Pints With Aquinas - The Eight EVIL Thoughts Episode Zero! | Mother Natalia

Episode Date: May 27, 2024

Mother is starting a few episodes long series on the 8 evil thoughts as listed by Evagrius. In this episode she introduces the concept and talks about why it is an important topic! 🎧 Mother's Podcast: https://whatgodisnot.com/ 🖥️ Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ 🟢 Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/pintswithaquinas 👕 Merch: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com 🚫 FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/matt 🔵 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd We get a small kick back from affiliate links

Glory to Jesus Christ. I'm Mother Natalia, a Byzantine Catholic nun from Christ the Bridegroom Monastery, and this is Pines with Aquinas. I'm going to start something of a series, which I'm really really excited about. Spanning over the next, I don't know, we'll see how long it takes, maybe three weeks, four weeks, something like that. So most of you who are listening have probably heard of the seven deadly sins, but I think a lot fewer of you have heard of the eight evil thoughts, which is super sad because the eight evil thoughts are where the seven deadly sins originate. So to give kind of an intro to the eight evil thoughts, I usually oversimplify this, I think.

Not I think, I know I usually oversimplify this. So I asked a friend of mine if he could kind of confirm the explanation that I usually give and he sent me this chart, which is amazing. So I'm going to share this chart with y'all verbally and break it down. So the the chart is mostly from a book called Glittering Vices by Rebecca Conan Dick de Young maybe? I probably butchered that name and but there's some adaptation some slight adaptation to it by Professor Turner Nevit from the University of San Diego. Hopefully, I didn't butcher that name.

So Evagrius, who I've talked about before on this podcast, because you all know that he's, he and Maximus the Confessor are kind of like my main desert fathers, church fathers that I really love. So anyways, Evagrius, so he's like fourth century, and he lists mostly eight evil thoughts, but then he lists them kind of in different orders, and only sometimes does he include jealousy. So jealousy is added in sometimes as a ninth

of the eight evil thoughts. So the other eight, other than jealousy, are gluttony, lust, avarice, sadness, anger slash wrath, acadia slash sloth, vainglory and pride. Cashion, fourthinglory, and pride. Cachon, fourth, fifth century, he was a disciple of Avagrius. So he emits jealousy. And then he orders the list of Avagrius's eight evil thoughts,

starting with carnal and moving into spiritual. So other than jealousy, that list is the same. It's just reordered. Cachon brings the eight evil thoughts west. Gregory the Great, sixth century, then removes pride because he says pride is the root of all of the vices. So he calls pride the root of all of them, takes it out. He subsumes sloth under sadness and he adds envy. So he kind of takes out pride,

combines two of them and adds envy in. And we now have seven capital sins, seven deadly sins, capital vices. I don't remember at which point they call them which things. And then in the 13th century, Aquinas keeps pride as the root, but he restores sloth, and then he puts sadness in between,

like mixed between sloth and envy. So the seven deadly sins are capital vices as presented by Aquinas. He has pride as the root of them, and then the seven sins are vainglory, envy, acadia, slash sloth, avarice, wrath, lust, and gluttony. So between pride and vainglory and like the sloth, acadia, sadness situation,

that's where some of the stuff gets mixed in between. But I am going to focus on sharing with you all a little bit about each of the eight evil thoughts as articulated by Avagrius and Cassian, not including that ninth one of jealousy that's sometimes added in. So also another shout out, though I've given it many shout outs, to Therapy of Spiritual Illnesses by Dr. Jean-Claude Larcher, because these books are just a compilation of a bunch of different church fathers, and he really does just an incredible job of putting this all together. So basically anything I share in these episodes, other than my own personal experience,

which praise God, Dr. Larcher does not know my own personal experience, everything else is pretty much going to be from his book. It's gonna be quotes that he's got here and things like that. So, the first thing to say about the passions or the evil thoughts or the sins is that they are not natural to us.

And, you know, Saint Isaac the Syrian in his Aesthetical Homilies says, "'When the soul allows itself to enter "'into passionate movements,' "'by passionate he means sinful.'" So let's clarify that right now. When the fathers use the word passionate, they're not talking about passionate

as is commonly used in our English language today of just like having a lot of zeal. They're using passionate in the sense of acting out of the sinful passions. So St. Isaac the Syrian, when the soul allows itself to enter into passionate movements, it is as all agree outside its nature.

So the fathers are pretty unanimous about this. I would say even unanimous that the passions are not natural to us. When we're acting out of our passions, we're acting in discord with who we really are. And I've talked about this many times, right? Maybe you don't know this, maybe this is the first of my videos you've seen. But when we sin, we aren't just being human, we're being subhuman because it's not naturally in us to sin.

