Great spiritual teachers of the Eastern Church appeared even as far as the borders of Persia,
where Orthodox Christianity thrived for many centuries before the appearance of Islam.
Such a man was St. Isaac of Nineveh, also known as the Syrian, who was born on the peninsula
of Qatar in 613 A.D., which at the time, jurisdictionally was in the territory of the Syriac Church
of Persia.
This was right before Islam began to spread across the Middle East.
At this time, the Persian Church had sparse relations with the Church within the Christian
Roman Empire due to its geographic isolation and its quarrels with them regarding the Council
of Chalcedon, starting almost two centuries before.
The Syriac spiritual masters had their own approach to the mystical.
If the Romans took pride in their legal precision and the Greeks in their philosophical reflection,
the Syriac people to the East tended to prefer expressing their faith in poetry, exploring
the symbolism, the paradox and the beauty of the faith through poetic verse.
Isaac certainly grew up with a keen awareness of St. Ephrem of Nisibis, also known as St.
Ephraim the Syrian, whose hymns and poetry reflecting this Eastern love of symbolism,
paradox and beauty, shaped much of the religious thought of his time.
During Isaac’s lifetime, controversies raged within the Church regarding various doctrinal
and liturgical issues.
Sometimes the debates could be passionate and even violent, but Isaac steered clear
of these controversies and focused on the core theology of the Love and Mercy of God.
As a young boy, Isaac was of a contemplative nature and tended to avoid theological debates,
focusing rather on his relationship with Jesus and the purification of his own heart to reflect
the light of Christ.
Following the footsteps of St. Ephrem of Nisibis, he expressed this dynamic in terms of Syriac
poetry, where he compares the heart to a mirror made of metal.
Just like with the mirror, where in order to make it render an accurate image, the metal
must be polished and shined thoroughly and habitually, in the same manner, constant ascetic
practices are necessary to polish the heart so that it may accurately reflect the light
of Jesus.
Isaac points out that prayer is not just a meditation.
It is a conversation with God.
As such, it entails an increasing silence within, so that God’s voice may be heard.
And he explains: Love of God proceeds from conversing with
him; this conversation of prayer comes about through stillness, and stillness comes with
the stripping away of the self.
The goal of ascetic practice is to discern the will of God while “stripping away”
all desires which impede doing what God would have us do.
According to Isaac, regular meditation and payer “polishes” the heart in order to
remove the dross of our selfish passions and reflect divine light in this world of darkness,
thus recovering the blissful nature which God intended for us.
At a young age, Isaac entered the monastery at Mar Matthew, near Nineveh (present-day
Mosul, Iraq).
Before long, he was mentoring other monks as a spiritual advisor, and by popular acclamation
from his brothers, he was soon elevated to Abbot.
Shortly thereafter, he was named Bishop of Nineveh and was compelled to move to the city.
The administrative life, however, did not agree with him as it entangled him with the
strife of mundane affairs and doctrinal disputes.
He was disgusted by the pettiness and coarseness of city life:
Once, two Christians came to him, asking him to settle a dispute.
One man acknowledged that he owed money to the other but asked for a short extension.
The lender threatened to sue his debtor and force him to pay.
St. Isaac, citing the Gospel, asked him to be merciful and give the debtor more time
to pay.
The man said, "Leave your Gospel out of this!"
St. Isaac replied, "If you will not submit to the Lord's commandments in the Gospel,
then what remains for me to do here?"
After about five months, bishop Isaac fled to the desert again and lived as a hermit,
eventually settling at the Monastery of Rabban Shabur (near present-day Alqoush Iraq, about
28 miles from Mosul).
Isaac was not alone in his disillusionment with his contemporary Church which was torn
by dissention.
Many others had fled the cities seeking stillness.
But, although many fled to the desert, the Syriac interest in ascetic practices was not
always expressed isolation from society.
Some small groups of men and women sought an ascetic lifestyle by living in covenant
with one another among the general population.
The Bnay qyāmā (or sons of the covenant) were people who had taken holy vows of sanctification.
These included two types: celibate individuals called bthūlē (virgins; applicable to both
male and female) or qaddīshē (holy ones) who were married.
There was a particular group within the bthūlē who lived in isolation called īḥīdāyā,
an interesting word that can be translated as hermit, but in Syriac it is also the term
used to describe Adam’s nature before the fall.
It was widely held that baptism and spiritual discipline lead to the acquisition of the
nature of the “second Adam,” restoring us to the pre-fall life of Eden on the earthly
realm.
This understanding reflects an important notion in Isaac’s approach to contemplation.
Baptism was seen to be the re-entry to the Garden of Eden made possible by Christ’s
baptism and resurrection.
In other words, it was the beginning of a life-long journey from the ephemeral world
of change to the eternal world of Heaven in order to recover the state of existence God
intended for us.
Our prayerful conversation with Jesus invites him into our heart so that he may guide us
away from the mirage of earthly affectation and develop our senses to perceive the divine.
St. Isaac explains: The nature of the soul is to be a receptacle
of blessed light, but when it is moved by affectations, it has abandoned its nature.
The understanding of created things is natural to the soul, but contemplation moves it above
nature.
St. Isaac calls us to step into a blinding light that is perceived as darkness.
