By Father Alex Fry
Special to The Texas Catholic
When I was in seminary abroad, I traveled to Ukraine over winter break to visit friends. I stayed in a 600-year-old house in the eastern part of the country. It was a simple home with few modern comforts. In fact, I was only ever in the main living space, gathered around a large wood-burning hearth that served as the heart of the house.
That single room was where everything happened. We shared meals there. The family kept their valuables there. And at night, it became my bedroom. The hearth warmed the entire house, but that room — closest to the fire — was the warmest of all. Winter in Ukraine is unforgiving, so I did not complain about sleeping near the hearth.
Each night before bed, my friend would carefully load the hearth with logs, fitting them together like a tight jigsaw puzzle. It did not take much — just a few well-placed pieces of wood — to keep the house warm through most of the night.
By morning, though, the fire had burned low. I would wake with freezing toes and clouds of breath hanging in the air. Then came the wait: until my friend, a notoriously late sleeper, finally woke up and stirred the fire back to life.
There is something analogous in the spiritual life. The days of Advent and Christmas are like lighting the hearth, filling our hearts with warmth and peace. The prayers are familiar, the churches are full, and even the surrounding culture seems to echo something of the season’s hope. It does not take much effort to feel close to the fire.
But as we turn the corner into January and February, it can feel as though the flames begin to dim. The decorations come down. The routines return. The days grow long and gray. With our natural energy low and the exhaustion of the holidays setting in, the cold can creep back in quietly.
The tradition calls this temptation “acedia” — a kind of spiritual weariness that is not quite sadness and not quite laziness but a dull resistance to the demands of love and faithfulness. It whispers that prayer can wait, that Sunday can be skipped, that the effort is no longer worth it. Nothing dramatic — just a slow cooling of the heart.
The contrary virtue to acedia is diligence — not a forced cheerfulness or sudden burst of motivation, but a steady faithfulness that endures when feeling fades. Diligence is the quiet decision to keep tending the fire even when it no longer gives immediate warmth. It shows up in small, ordinary acts: returning to prayer when it feels dry, staying close to the sacraments when the excitement of the season has passed, choosing to love and serve even when the heart feels tired. This kind of perseverance does not chase consolation; it trusts that warmth will return in time. And so, rather than staying in bed as the fire goes out, diligence teaches us to place another log on the hearth and to remain nearby, confident that God is still at work, even in the cold.
In the quiet stretch between Christmas and Lent — those ordinary days when Ash Wednesday (Feb. 18 this year) still feels far off — we are given a gentle invitation. This is a good time to recommit ourselves to the simple obligations of prayer, or even to take up a small new practice to keep the fire in our hearts from going cold. It is this steady tending that allows warmth to endure through the long winter.
For further reading, Robert Hayden’s poem “Those Winter Sundays” offers a quiet and moving meditation on hidden love, faithful labor, and those people in our lives who light the fires that keep us warm. For a deeper spiritual treatment of the theme, Abbot Jean-Charles Nault’s “The Noonday Devil: Acedia, the Unnamed Evil of Our Times” provides a clear and compelling exploration of spiritual weariness and the steady virtue that keeps the heart attentive and alive.
Father Alex Fry is parochial vicar at Christ the King Catholic Church in Dallas.
Cutline for featured image: Children and youth from St. Rita Catholic Community rehearse Jan. 3 for their Epiphany celebration, where they will portray the arrival of the Three Magi. (MARÍA OLIVAS/Special Contributor)
