Fighting the Noonday Devil by R.R. Reno

Fighting the Noonday Devil by R.R. Reno

Christians have not always thought pride the deepest threat to faith. For the ancient spiritual writers of the monastic movement, spiritual apathy was far more dangerous. Recalling the sixth verse of Psalm 91, the desert fathers wished to guard against “the sickness that lays waste at mid-day.” Evagrius of Pontus, a fourth-century monk, is one of the earliest sources of information about the desert monastic movement, and he reports that gluttony, avarice, anger, and other vices threaten monastic life. Yet, of all these afflictions, he reports, “the demon of acedia, also called the noonday demon, is the one that causes the most serious trouble of all.”

Joshua Gibbs turned me onto this vice of acedia. Interesting topic.