Effectively, we are moving towards a distant land that is actually our home, forgotten
after Adam fell.
Although we must go single file along treacherous paths, we are not alone.
For, He who meditates on God in the night will
acquire Him as a housemate.
One who is pliable to His will, will find the angels of heaven to be his teachers.
St. Isaac’s description of this journey is marked by the Syriac love of metaphor.
It is like a trek through the desert in which the town of origin is a simple mirage that
fades from sight before the destination slowly comes to increasing visibility.
It is a kenotic journey in which one empties oneself of selfish passion, causing God’s
presence in the heart to become clearer as our spiritual eyes grow accustomed to the
brilliant desert sun.
As is often the case in caravans moving through the desert, illusory oases often tempt the
faithful with evanescent rewards and lead them astray.
These illusions and temptations, however, lose their power as God grants us the humility
which cures our selfishness.
In remembering one’s transgressions and imperfections, the solitudinous journey cleanses
the heart, raising the mind
Above the reproach and accusations of others and above zealotry; by not being one whose
hand is against everyone and against whom is everyone’s hand, but rather one who remains
alone and isolated, not taking on the concern of anyone else in the world apart from himself.
In an age of pitched ecclesial battles, St. Isaac saw the wisdom in casting the beam out
of one’s eye before trying to remove the mote from the eyes of others.
He saw the struggle for humility as an absolute necessity.
The arduous journey through the desert is painful by nature and is a lifelong quest.
St. Isaac tells us, that this spiritual journey must be motivated by love of God rather than
fear of judgement and punishment: As a handful of sand thrown into the ocean,
so are the sins of all flesh as compared with the mind of God.
Just as a strongly flowing stream is not blocked up by a handful of earth, so the compassion
of the Creator is not overcome by the wickedness of his creatures.
It is God’s initial love for us, that is the model.
And we respond to Him by seeking to reflect his love for the cosmos.
God the creator is not separate from God the lover of Creation.
St. Isaac explains that devotion involves our entire being and is not simply a matter
of intellectual conviction or of mere mental contemplation.
As creation groans for the manifestation of the sons of God, St. Isaac tells us that “every
prayer in which the body does not toil, and the heart does not feel suffering” is “without
a soul” and invalid.
Just as a long trek through the Arabian desert implies suffering in torrid heat and profound
thirst, we are also moving slowly through arid regions towards our ultimate home.
We are in “the land of thorns” which Adam experienced after the Fall, and until we partake
of the heavenly bread, offered in divine love, our labor is in vain, even if it is offered
for righteousness’ sake.
It is the acceptance and reflection of the love of Christ that validates our earthly
efforts.
He further explains: Whoever is sustained on love is sustained
by Christ who is God over all.
Jesus testifies to this, saying ‘God is love.’
This is the air in which the righteous find delight at the resurrection.
St. Isaac went to the desert to contemplate God in solitude.
He left behind him a bishopric that was beset with strife.
Some may have considered this to be the abandonment of an important post in a time of stress.
To the denizens of our “world of thorns” it may appear so, and he certainly suffered
accusations and reproach from the zealots of his time.
But it is one of those paradoxes, which the Syriac saints love so well.
Effectively, in his total surrender to the transcendent God and unwavering desire to
fulfill his loving will, St. Isaac made a diocese for the ages to come.
Immersed in the love of Christ, he reflected and expressed God’s unifying love of creation
and his writings have served as a guide to spiritual pilgrims for over a thousand years.
The kenotic surrender of the self begins in an apparent loneliness, but God the loving
creator offers so much more than is initially apparent.
The desert overflows with an ocean of compassion and the heart reflecting the creator’s love,
…is a heart on fire for the whole of creation, for humanity, for the birds, for the animals,
for demons and for all that exists.
At the recollection and at the sight of them, such a person’s eyes overflow with tears
owing to the vehemence of the compassion which grips the heart; as a result of his deep mercy,
his heart shrinks and cannot bear to hear or look on any injury or the slightest suffering
of anything in creation.
This is why he constantly offers up prayers full of tears, even for irrational animals
and for the enemies of the truth, even for those who harm him, so that they may be protected
and find mercy.
As one treks in solitude across the desert with Christ as the intimate guide, the loving
nature of God outshines all else and fear is conquered.
Paradoxically, the seemingly lonely journey leads to a unity with all.
God the Creator is no different from God the Lover.
St. Isaac tells us: This shall be for you a luminous sign of the
serenity of your soul: when on examining yourself, you will find full compassion for all humanity,
and your heart is afflicted with pity for them, burning as through fire, without making
the distinction between one person and another.
When the image of the Father becomes visible in you by means of the continual presence
of these things, then you can recognize the measure of your way of life—not from your
various labors, but from the transformation your understanding receives.
The body is then likely to be bathed in tears, as the intellect gazes on things spiritual.
St. Isaac the Syrian crossed the threshold to God’s eternal reality from his temporary
home in the Monastery of Rabban Shabur sometime around the year 700 AD.
Yet, he still remains a living guide and a spiritual well-spring to us who dwell in the
desert of the World seeking a path to our transcendent home, which God has prepared
for us in His loving embrace.
St. Isaac, pray for us.