Philokalia Ministries

There are passages in the Fathers that can frighten us if we read them too quickly.

They speak of perfection.

Of keeping the commandments.

Of allowing no passion to remain unchallenged.

Of giving everything away.

Of taking up the cross.

Of refusing to divide our lives between God and something else.

And almost immediately we begin calculating our inadequacy.

Who can live this way?

Who possesses every virtue?

Who has cleansed himself from every passion?

Who can say that there is no breach left in the wall of his heart?

The Evergetinos does not soften the question.

The Fathers are far less interested than we are in making Christianity appear manageable.

A ship missing what it needs for the voyage cannot safely cross the sea. A soldier without his armor is exposed before the enemy. A city may have strong gates and vigilant guards, but if there is a breach somewhere in the wall, the enemy does not need to attack the gate.

He enters through the place left open.

So too the heart.

We may pray much and still protect one resentment.

We may fast and remain vain.

We may give generously while secretly feeding our need to be praised.

We may speak beautifully about God while refusing to forgive one person.

We may have surrendered almost everything and still whisper over one small corner of the heart:

This is mine.

The Fathers will not allow us the consolation of “almost.”

Not because God is a tyrant demanding flawless religious performance, but because love desires the whole person.

God does not want most of us.

He wants us.

And strangely, this severity becomes beautiful once we understand what the Fathers mean.

The problem is not that God is keeping an account and waiting for us to miss one item on an enormous list of obligations.

The problem is division.

“No man can serve two masters.”

The heart cannot become whole while deliberately maintaining two allegiances.

We know this from experience.

One cherished passion can gradually organize an entire life around itself. One resentment rehearsed long enough begins interpreting every encounter. One attachment we refuse to surrender begins dictating our choices. One secret vanity can enter even our prayer and turn the search for God into another search for ourselves.

“A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.”

We usually hear this negatively.

But then Abba Mark takes precisely that image and turns it toward grace.

This is where the beauty of these passages opens before us.

For there is another leaven.

The Word of God.

The Fathers do not simply tell us what Christianity demands.

They tell us what Christianity makes possible.

Abba Mark says something astonishing: the Word of God possesses the same power as the authority by which it is spoken. It commands us, yes—but in the command itself it communicates the power by which the command may be fulfilled.

God does not stand at a distance saying:

Become holy.

He speaks holiness into us.

Christ does not merely say:

Follow Me.

His word creates within the willing heart the capacity to rise and follow.

He does not merely say:

Forgive.

Grace begins loosening the clenched fist of the heart.

He does not merely say:

Take up your cross.

He enters the suffering with us and makes what would otherwise crush us into the very place where communion with Him becomes possible.

This changes everything.

The Christian life is not principally the heroic attempt of fallen human beings to satisfy the demands of an impossibly holy God.

It is the life of God entering the human person.

“The word of God is living and active.”

Living.

Not information.

Not merely instruction.

Not religious advice.

Living.

The word received in faith enters the heart like leaven hidden in flour. Quietly, invisibly, patiently, it begins working through the whole person—body, soul, and spirit—until what has been received begins transforming the one who received it.

This is why hearing the Word is never trivial.

We may think nothing has happened.

We hear the Gospel proclaimed.

We read a saying of the Fathers.

A verse follows us through the day.

A command of Christ wounds us because we know that we are not living it.

And perhaps we think we have merely acquired another obligation.

But something has been placed within us.

A seed.

A fire.

Leaven.

Grace.

The Word carries within itself the possibility of the life it announces.

And baptism deepens the mystery still further.

Abba Mark insists that those who have been baptized have received the power to fulfill the commandments.

That statement should stop us.

Baptism, then, is not merely something that happened to us.

It is something that has been placed within us.

We have been joined to Christ.

His death has been planted within us.

His Resurrection has been planted within us.

The possibility of a new manner of existence has been given.

This does not mean that struggle disappears. The Fathers knew the violence of the passions better than we do. They knew temptation, weariness, distraction, despondency, lust, anger, vainglory, fear, and the terrible instability of the human heart.

But they also knew something we easily forget:

Grace has already arrived.

We are not standing outside the Kingdom trying to break into it by moral effort.

The Kingdom has been planted within us.

The tragedy of sin, therefore, is not simply that we have violated a rule.

It is that we have lived beneath what has been given to us.

We have forgotten who we became in the waters.

This is why repentance is so central.

Repentance is not groveling before an offended deity.

It is returning to reality.

It is repairing the breach.

It is discovering where we have divided the heart and opening that place again to God.

And this explains the uncompromising language of the Fathers concerning even the “small” passions.

They are not teaching scrupulosity.

They are teaching freedom.

Anything that masters us is too large.

Anything we cannot surrender has already revealed its power over us.

Anything we must hide from God has become a small altar erected beside His altar.

“For of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.”

The question, then, is not:

How many sins am I permitted while remaining a good Christian?

That question belongs to the mentality of a contract.

