and empty life. How fragile this life. How frail I am. My days, a very short span, as nothing before you, but an able, but a breath. Yeah, I think it's... How frail I am.

[07:33]

Yes. My life is as nothing. All mortals are but a breath. The word breath there is... That's the... The Hebrew word breath is Hebel. Hebel is the national anthem of the book of Kohelet or Ecclesiastes. Now what's the national anthem? Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Emptiness of emptiness is everything is empty. Or it's a proper name in chapter 4 of Genesis. Abel of Abel. Everything is reduced to Abel. Abel is Cain's younger brother who was killed while he was after he did his sacrifice. Mere phantoms, mere vapor, he says.

[08:38]

What's worse, a fleeting life is a punishment for sin. He feels that somehow he doesn't, he's The poet is not explicit about sin. He just has this kind of nagging idea that somehow he's being punished for sin. He confesses his sins in a general sort of way on two places in this psalm. He says, take your plague away from me. I'm ravaged by the touch of your hand. Now he's talking to God. You dissolve all... All that we prize like a cobweb. All mortals are but a breath. All mortals are just vanity. The physical pain and the fatigue add a sense of frailty and futility to all things. At first, the poet concentrates on himself and vows to keep quiet.

[09:40]

I'm not going to talk about this so that people don't find fault with it. It is said that a man is master of his silences but slave of his speech. Despite his determination to be quiet, the poet, reminiscent of Jeremiah the prophet, can't keep silence and finally erupts to vent his feelings to God. Now that's healthy. That would be healthy prayer, telling the truth to God as one sees it. Twice he claims that he made every effort to muzzle his speech. The irony is that this poet speaks with eloquence. In verses 9 to 14, he makes a final request. In verses 9 to 14, from all my sins deliver me.

[10:45]

Let me not be the taunt of fools. Take your plague away from me. Listen to my prayer, Lord. Hear my cry. Do not be deaf to my weeping. Turn your, he says then, turn your gaze from me. Now this is the only time I remember in all of the Psalter, 150 Psalms, where he says, take your eyes off of me. Normally, he wants to be seen by God And he wants to be in the presence of God. That would be the normal prayer of this psalter, of the psalmist that we see all the time, we hear all the time. But here he says, just don't even look at me anymore so that I can just breathe. I just want to breathe. That's all I want to do before I die. The poet is painfully aware of the divine presence and he notifies God that he's being reduced to nothing in God's presence.

[11:46]

The reflection about the swiftness of life aims to move God to intervene. I'm disappearing. I'm just a vapor. I'm nothing anymore. God, you've got to do something. I can't. With this repeated word vapor or breath in verse 6, all mortals are but a breath in verse 6, Seven, mere vapor. And in verse 12, all mortals are but a breath. The poet complains about life's frailty. This is Kohelet's favorite word. Vanity of vanities. What the poet is saying is, God, I can't do it myself. You'd better... put your hand to the task before the morning mist clears, before the fog, the morning fog dissipates.

[12:55]

I am morning fog. The emphatic in verse 8, now, Lord, what future do I have? And he raises the tone, you are my only hope. The trusting poet pleads for relief from his rebellious nature that earned such torment. If God continues to allow him to be crushed, he will vanish in thin air. If he vanishes in thin air, that's a threat to God because then praise in the world will be diminished. And that happens several times in the psalm. The psalmist Don't let them get me. Don't let them kill me. Because if I die, your praise will decrease. We find that in a number of songs.

[13:56]

In the end, the poet in verse 13, Listen to my prayer, Lord. Hear my cry. Do not be deaf to my weeping. I sojourn with you like a passing stranger, like a migrant worker. I'm a guest, like all my ancestors. When he says migrant or stranger and guest, that's connecting us with Psalm 23, which we prayed yesterday. A fugitive in the desert, when he's taken into somebody's home, has the right to be protected. And the poet is saying, I've been accepted in your house.

