Abbot Moses on the Cure for Acedia

When I was beginning my stay in the desert, I told Abbot Moses, the chief of all the saints, that I had been terribly troubled the day before by an attack of acedia, and that I could only be freed from it by running at once to Abbot Paul. He said: “You have not freed yourself from it. Rather, you have given yourself up to it as its slave and subject. From now on the enemy will attack you more strongly as a deserter and a runaway, since it has seen that you fled at once when you were overcome in the fight. That will happen unless, the next time you join battle with it, you make up your mind not to dispel its attacks and its fevers for the moment by leaving your cell or by idle sleep, but learn instead to triumph over it by endurance and struggle.” So experience proves that a fit of acedia should not be escaped by running away from it, but overcome by resisting it. [a]