St. Isaac the Syrian and his Ascetic writings

THE FATHERS OF ORTHODOX MONASTICISM

The Life of
ST. ISAAC THE SYRIAN
AND HIS ASCETIC WRITINGS

By Prof. I. M. KONTZEVITCH1

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1. The brief life of St. Isaac here is translated from the Moscow edition of his Works (1893); the rest of the article is Prof. Kontzevitch's.



Gerontos Pachomios, Mt. Athos

SAINT ISAAC THE SYRIAN

Commemorated January 30

KONTAKION, TONE 2

IN PURITY OF SOUL divinely having armed thyself,+ and continual prayer having firmly grasped as a spear,+ thou didst pierce the legion of demons,+ Isaac, our Father, pray continually for all of us.+


SAINT ISAAC, who lived in the sixth century, was by birth a Syrian. His homeland was Nineveh; concerning his parents no information has been preserved. While still a youth Isaac, having left the world and everything worldly, together with his brother entered the lavra of St. Matthew and there received the monastic tonsure. When, however, in this monastery he had perfected himself in asceticism and to a sufficient degree had matured in virtue, the desire was awakened in him for deeper silence and desert dwelling. Therefore, having gone away a great distance from the monastery and settled in a desert cell, he began to lead a completely solitary life, having contact with no one at all.

The brother of St. Isaac, having entered into the direction of the aforementioned lavra, did not cease from mightily persuading and begging him in letters to quit the desert and return to his former monastery. But St. Isaac remained in the desert which he found agreeable. News of the high ascetic labors and spiritual enlightenment of St. Isaac laroused a general desire among the Ninevites to ask him to take upon himself, in the capacity of bishop, the direction of the Church of Nineveh.

St. Isaac acceded to this unanimous summons. But he did not govern for long the Church of his native city. Because the flock soon began to display disobedience to the archpastor whom they themselves had chosen, St. Isaac considered it better to take from himself the burden of episcopal service. A particularly strong and painful impression was left by the following incident, which finally forced him to quit his episcopal see.

Once two Chrstians of Nineveh came to the Saint in the episcopal house, and one of them demanded of the other the payment of a debt, while the latter, aknowledging that he was in actual fact a debtor, begged nonetheless to be given a short extension. But the lender replied: "If he refuses to pay me the debt, I will take him right now without fail before a judge." St. Isaac, wishing to incline him to condescension, remarked to him: "If according to the commandment of the holy Gospel we must forgive the debtor his debt, then all the more should you show magnanimity for a single day to one who has promised to pay you his debt." In reply to this the cruel man said the following crude words: "Leave your Gospel out of this!" Then St. Isaac declared: "If they will not submit to the Gospel commandments of the Lord, then what remains for me to do among you here?"

And St. Isaac went off into the mountains, [to Kurdistan, in order to labor in asceticism amongst the anchorites there. Later he settled in the monastery of Rabban Shabur, where he studied the holy Scriptures with such zeal that he lost his sight (Kontzevitch)].

His so elevated teaching often found little response or understanding in the world around him. However, his great respect among some contemporaries is apparent from the fact that he was appealed to in letters, in search for the solution of various perplexities, by the holy ascetic St. Simeon Stylites the Younger, who subsequently practiced asceticism on a pillar of the "Hill of Wonders" near Antioch, from which he received the name "St. Simeon of the Hill of Wonders."

The Ascetic Essays

"The cell of a hesychast is that cleft in the rock where the Lord spoke to Moses."
St. Isaac

THE ASCETIC ESSAYS of St. Isaac the Syrian do not present themselves as a systematic work. In them there is no system, sequence, or logical constructions. They are rather a collection of fragments and sketches of spiritual reflections, and besides written under his dictation. They are intended not for beginners, but for those advancing in perfection.

Here the subject most of all is the higher stages of the spiritual path. These are notes of extraordinarily clear contemplations and insights. They afford a most abundant material for the monastic inward activity. They are inspired essays on fleeing the world and on spiritual vision. In them "one senses clearly this penetration of the wilderness by the sun, the resounding silence of the monastic cave and the extraordinary realness of the inner spiritual warfare. The swish of the serpent, the rustle of the scorpion, the imperturbably regal flight of the eagle in the expanse of heaven, and the refinement of the attacks of demons, the most subtle net of spiritual and fleshly temptations and the warfare of thoughts in the abyss of one's own heart – this is what grips the reader of this book" (Archimandrite Cyprian Kern).

St. Isaac knows all his predecessors in the sphere of ascetic writings and makes direct citations from them.

THE TEACHING OF THE ASCETIC ESSAYS

THE HEART. The heart is the center of religious life. In the concept of the "heart" is included the manifestations and functions of the soul, including also the mind.

The mind is one of the senses of the soul, says St. Isaac, while the heart embraces in itself and holds in its power the inner senses.

