It’s not surprising that pride, greed, anger, lust, envy, and gluttony make the sixth century Seven Deadly Sins list. But sloth? We commonly associate sloth with laziness but when Gregory the Great included sloth in his deadly sin list, he had other things in mind than physical lethargy. The Latin word for sloth, acedia, means “without care” and is more akin to spiritual apathy. Kathleen Norris wrote a book about this spiritual affliction titled, appropriately enough, Acedia and Me. She chronicles in her book her lifelong struggle with acedia. She first became aware of it when, at age fifteen, she began asking herself, “Why bother? Why bother with church and prayer?” Writing after the deaths of her father and husband, she describes acedia in her book as a kind of spiritual morphine. “You know the pain is there, yet you cannot rouse yourself to give a damn.” She asks a provocative question, “Why am I so willing to waste time, as if it were not a gift, mindlessly consuming and discarding my precious mortal life?” We appear on the outside to be anything but slothful. We are busy people. Look at the way we run around and concern ourselves with living. But our busyness has a way of masking acedia. It can be a cover for being lazy and slothful toward the things of God. It’s hard to admit, I know, but lazy is what we are at times: lazy for God. Kathleen’s remedy for acedia is rather simple: “Go for a walk. Memorize Scripture. Sing Psalms. Seek community. Worship. Shovel manure. Dust a bookshelf. Wash dishes. Study. Read. Write. Pray. And be kind to one another.”
Bonifacius Stoltzlin (1603-1677) pastored several rural German churches during the Thirty Years War in Europe. This deadly war, which began as a religious conflict, had a devastating spiritual impact on Protestants and Catholics alike. His morning prayer invites us to ask God to awaken us from spiritual slumber: