How lovely to have a Brother Ignatious, we all need someone like him to remind us that we exist.
Acedia, a big problem for us all, but some of that has been lifted for me when I re read Brother Lawrence, 'Practising the Presence of God'. It is so simple and uplifting and reminded me that God is everywhere present and fillest all things. Acedia is a sickness of the soul because mankind no longer knows that Presence. I know that that is not your situation but it shows how insidious this condition is for all of us including Christians. It takes away our Joy, which is why Evagrius Pontus condemned it as a sin. Bit tough, that one though, how do you overcome in involuntary sin?
Sorry, just had another thought. Maybe Acedia is more specifically a problem fo Christians because we are particularly under attack from the evil one. Evagrius saw Acedia as a problem peculiar to monastics. Whereas Brother Lawrence who was a monk was filled with the joy of the presence of God having overcome problems associated with self denial in the first 10 years of his vocation. I have no doubt that Acedia might have been one of his problems. I guess you have had a sort of monastic life forced upon you by life events which you mention, so despondency, which heightens awareness of problems in the world, might be a consequence of your continuing sense of loss and semi isolation. However, the problem exists for everyone, maybe because we have more labour saving devices, and more access to the news etc, more technology, maybe we have too much time on our hands to dwell upon events that make us feel helpless, and hopeless. But hopelessness, for a Christian is surely a sin, which was probably the crux of the matter for Evagrius.
This very much sums it up, and is certainly completely congruent with what I've been reading. And the point about labour-saving devices is extremely important. I almost wrote a whole post on how such elimination of labour has damaged us, socially as well as spiritually. We've saved all the labour, but for what? Are we all great writers, poets and artists now, as the Platonists proposed we would be? What do we do with all this leisure? Netflix. Twitter. Facebook. We're rotting away from the saving of all the labour.
How lovely to have a Brother Ignatious, we all need someone like him to remind us that we exist.
Acedia, a big problem for us all, but some of that has been lifted for me when I re read Brother Lawrence, 'Practising the Presence of God'. It is so simple and uplifting and reminded me that God is everywhere present and fillest all things. Acedia is a sickness of the soul because mankind no longer knows that Presence. I know that that is not your situation but it shows how insidious this condition is for all of us including Christians. It takes away our Joy, which is why Evagrius Pontus condemned it as a sin. Bit tough, that one though, how do you overcome in involuntary sin?
Sorry, just had another thought. Maybe Acedia is more specifically a problem fo Christians because we are particularly under attack from the evil one. Evagrius saw Acedia as a problem peculiar to monastics. Whereas Brother Lawrence who was a monk was filled with the joy of the presence of God having overcome problems associated with self denial in the first 10 years of his vocation. I have no doubt that Acedia might have been one of his problems. I guess you have had a sort of monastic life forced upon you by life events which you mention, so despondency, which heightens awareness of problems in the world, might be a consequence of your continuing sense of loss and semi isolation. However, the problem exists for everyone, maybe because we have more labour saving devices, and more access to the news etc, more technology, maybe we have too much time on our hands to dwell upon events that make us feel helpless, and hopeless. But hopelessness, for a Christian is surely a sin, which was probably the crux of the matter for Evagrius.
This very much sums it up, and is certainly completely congruent with what I've been reading. And the point about labour-saving devices is extremely important. I almost wrote a whole post on how such elimination of labour has damaged us, socially as well as spiritually. We've saved all the labour, but for what? Are we all great writers, poets and artists now, as the Platonists proposed we would be? What do we do with all this leisure? Netflix. Twitter. Facebook. We're rotting away from the saving of all the labour.