The mechanism of passion. In the depths of the heart, in unconsciousness, there accumulate sinful habits, preconceived notions, from which the demons evoke an inducement toward sin.

SOTERIOLOGY. The redemption is the healing of sin evoked by compassion toward the creature; more than this, the Incarnation is not only a soteriological feature, it is a sign of the immortal love of God toward the world, and therefore God would have become man even in the case that Adam had not fallen.

St. Isaac notes three stages of the spiritual path: repentance, purification, and perfection or "fulfillment in love and rapture."

Repentance is a "higher grace," the "door of mercy," the possibility of return. It is a "second grace" (the first being baptism), a "second rebirth from God."

Repentance is not merely a single moment, there should be an orientation of repentance. Repentance can never be definitive, for no one is above temptations. For those seeking salvation repentance should be constant, as there is no limit to perfection.

"Repentance is always befitting all, sinners and righteous, who seek salvation. And there is no limit to perfection, so that even the perfection of the perfect themselves is in reality an imperfection. Therefore until one's very death there are no limits for repentance either in time or in deeds."

Both lamentation and repentance pave the road to purity of soul, for from lamentation a man comes to purity of soul.

Both stillness and repentance are indissolubly bound to each other; stillness seeks solitude, and this is the aloneness of the soul before the face of God. "Blessed is he who has withdrawn from the world and its darkness and pays heed to himself alone."

Anchoretism is an inward solitude, a special disposition of the soul, a departure from the world; one must "be renewed" and leave the world the world of passions, of which it is composed.

"The passions are parts of the continuous course of the world, and where the passions cease, there the world stops in its continuity." "Where the passions cease their coursing, there the world dies." "In short, the world is a fleshly institution and a false wisdom of the flesh."

The passions are component parts of the world. The soul by nature is passionless. "The passions are something additional," secondary, alien, unnatural. The soul is drawn into the whirling of the passions, itself enters into them and becomes already outside its own nature." The passions are already a falling out of one's "pristine state."

The soul is drawn into the world, but it can and must go out of it through ceaseless repentance, which will be for it a return to itself, into its natural condition, and a liberation from the laws of spiritual slavery.

The world binds and enslaves through the senses, through sensory impressions; it is precisely through the sensory faculty that the soul's impurity is in subjection to sensory impressions, which kill the life of the heart. Impurity is the death of the heart. Sensory impressions blind the soul's vision, and passions consume its authentic knowledge. Purification is attained through the mastery of the senses.

The world is a deception of the senses. "The natural condition of the soul is knowledge (gnosis) of God's creatures, sensory and mental. Its unnatural condition is the movement of the soul in (people) tossed about by the passions." And that which is accepted by the impassioned senses is an illusion, and the world is a deception of the senses. "And spiritual knowledge is a sensing of the Divine mysteries hidden in things and their causes."

One must be diverted from everything transitory (unnatural) and illusory in things and attain what is not transitory in them. To remain in the transitory and illusory calls forth self-forgetfulness; therefore finding oneself, coming to oneself out of self-forgetfulness, is attained by a departure from the "illusory" world. This is precisely purification (catharsis).

Having been liberated from the impressions of the world, in stillness, the soul becomes purified. "Stillness mortifies the outward senses and resurrects inward movements." And thus in stillness is revealed true knowledge (gnosis).

The higher "mental" revelations, already without images, above every image, are incommensurate with the understanding: "The objects of the future age have no direct and proper nomenclature. Of them there is possible only a certain simple knowledge, (which is) above every word, every element, image, color, outline, and every complex name." "This is that unknowing," says St. Isaac, "of which it is said that it is above knowledge" (direct quotation from St. Dionysius the Areopagite).

TRANSFIGURATION. The soul begins to be transfigured, obtaining an unearthly beauty a hundred times more brilliant than the sun's radiance. And the soul enters "the realm of pure nature" and reigns in the Father's glory. This is already the state of rapture. The soul is intoxicated with Divine love. "Thought is in amazement, and the heart in Divine captivity." The path is finished. This is already a "sensing of immortal life" – and more than that, the realization and revelation of eternal immortality in the very being of man.

KNOWLEDGE. Thus there are various stages of knowledge. The first stage, of which we have already spoken, is fleshly knowledge, knowledge of the transitory, the unreal. This knowledge is a false and dangerous one, accomplished through our senses.

The second stage. In it the soul and its qualities are known, and likewise the wisdom and providence in the structure and course of things. But all this is still in the sphere of the senses and experiences of the soul.

Then, the third stage, which is more elevated. This is a spiritual knowledge of the world that rises above the earthly. "Now it can fly up to the region of the incorporeal, touch the depths of the intangible sea, present to the mind the divine and wondrous actions of Providence in the nature of sensory and mental beings, and it traces out the spiritual mysteries accessible to thought which is mysterious and simple."

