St Isaac the Syrian, or St Isaac of Nineveh, as he is also known, is one of the greatest spiritual writers of the Christian East. If one visits the monasteries of Mount Athos or Romania today and asks the monks whom they would recommend for spiritual reading, the name of Isaac will nearly always be among the first to be mentioned. His influence on Orthodox spirituality continues to be great. It is by no means confined to the monasteries. Traces of it can be seen in the works of one of the greatest Russian novelists, Fyodor Dostoevsky.
For myself I can only say that [Saint Isaac’s words] once heard are never forgotten, words which speak with the clarity and vigor which we find in the Gospels themselves: ‘Like a handful of dust thrown into the sea are the sins of all mankind compared with the mercy and providence of God,’ and ‘Blessed is he who has eaten of the bread of love, which is Jesus’.
Who, having read Isaac’s account of the compassionate heart, ‘a heart on fire with love for all creation’, is ever likely to forget it? When we come to his description of how the animals are attracted to the man in whom humility reigns, we are reminded of St Seraphim in the forests of nineteenth-century Russia. They tell us of the restoration of our true humanity.
But Isaac can also tell us much about the inner journey of the human spirit. Within each one of us the Kingdom is to be found, the Kingdom whose sun is the light of the Holy Trinity, whose air is the very breath of the life-giving Spirit. There are mysteries of silence and of stillness here, in which the heart of the man of prayer makes silent melody, speaking ‘in a hidden way to the hidden God’. It is not by chance that his writings have been so much treasured among the hesychasts of Eastern Orthodoxy. The word hesychast is one which applies to the man or woman of prayer who seeks to live a life of silence and stillness, who feels called into the desert places of the heart.
Isaac is very insistent that, for the one who has received it, the call to prayer has an absolute priority. When God speaks, man must obey. But he is also quite clear that ‘an ascetic without compassion is a tree that bears no fruit’. The two commandments of love are so inseparably intertwined that they cannot be divided.
He makes it very evident that the solitary life can only be lived, in a Christian context, on the basis of a strong faith in, and experience of, the solidarity of us all, both in Adam and in Christ, both in suffering and in glory. Time and again he reminds us that we are members one of another, that our life is with our brother. It is very striking to see which of the Desert Father stories he chooses to retell. There is nothing private or privatized about such a way of life, however solitary it may be. All are present in the prayer of each.
There can be no doubt whatsoever in [his writings] about the absolute demands which the
Gospel makes on those who hear it. The religion which Isaac describes is fervent and total in its claim. It transforms man both inwardly and outwardly. There is no separation here between body and soul. Both are intimately concerned. That is why we hear so much about fasting, so much about tears and prostrations.
Through the experience of the cross, through dying to this world, we find already here and now the joy of the resurrection, made present in our world of space and time. That is a joy which looses all bonds, which gives us a first taste of the world to come.
Ultimately, Isaac’s vision is one of the whole creation restored in Christ. The animals are part of it, including the reptiles. Remember that he lived in a desert and would have met real snakes. Even, and this is more mysterious, the demons are not altogether left out. The man in whom God’s love is at work will pray also for them.
We touch here on very mysterious realities. In his own century Isaac seems at times to have been criticized for teaching openly things that many people thought were better kept secret. His teaching that in God mercy has wholly conquered justice could be a case in point…. He does not underestimate the tragedy of sin. But he is overwhelmed by his sense of God’s grace in bringing us into existence in the first place. Still more he is amazed that after sin and after death that grace should raise us up into newness of life. In the face of this love there can be no place for despair. If man’s sin is great, God’s love is always greater.
~Adapted from the Introduction by A.M. Allchin, “THE MAN IN HIS TIME, THE MAN AND HIS MESSAGE,” taken from: Daily Readings with Saint Isaac of Syria, Translated by Sebastian Brock
