Sermon Resources:
1. Audio clip is not our own - from Disney's "Zootopia" (2016)
2. Sloth is "aversion to the divine good in us." -Thomas Aquinas, "Summa Theologiae"
3. “Sloth is not to be confused with laziness. Lazy people, people who sit around and watch the grass grow, may be people at peace. Their sun-drenched, bumblebee dreaming may be the prelude to action or itself an act well worth the acting. Slothful people, on the other hand, may be very busy people. They are people who go through the motions, who fly on automatic pilot. Like somebody with a bad head cold, they have mostly lost their sense of taste and smell. They know something's wrong with them, but not wrong enough to do anything about. Other people come and go, but through glazed eyes they hardly notice them. They are letting things run their course. They are getting through their lives.” -Frederick Buechner, "Wishful Thinking"
4. “The puzzle is why so many people live so badly. Not so wickedly, but so inanely. Not so cruelly, but so stupidly. There is little to admire and less to imitate in the people who are prominent in our culture. We have celebrities but not saints. Famous entertainers amuse a nation of bored insomniacs. Infamous criminals act out the aggressions of timid conformists. Petulant and spoiled athletes play games vicariously for lazy and apathetic spectators. People, aimless and bored, amuse themselves with trivia and trash. Neither the adventure of goodness nor the pursuit of righteousness gets headlines.” -Eugene Peterson, "Run With The Horses"
5. Article on "languishing:" https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/19/well/mind/covid-mental-health-languishing.html
6. “To our chagrin we discover that the declaration of self-determination has issued not in a race of free, masterly humans, but rather in a race that can be described by its poets and dramatists only as bored, vexed, frantic, embittered, and sniffling.” -Thomas Howard, "Chance or The Dance?"
7. “Sloth is the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, loves nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive only because there is nothing it would die for.” -Dorothy Sayers, "Letters to a Diminished Church: Passionate Arguments for the Relevance of Christian Doctrine"
8. “Can you hate the world enough to want to change it, and yet love it enough to see it worth changing?” -G.K. Chesterton, "Orthodoxy"
9. Boston Globe study: https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2018/05/19/don-get-too-comfortable-america-relentless-pursuit-convenience-and-relaxation/liWGIaQgFNWMXVU7Pvl0rN/story.html
10. "The Lonely Century," by Noreena Hertz
11. “‘Nothing’ is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man's best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like…You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy [God]. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the ‘Nothing.’ Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” -C.S. Lewis, "The Screwtape Letters"
12. Prayer from the Breastplate of St. Patrick