[14:59]

Now you have to protect me. You have an obligation, moral obligation and a legal obligation to protect me. I'm just a migrant. I'm an undocumented alien. And then he says, I'm a guest. And that those two words are tying, are making practically a covenant between the poet and God. What catches my attention here is a person who's suffering from the disease perhaps of Assyria is really trying to do something about it. He's trying to get closer to God to find his feeling again, to find his first fervor again. This psalm was prayed by Christ who shared our limited earthly existence, who lived in solidarity with sinners,

[16:11]

Jesus was accused, abandoned, was silent before his accusers. The fact that Jesus prayed the liturgy and we are praying the same psalms as Jesus infuses our life with meaning. God did not excuse his son from death, but he accompanies us through the corridor of death to resurrected life. United with Christ, the poet entrusts his life into the hands of his Heavenly Father. The prayer reflects an internal anguish, physical pain, a chronic sadness, melancholy, of a faithful person who reflects on the meaning of life with God. The author, the poet here, is in crisis of some sort.

[17:17]

The presence of adversaries and fools bother him, but he knows that his own failings are at the root of his suffering. Brief life, heaped up with illness, pain, and frustration, the poet confesses, is the desert of his own failings and his own sins. In the school where God disciplines and corrects the human being, this is the school where God corrects the human being. Saint Benedict says of the formation of novices, the novice should be clearly told all the hardships and difficulties that will lead him to God. Are you acquainted with this monk? He does all the things that you do, attends all the common exercises in the course of a week or a month, but it seems to cost him more.

[18:32]

It's as if he were suffering from chronic jet lag after a trans-oceanic flight. He sighs audibly, when you ask him, brother, what's going on with you? He just responds, nothing, just a little tired, that's all. But he doesn't give the impression of being a little tired. It sounds more like sadness. He can't be tired or sad for the reasons he gives you. Oh yes, he has every reason to complain. The food is always the same. Everything tastes alike. His confreres and the workers, the lay staff, don't pay attention to what they're doing. The community is slow in making decisions. The senior council lacks creativity.

[19:37]

The sad monk compares his present assignment with previous ones or other possible positions where his ability would be more appreciated and his talents wouldn't be wasted in trivial pursuits. This monk complains that nobody understands. This monk is amiable and pleasant. He has spark and fulfills his responsibilities and tasks but he doesn't enjoy life, like getting up in the morning, attending vigils, praying the hours, keeping house. He attends the liturgy out of a sense of duty and routine, but his heart is somewhere else. He's hoping to reduce his responsibilities. He longs for a change so he can rest from the chronic fatigue that plagues him.

[20:40]

He comments that he doesn't sleep well and he has very little interest in eating. What he doesn't tell you, perhaps because he doesn't realize it himself, is that he passes hours surfing the net or reading the newspapers or playing with Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, which are favorite pastimes. and he spends an inordinate amount of time just walking from place to place, just putzing. He fulfills nearly all his responsibilities, but only half-heartedly, because his tasks are not exciting, they're not worthy of his efforts. His confreres and friends give this monk a little extra time and patience.

[21:46]

But he still doesn't snap out of his fatigue. You advise him to attend the community social time after supper, something he stopped doing. And he answers, well, what's the use? It's the same old script, the same old politics, the same old gossip. What's the use? The only sensation that seems to register in his life is a low degree of chronic anxiety. He's a monk bothered by his own life but not bothered enough to do anything about it. It's not as if he's going to have a breakdown. He's just in low gear slowly grinding to a halt in his spiritual life. Are you acquainted with this monk?

[22:50]

I have the dubious pleasure of knowing him. I've lived with him. At times in my life I have been that monk. The disease that he suffers has been diagnosed across the ages and in different societies goes by many names. It was even known in Greek philosophy as melancholy. Evagrius, Ponticus, and the desert monk, monks call it Assydia. One of the... Now get this. Assydia is not a sin. It's an erroneous way of thinking about things. It's a faulty way of thinking about things. That's the way Evagrius... Evagrius... talks about sin, the seven capital ones. The seven capital, he doesn't use the word sin.

