On Tedium and Despondency

Together with the spirit of sorrow the spirit of tedium acts inseparably. According to the observation of the fathers, it attacks the monk around midday and produces in him such terrible restlessness that his place of dwelling becomes unbearable to him, as do the brothers living with him; during reading a kind of aversion arises in him, along with frequent yawning and a strong hunger. After filling the belly, the demon of tedium suggests to the monk thoughts of leaving his cell and talking with someone, giving him to understand that there is no other way to be rid of tedium than by conversing with others without ceasing. And the monk overcome by tedium is like the dry brush of the desert, which stops for a moment and then is carried again by the wind. He is like a cloud without water, driven by the wind (see Jude 1:12. — Editor’s note.)

If this demon cannot draw the monk out of his cell, he begins to distract his mind during prayer and reading. “This is not in the right place,” a thought tells him, “and that is not where it belongs; everything needs to be put in order”—and all this it does in order to make the mind idle and fruitless.

This illness is healed by prayer, abstaining from idle talk, whatever manual work one is able to do, reading the word of God, and patience; for it is born of faint-heartedness, idleness, and idle talk (St. Antiochus, Homily 26; St. Isaac the Syrian, Homily 30).

It is difficult to avoid this illness for one who is beginning the monastic life, for it is the first to attack him. Therefore first of all one must be on guard against it through strict and unquestioning fulfillment of all the duties laid upon the novice. When your occupations come into proper order, then tedium will find no place in your heart. Only those whose affairs are in disorder grow bored. Obedience, therefore, is the best remedy against this dangerous illness.

When tedium overcomes you, say to yourself, following the counsel of St. Isaac the Syrian: “Again you desire impurity and a shameful life. And if your body says to you: ‘It is a great sin to kill yourself,’ then answer it: ‘I kill myself because I cannot live impurely. I will die here so that I may not see the true death of my soul, death before God. It is better for me to die here for the sake of purity than to live a wretched life in the world. Of my own will I have chosen this death on account of my sins. I mortify myself because I have sinned against the Lord; I will no longer provoke Him. What is life to me if it is far from God? I will endure these afflictions so as not to be cut off from the heavenly hope. What does God gain from my life in this world if I live badly in it and provoke God?’” (St. Isaac the Syrian, Homily 22).

Boredom is one thing; anguish of spirit—what is called despondency—is another. A person sometimes falls into such a state of spirit that it seems to him he would sooner cease to exist, or be without any feeling or awareness, than remain any longer in this inexplicably tormenting condition. One must hasten to get out of it. Guard yourself against the spirit of despondency, for from it every evil is born. “There is a natural despondency,” teaches Saint Barsanuphius, “arising from weakness, and there is a despondency that comes from the demon. If you wish to distinguish them, distinguish them thus: the demonic kind arrives before the time when one ought to allow oneself rest—for when a person begins to do something, before a third or even a quarter of the work is done, it compels him to leave off and get up. In that case one must not listen to it, but should say a prayer and sit at the work with patience; and the enemy, seeing that the person is praying over this, stops fighting him, for he does not want to give occasion for prayer” (St. Barsanuphius the Great, Answer 559).

“When it pleases God,” says Saint Isaac the Syrian, “to subject a person to greater afflictions, He permits him to fall into the hands of faint-heartedness. And it produces in the person an overpowering force of despondency, in which he feels a crushing of the soul—and this is a foretaste of hell. Through it a spirit of frenzy is brought upon a person, from which a thousand temptations flow: confusion, irritability, blasphemy, complaint against one’s lot, perverse thoughts, moving from one country16 to another, and the like. If you ask, ‘What is the cause of all this?’ — I will say: your own negligence, for you yourself have not taken care to seek a remedy for this. Yet the remedy for all of it is one, and by it alone a person finds swift consolation in his soul. And what is this remedy? Humility of heart. Without it, no one will be able to demolish the stronghold of these evils; rather, he will find that calamities have prevailed over him” (St. Isaac the Syrian, Homily 79). Despondency is sometimes called by the holy Fathers idleness, laziness, and sloth.