Evelyn Waugh's Sloth

I took out The Seven Deadly Sins, a collection of essays written by famous British authors in the 50's from the London Sunday Times. I don't know if I'd recommend it, because most of the authors thought their deadly sin shouldn't really be that bad, but Evelyn Waugh had some choice word to say about Sloth:

Theologians are the least rhetorical of writers. Their vocabulary is elaborate and precise, and when they condemn an act as a mortal sin they are not merely expressing disapproval in a striking phrase. They mean something specific and appalling; an outrage against the divine order committed with full knowledge and consent which, if unrepented before death, consigns the doer to eternal loss of salvation

What then is this Sloth which can merit the extremity of divine punishment? St. Thomas's answer is both comforting and surprising: tristitia de bono spirituali, sadness in the face of spiritual good. Man is made for joy in the love of God, a love which he expresses in service. If he deliberately turns away from that joy, he is denying the purpose of his existence.