[23:56]

He uses, we have seven capital errors in our thinking. And one of them is acedia. It's a false way of thinking about life. It's a mistaken way of thinking about life. And erroneous thoughts when their capital erroneous thoughts, like the big seven, they lead to death, according to Evagrius. Other generations diagnosed this condition as sloth. Sloth is a three-toed or four-toed animal in Brazil that gets up on a limb and falls asleep and then he falls down to the ground and he doesn't even care. sloth, faintheartedness, sorrow, anxiety, apathy, lack of feeling, indifference, boredom, or just being fed up.

[25:05]

Today we might say somebody is depressed or burnt out, having a midlife crisis, something that is not limited to the middle years of life. This disease visits monks in various stages of life and growth. Monks today call this condition acedia and we place the emphasis on the spiritual side of this struggle. John of the Cross compared the acedia in prayer to that of a lover whose affections have been withdrawn without expectation, without explanation. Acedia is a kind of a spiritual unrequited love. The sentiments and consolation that have sustained me in prayer fade, and the sensation of God's presence evaporates. I'm not really talking about what happens normally at the end of the novitiate, in the first year of progression, the first years of our monastic life.

[26:14]

I would say that A very young crowd might be too green for acedia. But there are symptoms that can be applied to those first years of monastic life when the fires begin to burn low and the fervor is dying, going out. No one is listening and nothing comes to me from the other side when I pray. That's a common sensation at various times in our monastic life. Nobody's over there on the other side listening to my prayer. Talking about God. The solitude that once consoled me now just bores me. I get bored and am fed up with the silence since prayer feels like a waste of time

[27:17]

I'm tempted to abandon prayer altogether in favor of more productive or entertaining occupations. Though I haven't quite done it, I feel the emptiness of my spiritual life by reading books on self-help or popular spirituality. I might be more attentive to God if I prayed in a different way. Something might sink in if I could force myself to be less distracted and more disciplined. What does a monk have to do to jumpstart a long-lost fervor? But I would say, reading this psalm, that ascidia is also an opportunity for spiritual growth.

[28:19]

Yes. Waking up to the demon of acedia, calling it by its name, can make us more aware and open, more aware of and open to God's grace in our life. We can't do it alone. We connect as we recognize a tendency to acedia in one phase of our life, we can recognize that in my weakness, no, I can't do it alone. As maybe we could when we were quite much younger at the beginning stages of our monastic life. We connect ourselves with God's grace and God's strength. By our confession, as this psalm was confessing.

[29:23]

When the Desert Fathers, our heroes, spoke of acedia as a deadly operation in our life, they didn't think of, they weren't talking about sin as a personal fault committed by an individual or a moral foible. The Desert Fathers Evagrius and his friends considered a deadly sin more like quicksand as a gravitational force that attracts its victims away from growth and maturity and holiness. Now if we look at those seven capital faults in the spiritual life as Erroneous ways of thinking about things. I wonder what that implies about other so-called deadly sins. What about gula?

[30:32]

It doesn't just have to do with eating. It has to do with our consumption of lots of things in life. And a particularly insidious type of gula now could be leisure time, use of leisure time. We're living in a society that doesn't have to work as hard as maybe our parents or grandparents did. Insidious misuse of leisure time, or particularly now when we're living in a with the cybernetic world at our fingertips, there is gula, gluttony, related to our use of the communication system, internet.

[31:38]

You don't... You would be surprised. I am surprised. I'm a minister of the sacrament of confession. I'm surprised at the good and holy religious men and women and priests who are really struggling against the gula of pornography on the internet. It's a real, real illness. The beautiful thing is that people are aware of it. They themselves are aware of it. We become addicted to it. And addiction, as you know, is so insidious that we don't even know that we're addicted to something.

