By Fr. Stephen Freeman, June 26, 2017 I was 19 years old the first time I had a panic attack. I was trying to go to sleep in my dorm room, when suddenly my heart began racing, my mind speeding forward, with what seemed like crazy, desperate thoughts. That was in the early 70’s and the phrase “panic attack” had not been invented. What I did not know was that this was the beginning of
In ecclesiastical circles today one often hears the lament, “The faith is evaporating.” Despite an unprecedented “pastoral approach”, the faith of many Christians in fact appears to be” growing cold” or even, to put it colloquially, to be “evaporating”. There is talk of a great crisis of faith, among the clergy no less than among the laity. This loss of faith, which is so often lamented in the West, stands nevertheless in contrast to a
The word accidie [acedia] (translated as ‘despondency’ or ‘spiritual sloth’) means, etymologically, ‘lack of care’, i.e. about one’s salvation. With few exceptions, all humanity is now living in the state of accidie [acedia]. People have become indifferent about their salvation. They do not seek divine life. They confine themselves to forms of life which appertain to the flesh, to everyday needs, to the passions of this world, to mundane activities. God, though, created us out
Another thought may press us hard: getting out of our former life, our former profession, and doing something completely different. Often all the arguments are useless here. The thought just keeps coming back. Here too some of the sayings of the fathers show us a way. A father who had struggled for years against the thought of visiting a certain confrere concretely imagined going to him, greeting him, and speaking to him. He imagined the
By Grace Brooks I don’t know many languages, but in each one, there are words that I wish we had in English. The same is true in different dialects (for instance, I’m sorry that the word “y’all” isn’t commonly used by non-Southerners). But that desire to co-opt vocabulary is never more pronounced than when I consider some of the Orthodox words that I have read or heard. There are words from the Orthodox lexicon that
With regard to acedia Evagrius gives two pieces of advice. One concerns steadfastness. We are to make up our minds and stay in our cell, simply enduring whatever is going on within us: “Just accept what the temptation brings on you. Above all, look this temptation of acedia in the eye, for it is the worst of all. But it also leads to the greatest purification of the soul. To flee or avoid such conflicts
While in sadness we react passively to our unfulfilled wishes, anger is an active response. Evagrius also identifies anger with a demon. For him anger clearly shows how humans can be utterly dominated by another force. “Anger is the most vehement of the passions. It is a welling up of the excitable part of the soul directed against someone who has injured us or by whom we believe ourselves injured. It unceasingly irritates our souls
In ecclesiastical circles today one often hears the lament, “The faith is evaporating.” Despite an unprecedented “pastoral approach”, the faith of many Christians in fact appears to be” growing cold” or even, to put it colloquially, to be “evaporating”. There is talk of a great crisis of faith, among the clergy no less than among the laity. This loss of faith, which is so often lamented in the West, stands nevertheless in contrast to a
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