Sloth

Doctors say that out of six babies born at least one is a depressed future. You get depressed as a newly retired but also as a teenager, especially women, and in the most active age, between 25 and 44 years.

The most obvious symptom is the pain of living, the dark evil, the assault of negative thoughts, without hope, the failure of one's life, the sense of guilt or a dull resentment that blames others for their imaginary misfortune. The Fathers called it sloth, from the Greek akedos, without care. What for us is a disease of the psyche for them was a disease of the soul, or rather a form of atony, paralysis, neglect of the soul, as Evagrius, Cassian and Thalassio said.

The worst passion, says St. Maximus, because while the others invade either the irascible or the concupiscible or the rational part of the soul, sloth excites them all together. It is a death that attacks man from all sides, Cassiano adds, one virtue is not enough to destroy it. As realists as they were, in addition to identifying the symptoms (the same ones illustrated by our psychologists), they were mainly concerned with indicating the remedies.

The first, as we know, is to become aware of the temptation that assails us: but in the case of sloth, awareness is difficult, because one of its characteristics is non-motivation, the incomprehensibility of its arising, like a mist that insidious which prevents you from seeing. Yet there is a spy that unmasks it: intolerance towards one's own space including the body, the desire to change one's state of life, the inability to concentrate, to be here and now. The slothful man invents useless acquaintances in order to seek relief from the boulder that oppresses him.

But soon sloth returns to bite worse than before, notes Isaac the Syrian. Therapy of the here and now begins with work: in each activity, set a just measure and observe it until you have completed it, Evagrio suggests, who knew sloth well: "prevent yourself from running away and divide your soul in two; one cries and the other consoles ". Sloth is overcome only with the solitary struggle, with stability, making one's body the place of encounter with God. Since this passion contains all the passions, when the demon is conquered no others arrive: "after the struggle one a state of tranquility emerges in the soul and an ineffable joy floods it ”. But the struggle is neither easy nor short, it takes patience with sloth.

Jesus said it: with your patience you will save your souls: because sloth would like to devour the whole soul, it is nothing but one of the disguises of the insatiable ego. Only remaining steadfast in one's cell, says Saint Paul with a play on words, makes a friend of oneself become a friend of God, transforms a filautos into filotheos.

Flaminia Morandi
NP January 2015