Have you ever experienced a certain heaviness when attempting to pray or read your Bible? Has laziness or fatigue prevented you from fulfilling your spiritual tasks and services? Have you ever felt like no matter what you did, you couldn't shake off those feelings that were burdening you, preventing you from coming closer to God, almost as if there was a barrier? Well, if this is the case, you might be struggling with despondency. Let's figure out what that is.
Welcome to answers from an apostolic faith.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.
What is the spiritual passion of despondency or akidía? Or how do we deal with it? Many people today would be tempted to simply explain away despondency with words such as sadness or despair, but this would be insufficient to characterize everything that despondency encompasses. The ancients of the Church would properly want us to know that spiritual despondency is much more than that. It's a war tactic adopted by the enemy, the devil, to place us in a state of slothfulness, boredom, discouragement, and even disgust and dissatisfaction. Its purpose is to paralyze and incapacitate the human being from taking action, from doing what the Spirit of God intends for us to do. Let’s take a closer look at what the word actually means.
In Greek, the word despondency is known as ακηδία (akidía); a- means without, -kedo means care or effort. And when the Fathers of the Church wrote about this spiritual condition, they adopted the word akidía to literally mean a state where we make no effort, no action, or even a state of no care or nonchalance.
It's especially important to be informed on what despondency is if you are a person who has embarked on a very important journey of taking your spiritual life seriously. We can be assured that by saying I want to be a true disciple of Jesus Christ, that we will face this kind of warfare from the demon of despondency. The purpose behind despondency or akidía is to break the consistency that is required in the spiritual life. In harming or disturbing our ability to be faithful and consistent in our spiritual canons, we lose momentum and never see any growth. This then leads to frustrations and disappointments, which then lead to despair, and eventually, the person wants to give up.
Now if you're anything like me, a person who desires a real relationship with God, but I continue to struggle to get up and to pray, to be committed to my scriptural reading or to get up early for prayers and liturgies and praises, where it feels like everything is set up to
prevent me from pursuing Christ, then everything we're saying right now should ring a bell for you as much as it rings a bell for me. This demon of akidía has clearly been hard at work in tempting so many of us.
Despondency will often drive a person to a strong feeling of discontentment. Nothing feels right. Nothing satisfies or fulfills us. Often when suffering from despondency, we look to escape the present moment. We want to go numb or to be distracted. We may find ourselves feeling our current immediate responsibilities and wanting nothing to do with them and even wanting to connect with others, not for the sake of actual connection, but rather to avoid facing my reality. Some turn to social media as a distraction to pull them away from their present thoughts or obligations. Some turn to food for comfort, to lust for satisfaction, or to whatever passion they are inclined to give in to. Despondency opens the door for all of these.
In addition to this, despondency drives us to think something has to change, as if somehow the problem is my circumstance, the place that I currently find myself in. We begin to imagine new and better places for ourselves, focusing only on how dissatisfied we are with where we are in life. We excuse these kinds of thoughts by suggesting that we want more in life or that we deserve better. Now, sometimes, and definitely not as often as we think, this may be true. But when suffering from despondency, it’s always a demonic warfare and its intention is to drive us to a place of discontentment, anxiety and worry, placing us in a position where nothing is ever enough and nothing leaves us feeling accomplished or happy. Even God is to blame for our uneasiness.
Take, for example, a common struggle with prayer. All of us might have experienced what it's like to want to pray but when the time for action comes around, we suddenly grow heavy. We find ourselves lazy and fatigued and even disinterested. It's like making it so difficult to fulfill our task. We may even be tempted to think: What’s the point? I don’t even feel God anymore. All of these thoughts are there in order to dissuade us.
Now, rest assured: we are far from being the only ones to have ever dealt with this form of warfare. St. John Climacus, the author of The Ladder of Divine Ascent, he writes to us about how even the desert ascetics would suffer from this very same reality. He says the following:
“When there is no psalmody, then despondency [or akidía] does not make its appearance. And as soon as the appointed service is finished, the eyes open (...). But [when] the hour of prayer has come, again the body is weighed down. [The person] begins to pray, but he grows sleepy and the psalm verses are snatched from his mouth with untimely yawns.” (St. John Climacus, Ladder XIII, subsection 8)
You can clearly see how this 7 th century saint wrote about the very reality that we ourselves struggle with even now, almost fourteen centuries later; a warfare that has existed since the beginning of humanity.
Now, what’s even more concerning is that even if the person struggling with despondency were to push through and still stand to pray and follow their spiritual canon, this specific passion has a plan B. If it doesn’t paralyze you at first, it will attack you with sadness and a feeling of emptiness. It puts the person in a state where they feel like what they are offering God is useless or without effect. And this then will translate into irritability, anger, and an overwhelming sense of indifference towards the person's spiritual state.
At first, I'm frustrated with myself. So, the thought is: What’s wrong with me? What's going on? And then I get irritated with God. So, the thought becomes: Where are you? Why aren’t you helping? I then move towards hopelessness. So, the thought is: I can’t anymore. Nothing is working. I then accept defeat and the thought is: There’s no point. Why even try? Why bother? And there it is: the demon of akidía’s favourite script and approach to making us give up on our relationship with Christ; his way of stopping us.
In short, despondency can easily stir up all the faculties of the soul in an attempt to prevent us from pursuing God. This demon’s resiliency and persistence is unbelievable. This passion will attempt to bring us to the breaking point and will stir up within us every evil inclination that we already struggle with. There isn’t a button it won’t push in attempt to tear us away from God. The greatest threat of despondency is that when it has lingered for too long with being fought against, it leaves the person open and vulnerable to almost all other passions that torment the soul: anger, sadness, pride, envy, lust, gluttony, fear... Pick your poison! Despondency will gladly welcome it to help join the fight.
Now, while this all seems terrible, and indeed it really is, the Church prescribes a solution. There is indeed a way to fight off this terrible passion and to receive victory from God. And so, in our next video, we will discuss how to deal with despondency, and what we can learn from the holy men and women who came before us and who have overcome this passion by the grace of God.
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