That's part of our fallen nature, part of our broken sinful reality, this broken sinful world that we live in, but it's not how we were created. So I want to share two quotes about this. One is a quote from St. John Damascene, and he says, and this is just making the point that I've made many times, and about this sin being contra-natural to us. All that God made is very good. All that persists, such as it was created, is very good. All that persists such as it was created is very good. That which voluntarily separates itself from the natural and goes against nature becomes

bad. All that serves and obeys its creator is according to nature. When a creature voluntarily revolts and disobeys its creator, it establishes evil within itself. So when we're acting in accord with our nature, we are doing good. Dorotheus of Gaza says, the passions are not natural. They have neither being nor substance. They resemble shadows that do not exist in themselves, but exist only through the deprivation of light." So this is the point that I've made before of evil is not something that exists in and of itself, because everything that exists,

God created, and all that God created is good. Evil is a lacking of good, a perversion of good, but it's not an existent in and of itself. I'm sure Father Pine could explain this much better than I can because I'm no philosopher, but so anyways, the passions. When do these passions come? St. Maximus the Confessor, and I've kind of paraphrased this on another episode, I think, but St. Maximus the Confessor says, in seeking to obtain pleasure and avoid suffering, man invents many and innumerable forms of corrupting passions. In other words, we have these passions, we sin, because we want pleasure and we don't want to suffer. And that's obvious, right? So, Maximus, Thalassius, Isaac the Syrian, John Damascene, Hezekiah the priest, all of these

fathers would say unanimously that the passions are derived from self-love. But self-love, I want to have kind of another definition of terms here, like I was saying about the word passionate. Because self-love is really a misnomer. Because self-love is really a misnomer. When they're using it in this sense, when the fathers are talking about the sin of self-love, they're not talking about actually loving ourselves. Because we are called to love ourselves, right? What's the second greatest commandment?

To love your neighbor as yourself. And so if we're saying we're not called to love ourselves, then we're also not called to love our neighbors and we're also not called to love God. And everything that Jesus said was a lie. So we're called to love ourselves. But self-love as the fathers describe it, and when they're using that term, in its perverted sinful sense,

is a search for carnal pleasure. So very clear example of this, right? If your kid wants to eat candy for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and dessert, they want to eat candy all day, every day, it's not love to give them the candy. And they might say, if you love me, you'll give me this candy because it makes me happy, because it gives me pleasure, because it avoids suffering.

But to actually to give them the candy is not actually love. And we all would say that. And so similarly, what we're, what they're calling self-love here is not a real love. When we're just searching for carnal pleasure, it's not a real love. Dr. Larcher, again, the author of Therapy of Spiritual Illnesses, he summarizes this really well. He says, since man has no true reality save in God, he cannot truly love himself in loving himself independently of God and is deluded in thinking he does so. does so. So if we have this this sinful self love, which comes out, it comes about as a search for carnal pleasure to avoid suffering. It's not real love because it's only actually increasing our suffering, right? These sins, these passions, these vices, whatever you want to call them, the evil thoughts,

they're only making us more miserable. And we see that and I could give you example after example after example in my life of the misery that my sin has caused me. St. Maximus the confessor says, this way divided nature. Because again, the greatest commandment is to love God. The second greatest is to love our neighbors as ourself. So if we're caught in this self-love, which is not true love, then we're not really loving ourself and we can't love our neighbor. And if we can't love our neighbor and if we can't love our neighbor who we have seen how can we love God whom we have not seen? So the devil

does what he often does here. He takes the word of God, love your neighbor as yourself and he twists it. He tries to make us love ourselves apart from God, to seek out our own pleasures, to grasp at what is going to make us happy, even in the short term, to avoid suffering even in the short term.

And that plays out. That self-love inspires, calls about the eight evil thoughts that I'm gonna start breaking open next week. This is, I realize this is a really apt time to start this series because this comes out the week after Pentecost, if you're in the new calendar and for us Byzantines who are on the new calendar we start a fasting period tomorrow so it's a really good time the apostles fast which starts eight days after Pentecost and goes up until June 29th

so if it's a very early Pascha like it was this year that means a very long Apostles fast and when Pascha is later it's a shorter fast. So I think I think those who are on the old calendar don't even have the Apostles fast this year because their Pascha is so late. So anyways, next week we will break open gluttony and start with that and see how far we get. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Heavenly Father, thank you for this day.

Thank you for the gift of technology, for the gift of those who are listening, the gift of the goodness of their hearts. I ask that you grant them and myself a deeper understanding of our goodness, of the virtue to which we are called when we are acting in accord with our nature. Help us this week to discern well what is real versus perverted self-love. Help us to not settle for carnal pleasure where you are calling us to sacrifice for the sake of a greater and truer love. Help us to love ourselves well so that we can love our neighbors. And so that most importantly, we can love you and your son and your Holy Spirit.

I ask all of this through the prayers of St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Nathaniel, through the prayers of Evagrius, St. Nathaniel, through the prayers of Evagrius, Cashion, Gregory the Great, St. Maximus the Confessor, St. Thalassius, St. Hisakias, the Most Holy Theotokos, and all the saints, through the prayers of our holy Fathers, O Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.