[32:42]

We're taking the drink and we don't even realize the drink is the poison that's killing my life. The same thing happens now with the use of Internet and particularly just sensational things on the Internet, communication, easy communication on the Internet, and it can get as insidious as the use of pornography. How many people, there's just a click of a mouse they open up an entire world that could really strangle them in their spiritual lives. And the good news is people are thinking about it, waking up to that fact now. People in monasteries. I wonder what erroneous thinking that leads to death...

[33:47]

how we might apply that to gula, gluttony, to anger. People get really addicted to anger. What's that called? Envy. Looking sideways instead of looking upwards. The vanities. Vanities in all their form. and pride. In the spiritual tradition, as you mentioned, Brother Pierre, a term from St. Jerome's translation of Psalm 90 has come to me to refer to boredom, spiritual sloth, sadness, tiredness, distraction. This chronic spiritual restlessness is known to us monks as the noonday devil.

[34:50]

The noonday devil appears at the brightest part of the day, according to John Cashin, one of our first systematic psychologists in Christian life, 5th century. John Cashin says it's at noonday that This devil chooses to snatch the soul away from God. Other deadly sins prefer a certain darkness to thrive. If you plot to murder somebody, for example, you shut down your senses to any positive thoughts about your victim, any feelings that might mitigate your resolve to do him in. Out of passion, adulterers close their hearts to their spouses. Darkness.

[35:54]

Kidnappers and hijackers close their mind to humanity, their own humanity, and the humanity of their victims. Darkness shelters other faulty ways of thinking that we call the capital sins. But acedia shamelessly stares us right in the face. The noonday devil's tactic is to convince us of a truth that isn't true. And he achieves this when he convinces us that things are what they seem to be. If unaddressed, the illness of acedia leads, among other things, to cynicism, a hazard of monastic life. When boredom and cynicism become our usual way of experiencing the liturgy or monastic observance, well, that's a pretty good indication that we are struck with acedia.

[37:02]

We feel bad or bored. Our good zeal appetites and energies are out of whack. Dorothy Sayers describes it this way. Acedia is the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing to die for. John Cashin put a more positive spin on its ravages, saying that ascidia comes upon us when we have learned what we are unable to be, yet it has not made us be what we are striving to be.

[38:05]

Ascidia is to be stuck in quicksand Most cases of ascetic are not so severe, although they are painful. No matter what we do or how successful we appear, we derive little pleasure or energy from our activities. While we're resting, a disquieting anxiety and doubt takes hold. When we're active, the weight of sadness slows us down. as if we were trying to ford a terrible, swift-moving stream. It's a little like being on steroids. You're tired and wired all at the same time. Even our favorite vices can lose the jolt they once had to drown, release, deaden, or distract one from the idle restlessness

[39:10]

At times it becomes difficult to express oneself or follow a thought in writing. It's interesting how ascidia desensitizes us, muffles our intellect, invades us with such inertia that doesn't foster even the initiative to make a change in our lives. Ascidia is a reality, is an illness, is that does visit our monasteries and visits monks at different times of our lives. And it's not symptomatic of a moral weakness or a lack of virtue. Rather, I would say, reading this psalm, acedia can be a doorway if we wake up to to this restlessness, this undefinable sort of restlessness that we sometimes suffer in life.

[40:18]

It can be a doorway where the Spirit of God can enter the house and rearrange the furniture of our spiritual life. An accurate diagnosis of a spiritual illness is the first step towards treatment. Diagnosing the symptoms and isolating a disease is part of a healing process. But what is the treatment? Are you acquainted with the monk who goes from doctor to doctor and never finds a cure? What might be a treatment for acedia? In the first place, the infirmed or afflicted must avoid the obvious tendency, which is to isolate the self. Saint Benedict recommends that we talk to a spiritual father about this.

