A Breastplate of Stillness and a Book of Thanksgiving: The Fruits of Patience in the Face of Boredom – Prof. Carl Vennerstrom

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Religion &Amp; Spirituality, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 27 November 2025

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Prof. Carl Vennerstrom explores how perseverance, prayer, ordered work, and thanksgiving transform boredom and the temptation to acedia into opportunities for deep spiritual growth, joy, and resilient virtue in an age of digital distraction.

This lecture was given on April 12th, 2025, at Dominican House of Studies.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speakers:

Dr. Vennerstrom specializes in eastern patristic theology. Of particular interest are monasticism, scriptural interpretation, and the writings of Evagrius of Pontus. He earned his PhD in Early Christian Studies at the Catholic University of America and teaches courses in church history, theology, and Greek at the Augustine Institute Graduate School in St. Louis, Missouri.

Keywords: Acedia And Boredom, Desert Monasticism, Digital Distraction, Evagrius Of Pontus, Liturgical Order, Patience And Perseverance, Prayer And Scripture, Spiritual Growth, Stillness, Thanksgiving And Joy

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Timistic Institute podcast.
0:06.2	Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.
0:12.7	The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world.
0:19.3	To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at
0:22.5	to mystic institute.org. In any case, I alluded in the title of my first talk to a saying of
0:30.0	Evagrius, A Light Breeze bends a Feeble Plant. A fantasy about a trip away drags off the person overcome with acedia. So the person
0:41.9	overcome with acedia is a feeble plant. The point was that for a person like our friend Antoine,
0:49.9	it doesn't take much to get a cycle of hatred and desire going.
0:57.2	When this dialectic of hatred and desire repeats over and over again, we're left in
1:03.0	moral weakness, unable to stand up to the slightest trigger.
1:07.8	Stretched out and disintegrated, we reach for anything that can help set us at ease or give at least the feeling of integration.
1:17.4	But these attempts are empty and leave us weaker and then we're bent by the slightest breeze.
1:24.7	Now I'd like to transition from one botanical metaphor to another. In the same work by
1:31.4	Evagrius, we find the following saying, wind from the north nourishes young plants.
1:38.4	Temptations strengthen the soul. The north wind is the fiercest of the four winds, and so is sensibly associated with
1:48.1	acedia here. But instead of bending and breaking young plants, the temptation to acedia nourishes
1:56.5	them. What gives? Well, I'm not going to make any concrete claims about Avagra's botanical knowledge,
2:05.4	even if his works do evidence some familiarity with natural philosophy, air cells history of the
2:13.2	animals. But in point of fact, it is true that wind does strengthen plants. When plants are
2:20.3	touched by the wind, by the rain, or even when they're repeatedly mechanically touched by a hand
2:28.2	or a passing deer, they release a growth hormone called auxin, just the Greek word for growth.
2:35.9	Alksin stimulates both upward growth as well as the growth of adventitious roots,
	...

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