How Acedia Creeps over a Monk

When it has taken hold of some unhappy soul, it produces a dislike of the place, disgust with his cell, and disdain and contempt for the brothers who live with him or a little way off, as if they were careless and unspiritual. It also makes the man lazy and sluggish about every kind of work that has to be done within the walls of his dwelling. It will not let him stay in his cell or take any trouble over reading. He often groans that he can do no good while he stays there. He complains and sighs that he can bear no spiritual fruit as long as he is tied to that community. He complains that he is cut off from spiritual gain and is of no use in the place, as though he were a man who could govern others and be useful to a great many people, yet was building up no one and helping no one by his teaching and doctrine. He praises distant monasteries, those a long way off, and describes such places as more profitable and better suited to salvation. Besides this, he paints the company of the brothers there as sweet and full of spiritual life. On the other hand, he says that everything around him is harsh: not only is there nothing to build him up among the brothers who live there, but even food for the body cannot be had without great difficulty. Finally he imagines that he will never be well while he stays in that place unless he leaves his cell, where he is sure to die if he stays any longer, and takes himself off from there as quickly as possible. [a]

Then the fifth or sixth hour brings him such bodily weariness and such a craving for food that he seems to himself worn out and exhausted, as if from a long journey or some very heavy work, or as if he had put off eating through a fast of two or three days. Besides this, he looks anxiously this way and that, and sighs that none of the brothers comes to see him. He keeps going in and out of his cell and gazing up at the sun, as if it were too slow in setting. And so a kind of unreasonable confusion of mind takes hold of him like some foul darkness, and makes him idle and useless for every spiritual work, so that he imagines no cure for so terrible an attack can be found in anything except a visit to one of the brothers, or in the comfort of sleep alone. Then the disease suggests that he ought to show courteous and friendly hospitality to the brothers and visit the sick, whether near at hand or far off. It talks, too, of certain dutiful and religious obligations: that he ought to inquire after such and such relatives and go to see them more often; that it would be a real work of piety to visit more frequently that religious woman, devoted to the service of God, who has no family to support her; that it would be a most excellent thing to get her what she needs, since she is neglected and despised by her own relatives; and that he ought to devote his time piously to these things instead of staying uselessly and to no profit in his cell.