The Noonday Devil: The Ancient Battle Behind Our Modern Restlessness
By Caroline Sholl
Every once in a while, I come across a book that gives language to something I've observed for years but haven't been able to fully articulate. The Noonday Devil: Acedia, the Unnamed Evil of Our Times by Dom Jean-Charles Nault was one of those books.
It's not a light read. Nault draws heavily from the Desert Fathers, St. Thomas Aquinas, and centuries of Christian spirituality, so it took me some time to work through. But I found myself returning to one central question over and over:
What if one of our greatest spiritual struggles isn't simply busyness, burnout, or laziness? What if it's something much older?
The Church has a name for it: acedia.
Most of us know acedia by its traditional translation, sloth. Unfortunately, that word has become almost synonymous with laziness, and I think we've lost something important because of that. Acedia is much more subtle than refusing to work. It's a quiet resistance to the good God is inviting us into. Thomas Aquinas described it as "sorrow at spiritual good." In other words, it's the strange experience of finding ourselves pulling away from the very things that are meant to bring us life.
How often this shows up in ordinary life! Prayer begins to feel like another obligation instead of a relationship. The work we're called to do starts feeling meaningless. We become impatient with the people we love most. The responsibilities that once felt like a privilege begin to feel like a prison.
We don't necessarily stop believing in God. We simply lose our delight in Him.
One of the images used in the book comes from the Desert Fathers. They described acedia as "the noonday demon" because it often struck monks in the middle of the day. The excitement of the morning had worn off, evening was still far away, and everything felt repetitive. Suddenly the monk became convinced that if he were in a different monastery, with different brothers, under a different abbot, life would be better.
How often we experience the same temptation today. "If I just had a different job..." "If I lived somewhere else..." "If this season of life were over..." "If my circumstances changed..."
Sometimes God really does call us to make significant changes. Discernment matters. But Nault's point is that our first instinct is often to assume the problem is our circumstances when the deeper struggle is happening within our own hearts. That observation feels remarkably relevant today.
We live in a culture that constantly tells us happiness is somewhere else. Another purchase. Another vacation. Another achievement. Another stage of life. We carry devices in our pockets that allow us to escape boredom, discomfort, loneliness, or silence within seconds. None of those things are inherently bad. But they can make it very difficult to remain present long enough for God to meet us where we actually are.
Nault distinguishes between acedia and depression. As someone who spends much of my week sitting with people who struggle with anxiety, grief, and depression, I thought this distinction was important. Depression is not a spiritual failure. Someone living with depression may be showing incredible courage simply by getting out of bed, caring for their family, or praying one honest sentence. Nault doesn't minimize that reality. Instead, he explains that acedia is something different. It concerns our response to God's invitation to love, not the presence or absence of emotional suffering. That distinction is both compassionate and clarifying.
The remedies the Desert Fathers offer are surprisingly simple. One of their most repeated pieces of advice was, "Stay in your cell." At first, that sounds like advice meant only for monks. But Nault explains that the "cell" represents the place where God has asked us to love. For most of us, our "cell" is our marriage, our family, our Church, our work, our friendships, and the ordinary responsibilities that make up daily life.
The temptation of acedia is to believe that fulfillment is always somewhere else. The invitation of Christ is to become faithful where we are. That doesn't mean we never change jobs, move, or make difficult decisions. There are certainly times when those changes are wise and necessary. But before assuming that changing our circumstances will solve our restlessness, perhaps it's worth asking a different question: What is God inviting me to become right here?
Another theme is Nault's emphasis on ordinary faithfulness. We often imagine holiness as dramatic moments of sacrifice or extraordinary spiritual experiences. Yet most of the Christian life is lived in repetition. Preparing another meal. Listening carefully to another person. Showing up for prayer when it feels dry. Keeping our word. Offering forgiveness. Doing the next loving thing. None of those moments usually feel remarkable. Yet over time, they shape a remarkable life.
I think many of us have become allergic many of us have become to silence. Whenever we experience boredom or discomfort, it's almost automatic to reach for a screen. We fill every empty space with noise. Perhaps one of the quiet invitations of this book is simply to recover the courage to be still—not because silence is always comfortable, but because God often speaks there.
The opposite of acedia isn't becoming more productive. It isn't trying harder. It isn't adding more spiritual disciplines to an already full schedule.
The opposite of acedia is learning to remain with God when prayer feels dry; remaining faithful to the people we've been called to love; remaining present instead of constantly escaping into distraction; remaining hopeful even when we cannot yet see what God is doing.
The Noonday Devil isn't simply a book about an ancient vice. It is an invitation to examine our own hearts. Where are we tempted to believe that joy is always somewhere else? Where are we resisting the ordinary ways God wants to meet us today? Perhaps one of the greatest lessons of The Noonday Devil is that holiness is rarely found by chasing another life. More often, it is found by receiving the life God has already given us and learning to love Him—and others—faithfully within it.