[41:22]

Choose someone who's to share with what's going on in your life. Someone to attend to your humble truth. You know, that psalm that we prayed on Thursday, the psalm where they grab the devils and dash them against the rock? And St. Benedict was very close to that psalm. He quotes it twice in the Holy Rule. He says, when these devils, when they are assaulting you, grab them and dash them against the rock, which is Christ. Abort them. Abort the thoughts by telling them to your spiritual father or to a spiritual friend or to someone who's not going to judge you but can rather attend to what you have to say.

[42:25]

Someone that can admire your humble truth. A spiritual director, a confessor, a colleague, a friend. Alexia group. As important as avoiding isolation, our Father Benedict advises fidelity to a balance of prayer and work. Now, acedia tends to get things out of balance. Even exaggerate. Exaggerate the prayer and avoid the work. Or exaggerate the work and avoid the prayer. Now that puts us out of kilter and that... is a friend or an access to acedia. Society at large looks for a healthy way to organize time and life. Rather than planning trips away or escaping from monastic life, it would be wise to ground ourselves in the daily rhythm of prayer, community service, reading, work,

[43:34]

but work with a balance in your life. Don't overdo the prayer and don't overdo the work. It's always a temptation. But overdoing something is an escape from reality in the monastic world. Reading that we read at Compline, I think. I haven't been... all the days at Compline, so I don't know. The admonition from Peter to the church, 1 Peter 5, be sober and alert. Your opponent, the devil, is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, solid in your faith, knowing that your fellow believers throughout the world undergo the same suffering. We're not alone. The Cistercian Michael Casey characterizes Asidia as an inability to identify with the group and a strong inclination to stand apart from the group.

[44:46]

Isolation. Asidia is not open rebellion, he says, since it's characterized by a lack of energy. A monk might demonstrate a sullen and resentful disinterest towards his assigned work as well as the daily exercise of liturgical prayer. But the opposite might also be true. The monk might push himself too hard in these areas to demonstrate that he is more committed than most and that supposedly gives him just cause to complain about his own life. A monk may willfully ignore his con-prayers and the guests. Or on the other hand, a monk might obsess in his efforts to care for people, almost preying on those people in need. That's unbalance. That would be also a symptom.

[45:49]

Ascidia, because it can tempt people to flee the monastic life altogether, or overdo and exaggerate their activities, Assydia puts up a smoke screen so that we cannot see clearly. And when we can't see clearly, it's hard to keep a healthy balance. For Evagrius, it is Assydia alone of all the bad thoughts that is an entangled struggle of hate and desire. The person afflicted with assidia hates whatever is in front of him and loves what is not there. Hate and love at the same time. If we cannot rein in this thought and the devastating life that this thought can bring, we become, in Evagrius's vivid phrase, we become

[47:01]

of our demons, no longer able to distinguish between what will enhance our lives and what will destroy us. Evagrius writes, like an irrational beast, we find ourselves dragged by desire and beat from behind by hate. Dragged by desire and beat by hate from behind. As always, however, there's a remedy, and it is close at hand. Endurance cures acedia, disinterest, and so does everything done with much care and with fear of God. Evagrius concluding admonition is good counsel. Set a measure for yourself in everything that you do, and don't turn from it until you've reached that. Evangelius also exhorts us to pray.

[48:05]

He says, pray intelligently and with fervor so that the spirit of Assyria will flee. Tomorrow afternoon at 5 o'clock, we'll gather for a reflection on Psalm 19. Now, where I'm going with Psalm 19 is I'm looking at Psalm 19 as what I think it is, an examination of conscience. Psalm 19 in the Bible, okay? Psalm 19 in the Bible is 18 in the liturgy. which I think we divided up in the liturgy. It's Psalm 19 in the Bible. It's on these sheets.

[49:07]

And then on Monday morning, we'll talk after examination of conscience tomorrow night, then we'll talk about Psalm 130, which is out of the depths, I cry to you, O Lord. That's the confession of sins. And then we'll end up with building the community on Monday afternoon. Let us prefer nothing to the love of Christ. May God bring us all together to everlasting life. That's good.

[50:13]

No, that's really...

[50:17]

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