Lenten Thoughts - Accidie

Jason Fisher has a fascinating blog called Lingwë: Musings of a Fish. While Lingwë is not a religious blog, Fisher does write about the likes of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Of particular interest for my purposes today is his entry on accidie. In reflecting on Lent, I appreciated Fisher's reference to St. Thomas Aquinas, who said that accidie was a torpor mentis (a "torpor of the mind"). Lent is a time to rouse us from our mental and spiritual complacency and reinvigorate our relationship with the Lord.

A while back I talked about St. Anthony of the Desert and the Desert Fathers. Accidie figures prominently in their recorded sayings. Here is the first saying from St. Anthony, found in Sr. Benedicta Ward's The Sayings of the Desert Fathers (pp. 1-2).

When the holy Abba Anthony lived in the desert he was beset by accidie, and attacked by many sinful thoughts. He said to God, ‘Lord, I want to be saved but these thoughts do not leave me alone; what shall I do in my affliction? How can I be saved?’ A short while afterwards, when he got up to go out, Anthony saw a man like himself sitting at his work, getting up from his work to pray, then sitting down and plaiting a rope, then getting up again to pray. It was an angel of the Lord sent to correct and reassure him. He heard the angel saying to him, ‘Do this and you will be saved.’ At these words, Anthony was filled with joy and courage. He did this, and he was saved.

Lent is a time to be reassured that God wants us to draw closer to him, and that the ways to do that, while challenging to be sure, are not extraordinarily complex. And God is there to help us.

In St. Anthony's vision, making God the focus of our lives is the way to him. To modern minds, St. Anthony's vision looks like a division of the day into what is oriented toward God (prayer) and what is not (work). However, that is not the case. St. Anthony is being shown that prayer and work are two sides of the same coin. If we do it right, work has a spiritual dimension. Pope John Paull II, in his encyclical, Laborem Exercens (On Human Work), wrote that through work man contributes "above all, to elevating unceasingly the cultural and moral level of the society within which he lives in community with those who belong to the same family." The last section of the encyclical concerns "Elements for a Spirituality of Work" (24-27). The motto of the Benedictines is ora et labora - pray and work. In The Practice of the Presence of God, it is said of Brother Lawrence: "That with him the set times of prayer were not different from other times; that he retired to pray, according to the directions of his superior, but that he did not want such retirement, nor ask for it, because his greatest business did not divert him from God" (Second Conversation).

The plaiting of the rope that St. Anthony does is a metaphor for the intertwined nature of prayer and work when they are united for the greater glory of God. Proper work and prayer take us out of ourselves, out of our torpor of mind, and direct us toward God. May our Lent follow such a path.

Feast of St. Anthony of the Desert

Today is the Feast of St. Anthony of the Desert.

St. Anthony is often called, "The Father of Monks" for his role in the establishment of Christian monasticism, and he is among the first of the Desert Fathers (although there were a few Desert Mothers as well). The Desert Fathers were men and women who lived either as hermits or in small communities in the deserts of Egypt, primarily during the fourth century. St. Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria and one of the thirty-three doctors of the Church, wrote a biography of St. Anthony.

I highly recommend a wonderful book: The Sayings of the Desert Fathers by Benedicta Ward, SLG. These sayings are very powerful and give important insight into lives of self-sacrifice, hospitality, penance, forgiveness, and compassion.

One of the sayings of St. Anthony has implications for living the Eucharistic life:

Someone asked Abba Anthony, "What must one do in order to please God?" The old man replied, "Pay attention to what I tell you: whoever you may be, always have God before your eyes; whatever you do, do it according to the testimony of the holy Scriptures; in whatever place you live, do not easily leave it. Keep these three precepts and you will be saved." (3, p. 2)

St. Anthony's distilled advice here is incisive. Whoever you are, whether rich or poor, powerful or powerless, you need to understand that you are a creature and that God is the Creator, and if your focus is ever on God and not yourself, then such humility will put things in their proper perspective. Certainly we can "always have God before our eyes" by thinking about him, but we can deepen that thinking by literally have him before our eyes in Eucharistic adoration, or contemplatively before our eyes through spiritual communion.

In all that you do, make sure your life and your actions correspond with how God has told us in the Bible how we should live and act. Too often in contemporary life we think that we can be "good people" without "having to follow a lot of rules." It is true that following rules will not guarantee that we will become good. However, we must also remember that breaking rules will not make us good, either. Saying, "God, I love you, but I don't think I need to go Mass on Sunday" is like saying to your spouse, "Honey, I love you, but I don't think I need to talk to you during the week." Love is demonstrated through actions. When love is talk only, it is usually used to manipulate another person. Jesus showed us his love through his actions, by laying down his life for us. The Scriptures are God's love letter, and with love, comes responsibilities and obligations, works and sacrifice.

St. Anthony's last point is perhaps the most unusual. I suppose the way I take him here is that wandering often leads to a lack of commitment. In a hermit's context, moving frequently may be an attempt to run away from one's self--one's own sinfulness, forsaking God's mercy and trying to escape God's demands. In a monastic context, moving frequently may be an attempt to run away from others, so that we are not beholden to anyone or anything. The same is potentially true for laity as well. Some people leave spouses and families because they are not willing to take on the daily task of fidelity and all that it requires. Some people date many different people for the same reason. Some people leave jobs frequently, either because they become bored from routine or because they cannot live in "community" in the workplace.

Let us live St. Anthony's words, and may his prayers help sustain us in that life.