And at the very end, the fourth, highest stage is divine vision under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. This is the beginning of perfection; this is already greater than knowledge (gnosis). "The ladder to that Kingdom is within you, it is hidden in your soul. Immerse yourself within yourself deeper than sin, and you will find there an ascent by which you can ascend."

FREEDOM. Freedom is the source of good. There can be good only thanks to freedom. It is brought to realization and strengthened through practice and asceticism. But asceticism is possible only in freedom. Even God Himself acts on the soul "in the mystery of freedom," and life in the future age is the "fatherland of freedom."

In freedom, however, is included also the danger of falling, namely in the "folly of arbitrary will," since good must always be dependent on freedom of choice. "For the Lord is almighty and stronger than all, and He is always victorious in the mortal body when He goes together with ascetics into battle. And if they are vanquished, it is clear that they are vanquished without Him. This means that by the folly of their arbitrary will they have stripped themselves of God."

The power of God is manifested only through searching and ascetic labor: "this world is a contest and this time is a time of warfare."

PRAYER. The moving power of asceticism is prayer, and from it is born and kindled love Prayer, in the definition of St. Isaac, is "every converse performed in secret, and every concern of a good mind for God, and every reflection on the spiritual." It is a standing before God, as well in thought as in deed and word.

One must strive for unceasing prayer, which is already a sign of perfection, since constancy in prayer is possible only with the cooperation of the Holy Spirit. And the ascetic "has already ascended to the summit of virtues and become a dwelling of the Holy Spirit."

In prayer "the mind's vision is directed to God alone. To Him the mind directs all its movements." Here is the Theocentrism of prayer. Thus, prayer is the Theocentric orientation of the soul.

DIVINE VISION. "He who concentrates the vision of his mind within himself, beholds in himself the dawn of the Spirit. He who disdains every flight of the mind beholds his Master within his heart." "If you are pure, within you is heaven--and you will behold within you angels and their light, and with them and in them the Master of angels." This is bound up with purity, with liberation from everything sensory, from predilections toward the visible world. "When the mind is in motion [from earthly influences] it is still in the sphere of the soul," but as soon as the mind enters the spiritual realm, "everything relating to prayer ceases, and there begins a certain divine vision, and the mind prays without prayer."

RAPTURE. "The soul's movements, in their strict immaculacy and purity, become participants in the actions of the Spirit. And one out of many is worthy of this, for it is a mystery of the future condition and life. For the soul is raised up, and nature remains inactive, without any movement or remembrance of the here-below."

This is already "silence of mind," and "silence is a mystery of the future age," the repose of divine vision, a prefiguration of the Kingdom of God. "For the saints in the future age, when their mind will be absorbed in the Spirit, will not pray with supplication, but will be established with amazement in joy-creating glory. Thus it also happens with us. As soon as the mind becomes worthy to sense the future blessedness, it forgets itself and everything here below and has no longer in itself a movement toward anything whatever... And freedom is taken away, and the mind is guided, but does not guide us."

In this divine vision, by the power of the Spirit, there is already revealed the connection and the fullness of times. Already the wondrous acon of the future is visible in its inexpressible light, and thereby the present earthly life seems all the more wondrous. Thought ascends even to the first creation, when by a sudden command everything was brought from non-existence into existence "and everything stood before Him in perfection." There is revealed in vision the fullness of providence. And in this divine vision hope is strengthened; every fear and distrustfulness is dispersed... Every anxiety ceases, every separate desire stops... "And they do not see the difficulties of the path, before them are no hills or streams, sharp places in the road will be smooth for them (Is. 11:4)... Ceaselessly their attention is turned to the bosom of their Father. And hope itself in each instant indicates to them as by a finger the remote and invisible... and with desire for the remote, as by some fire, the soul is kindled – and the absent presents itself as already present."

LOVE. At the same time there is kindled love. "The heart burns and is kindled by fire, day and night," and there is given the gift of tears. And these are already tears of tender feeling and joy, not lamentation and sorrow, tears of love, "for it is in the nature of love also to call forth tears by remembrance of the beloved." This is a foresensing of the approaching Kingdom of God, a sensing of spiritual peace, "and this is a precise sign that the mind has gone out of this world and sensed that spiritual world."

Only through love is perfection attained. "The sign of those who have attained perfection is this: if they were to be given over ten times in a day to be burned for love of men, they would not be satisfied with this."

Saints also strive to become like God "by the perfection of love for neighbor," and in limitless compassion for every creature. "And what is a heart that has mercy? The kindling of the heart for all creation, for men, birds, animals, demons, and all creatures. In bringing them to mind, in beholding them the eyes are filled with tears out of a great and powerful compassion that embraces the heart. And the heart softens, and it connot bear, or hear, or see any kind of harm, or even the least sorrow, experienced by a creature. And therefore even for dumb creatures, and for enemies of the truth, and for those who cause one harm, it offers supplication every hour, that they be preserved and purified. And even for crawling creatures it prays out of great pity. It is awakened in the heart without measure insofar as one becomes like, in this, to God."