The joy of the Lord is your strength.  - Nehemiah 8.10

The despondency of Elijah is something that comes upon all of us but those who “are very jealous for the Lord God of hosts” are particularly prone to this malaise.  Elijah exaggerates his enemies’ success and underestimates the support he has.  “Elijah requested for himself that he might die; and said, ‘It is enough now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers’” (1 Kings 19:4).  His whole life and ministry seem futile and worthless.  There is so little to show for his faithfulness. Later  Elijah complains or, we might say, whines, “I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts: for the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life to take it away” (1 Kings 19:10&14). 

Our circumstances are different and much less dangerous, but whining about the decay of God’s people, the opposition those who speak his Word must face, and one’s own experience of irrelevance and futility--these are the same.  There is a brooding kind of despair that pretends to be part of a real devout spirit but represents instead a lack of courage and discipline, a failure of hope.  We run the risk of becoming ecclesiastical whiners and we need to be reminded that it was for such murmuring that so many were kept from ever seeing or entering the Promised Land.

“Godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death” (2 Cor. 7:10).  This worldly and deadly sorrow is sometimes called Melancholy, Sloth, Depression or Sadness.  We need to make a clear distinction between Spiritual and Clinical Depression and while these may be connected they must be distinguished in both diagnosis and treatment. 

Paul is very clear in setting out two kinds of sorrow: one which is saving and healing, and one which is lethal.  John Cassian, one of the most important early Christian writers on this subject, tells us, “The only manner in which sadness can be considered beneficial is when it comes to us through sorrow for our sins, the desire of perfection, or the consideration of future bliss.”  C.S. Lewis, hundreds of years later, gives us something similar, “My own idea, for what it’s worth, is that all sadness which is not now either arising from repentance of a concrete sin and hastening towards concrete amendment and restitution, or else arising from pity and hastening towards active assistance, is simply bad.”

Cassian has two words that relate to this sorrow: Melancholy, which is “harsh, intolerant, cruel, full of rancour, and futile gloom, suffering in despair”; and Depression or Accidie which shows itself in grumbling and resentment.  So this “sorrow of the world” is part of what Christians come to call Sloth and it has always been one of the so-called deadly sins (more correctly capital sins) for it is, as Saint Paul says, lethal: “it worketh death.”

Gregory the Great identifies six daughters of Sloth or Accidie: Malice, Spite, Faintheartedness, Despair, Sluggishness, Wandering of the Mind.  This sin is the very opposite of the joy of the Lord.  St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that Sloth, his word for Accidie, is opposed to joy in God’s good as Envy is opposed to joy in our neighbour’s good.

We more often speak of Sloth and while this is a kind of spiritual laziness it can show itself in restlessness, in useless activity, in doing everything and accomplishing nothing, in an inability to bear down as well as in listlessness.  It is a “dreary, joyless, thankless, fruitless gloom.”  It has often been identified with “the sickness that destroyeth in the noonday” (Ps. 91:6).  It makes us resentful, fretful, irritable and angry and when it comes to any moral progress or aspiration it cripples us with a “self-indulgent, unaspiring resignation to one’s moral poverty.” It is opposed to all penitential and moral effort.

This kind of sorrow is a sin because it is willful.  Sloth must and does involve the will, though it overcomes us as much by sins of omission as commission.  I imagine that it is a spiritual version of “enjoying ill health.”

“Put sadness far away from thee, saith he: for truly sadness is the sister of half-heartedness and bitterness…Array thee in joy that always finds favour in God’s sight and is acceptable with him: yea, revel thou therein.  For every one that is joyous worketh and thinketh those things that are good, and despiseth sadness.  But he that is sad doth always wickedly: first because he maketh sad the Holy Spirit that hath been given to man for joy: and secondly he worketh lawlessness, in that he neither prays to God nor gives him thanks.  Therefore cleanse thyself from this wicked sadness, and thou shalt live unto God.  Yea, unto God all they shall live who have cast out sadness from themselves, and arrayed themselves in all joy.” -- Shepherd of Hermas' Mandate X

This kind of malaise comes to us when we are distracted from our hope, from looking unto Jesus, to looking unto the world, to looking only at the strong wind and boisterous sea and we sink in despair.

I am reminded of the remedy for this every time I say the traditional preparation for Communion. In some small cold vestry with an awkward 12-year-old server I ask, “Why art thou so heavy, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted within me?” Then in a sweet, faltering voice, hardly able to get around the poetry, comes the most profound advice with a hint of gentle rebuke (as if to say, 'you fool'), “O put thy trust in God, for I will yet give him thanks, who is the help of my countenance, and my God” (Psalm 43:5). This heaviness and disquiet are exactly what we mean by Accidie and the antidotes are set out clearly there: Thanksgiving and Trust.

There are two contrary virtues to Sloth: Fortitude and Hope.  For Christians, Fortitude is that which makes us able to glory in afflictions and involves Courage, Industry and Thoroughness.  Hope is that supernatural gift of God, which is grounded in faith and whose fruit is Joy.  We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. 

Let us not mistake this wordly sadness for a virtue, instead let us seek that godly sorrow which is part of repentance and leads to the joy of sin forgiven, the joy of Jesus Christ which no one and no thing can take from us. 

Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, in the power of the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

The Very Rev. Michael Hawkins

is the rector of St Alban’s

Cathedral in Prince Albert, Sask.,

and Dean of the Diocese of

Saskatchewan.