How Acedia Overcomes a Monk

And so the wretched soul, entangled in such schemes of the enemy, is thrown into turmoil, until, worn out by the spirit of acedia as if by some strong battering ram, it either learns to sink into sleep, or, driven out of the confinement of its cell, grows used to looking for comfort against these attacks by visiting some brother, only to be weakened all the more afterward by the very remedy it seeks for the moment. For the enemy will attack more often and more severely the man who, as he well knows, will turn his back as soon as battle is joined, and whom he sees looking for safety not in victory or in fighting but in flight. This goes on until, little by little, he is drawn away from his cell and begins to forget the purpose of his profession, which is nothing other than the meditation and contemplation of that divine purity which surpasses all things, and which can be gained only by silence, by remaining continually in the cell, and by meditation. And so the soldier of Christ becomes a runaway from his service and a deserter, and “entangles himself in the affairs of this world,” without at all pleasing the one to whom he had enlisted himself. [a]