However......You must replace your apathetic ways with fervent passion
 
 
 
 
 
 

Accidie

 rejecting life... is a Middle English word, retrieved because the usual word, "sloth," now only expresses a trivial laziness. Accidie is a form of spiritual despair, a refusal of grace, a bargain with nothingness that shuts out God's gift of the new possibility.
Usually called sloth, laziness, dejection, passive-aggressiveness, despair or spiritual depression nowadays, accidie is a spiritual listlessness or depression, a reluctance and finally a refusal to respond to God. Accidie begins at the center, at our relationship with God, and it stems ultimately from a refusal to live toward God as dependent creatures made in his image. It is a passive shrinking from creative existence. The style of accidie would be to dampen down one's inner life, living at a minimum level of mind and heart, letting thoughts and feelings die down.

Accidie is a partial consent to non-being, striking a bargain with insignificance. Another way to sin by accidie is to empty out one's self in idle worship rather than growing toward God, seeking significance in some other human being or cause or circumstance, scrabbling after a sense of self-worth. Self-abdication offers a temporary refuge both from God and from the nothingness that stalks creative life. The fruit of accidie is despair. In its terminal form it finally rejects God's new possibility. It rules out grace, shutting any opening to the divine life.

Accidie has its full effect when one puts oneself intentionally beyond the reach of God's mercy. Spiritual withdrawal and depression often start with dishonest prayer, refusing to raise some issue with God, rejecting a summons, getting tired of God's silence and walking away. It chooses to live and die on the margins of its own nothingness rather than launch out further into the abyss of God. It leaves the self independent from God and in control, even at the price of self-minimization. Those who bargain with nothingness can avoid surrender to God.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Bow down thy shoulder, and bear spiritual wisdom, and be not grieved with the bands of acedieris.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

After you have learned the error of your ways you may proceed to the Fifth Terrace