The Fathers ask something far more searching:

What still possesses the heart that belongs to Christ?

And yet even here we must be careful.

The answer is not anxiety.

It is not obsessive self-examination.

It is not the endless measurement of our spiritual condition.

It is surrender.

“Take up thy cross, and follow Me.”

There is a wonderful simplicity in this.

The commandments ultimately gather themselves into a single movement of the person toward God.

Give yourself.

Do not hold back.

Receive what comes.

Endure what cannot be changed.

Refuse the thoughts that separate you from Christ.

Repent when you fall.

Begin again.

Follow Him.

The Fathers knew that we could spend a lifetime trying to manage individual sins while never surrendering the self from which those sins arise.

So they lead us deeper.

Not merely:

Do not do this.

But:

Give yourself to God.

Not merely:

Control this passion.

But:

Let Christ possess the heart from which the passion draws its strength.

Not merely:

Fulfill your religious obligations.

But:

Become what you received.

Perhaps this is one of the great recoveries needed in our spiritual lives.

We have heard Christianity described so often in terms of demands, obligations, duties, prohibitions, and requirements that we can unconsciously imagine ourselves standing before God with an impossible list in our hands.

The Fathers see something far more beautiful.

They see a man standing in the waters of baptism.

They see the Word entering the ear and descending into the heart.

They see leaven hidden in the dough.

They see grace already working.

They see Christ within the human person making possible what fallen nature could never accomplish by itself.

Yes, the demand is total.

Because the gift is total.

God asks for the whole human being because He has given Himself wholly to the human being.

And perhaps this is why the Fathers can be simultaneously so severe and so full of hope.

They expect everything from us because they expect everything from grace.

There can be no protected corner.

No carefully preserved passion.

No portion of the day deliberately surrendered to another master.

But neither is there any corner of the human person into which Christ cannot enter.

That is the promise hidden inside the demand.

The Word that says,

Follow Me,

also gives feet to the lame.

The Word that says,

Rise,

raises the dead.

The Word that says,

Be clean,

cleanses the leper.

And the Word that calls us to become holy does not leave us standing alone before holiness.

He enters us.

He remains in us.

He works secretly like leaven.

Until, through repentance, patience, suffering, obedience, failure, beginning again, and grace upon grace, the life that once seemed impossible slowly becomes our own.

Not because we finally became strong enough.

But because the Word was living.

And we allowed Him to remain.

Reflection Three

The Furnace

“Give Blood and Receive the Spirit”

“Give blood and receive the Spirit.” — The Sayings of the Desert Fathers

There is a moment in the spiritual life when desire ceases to feel consoling. At first the awakening of desire can be beautiful.
Prayer deepens.
Silence becomes attractive.

The heart longs for God.
The desert seems spacious.
Freedom seems near.
But then something happens.
The fire begins to reveal what is actually within us. Not only our longing.
Our resistance.
Not only our love.
Our fear.
Not only our generosity.
Our need to control.
Not only our desire for God.

Our desire to possess God on our own terms.
This is where the fire becomes a furnace.
†
The Fathers were under no illusion about the human heart. They knew that desire can be mixed.

We may seek God and still seek ourselves.
We may desire silence and secretly want escape.
We may speak of freedom while protecting self-will.
We may speak of holiness while desiring admiration.
The desert exposes these mixtures.
And that exposure is grace.
The passions do not suddenly appear because we entered silence. Silence removes the noise that concealed them.
The anger was already there.
The need for approval was already there.
The wound was already there.
The desire to be important was already there.
The desert does not create these things.
It makes them visible.
And what becomes visible can finally be healed.

2

†

This is why the Fathers speak relentlessly about the thoughts.

A memory appears.

A resentment rises.

A fantasy begins.

A conversation from years ago returns and we rehearse it again.

We imagine ourselves vindicated.

We imagine ourselves admired.

And slowly we discover how much of our interior life is occupied by conversations that are not actually happening.

The Fathers call us back. Return to the cell. Return to prayer.
Return to reality.

Return to God.
This returning is one of the deepest forms of asceticism. †
The desert does not ask us to become less human.
It asks us to become truthful.
This is repentance.

3

Not self-condemnation.
The willingness to stand before God without disguise. This anger is mine.
This fear is mine.
This pride is mine.
This wound is mine.
This desire for control is mine.
And yet I am Yours.
Heal what I cannot heal.
Burn away what prevents love.
Repentance is not despair.
It is hope made honest.
†
And grace does not bypass our freedom.
We must consent to healing.
This is why asceticism matters.
Fasting.
Vigil.
Silence.
Watchfulness.

4

Prayer.
Obedience.
These are not punishments.
They reveal where the will remains enslaved.
A person may think himself patient until someone contradicts him.
Detached until something is taken away.
Humble until he is ignored.
Obedient until obedience conflicts with what he has already decided God wants. This is why the furnace is necessary.
Without it we can remain spiritually articulate and interiorly unfree.
†
“Give blood and receive the Spirit.”
The words are severe.
But the spiritual life costs us something.
Not because God demands suffering for its own sake.
Because love costs the false self everything.
The self that must be admired.
The self that must be right.
The self that must be safe.
The self that must be understood.

5

The self that must control the future. This self does not die easily.
And so the Fathers speak of blood. Not necessarily literal blood.

The interior cost of surrender.
The pain of not defending ourselves.
The pain of forgiving.
The pain of waiting.
The pain of being misunderstood.
The pain of remaining hidden.
The pain of discovering that we are not who we imagined ourselves to be. The pain of letting God be God.
†
This is where obedience becomes essential.
True obedience is not servility.
It is not the destruction of conscience.
It is the purification of self-will.
Self-will says:
I already know what must happen.
I already know where God is leading.

6

I already know what my life must become.
And then we ask God to bless what we have already decided. Obedience creates room for another possibility.
Perhaps I do not know.
Perhaps I am mistaken.
Perhaps what feels like freedom is escape.
Perhaps what feels like delay is mercy.
Perhaps what feels like obstruction is purification.
Obedience does not kill desire.
It tests whether desire belongs to God.
†
This is why the elder matters.
The elder is someone who has learned to distinguish fire from smoke. He has been burned himself.
He knows self-deception.
The disciple comes and says:
I want this.
I fear this.
I think God is asking this.
And the elder listens for the movement beneath the words.

7

Does this desire make you more loving? More humble?
More truthful?
More capable of waiting?

More willing to be hidden?
More compassionate?
More willing to surrender the outcome?
The Fathers do not despise mixed desire.
They purify it.
The spark may be genuine even when there is smoke.
The work is not to extinguish the fire.
It is to let it burn cleanly.
†
And this brings us to freedom.
The world often defines freedom as the ability to do what one wants. The desert understands freedom as the ability to desire what is good.
A person can possess enormous external freedom and remain enslaved. To anger.
To approval.
To fear.

8

To resentment.
To his own opinion.
The Fathers seek another freedom.
The freedom to forgive.
The freedom not to retaliate.
The freedom not to be praised.
The freedom not to win.
The freedom to remain silent.
The freedom to be unknown.
The freedom to lose everything except God.
Autonomy says:
No one will tell me what to do.
Spiritual freedom says:
Nothing will prevent me from belonging completely to God.
†
And sometimes the furnace is simply the life we have actually been given. Illness.
Hiddenness.
Delay.
An unwanted responsibility.

9

Loneliness.
Misunderstanding.
An unanswered prayer.
We tell ourselves:
I could pray if I had more silence.
I could love if people were easier.
I could be peaceful if this problem were resolved.
I could discern if God made things clearer.
But the saints discover that the place of limitation itself can become the altar. Not because suffering is good.
Because nothing need remain outside communion with Christ.
Everything can be brought into the fire.
†
Waiting is one of the great furnaces.
If a desire belongs merely to emotion, time often dissipates it.
If it belongs to ego, lack of recognition often embitters it.
But if it belongs to God, waiting can deepen it.
The desire becomes quieter.
Less dramatic.
Less defensive.

10

More peaceful.
Eventually it may no longer need to prove itself.
It simply remains:
I want God.
†
And the real test of all of this is love.
Not intensity.
Not extraordinary prayer.
Not great ascetic feats.
Humility.
Mercy.
Patience.
Non-judgment.
A gentle word.
The ability to bear another’s weakness.
Does the fire make the heart warmer toward others? Or harder?
Does prayer make us more merciful?
Does solitude enlarge our compassion?
Does suffering make us gentler?

11

St. Isaac tells us that the heart transformed by God becomes merciful toward all creation. This is what happens when the fire burns cleanly.
It does not produce harshness.
It produces tenderness.

The closer a person draws to God, the less capable he becomes of contempt. The fire of God illuminates.
It does not scorch others.
†

Perhaps this is what “give blood” finally means. Allow love to cost you something.
Give up the right to rehearse the injury.
Give up the fantasy of vindication.

Give up the need to be seen as spiritually exceptional.
Give up the demand that God’s path conform to the one you imagined. Give up the insistence that suffering must first make sense.
Give up the right to possess even your own vocation.
Put everything into God’s hands.
Even the desire itself.
And say:
Lord, I desire You.

12

And even the form that my desire takes belongs to You. If hiddenness is Your will, let me disappear.
If service is Your will, let me be poured out.
If I must wait, teach me to wait.

If I am mistaken, correct me.
If the desire is from You, purify it until nothing remains but love.
That is obedience.
Not passivity.
Offering.
†
The Cross stands at the center.
Christ is the truly free man.
And His freedom looks like self-gift.
“No one takes my life from me; I lay it down of my own accord.” Freedom reaches its perfection not in self-assertion but in love.
He is free enough to love unto the end.
And so every authentic Christian freedom eventually becomes cruciform. †
Here the furnace becomes luminous.
What feels at first like destruction is actually transfiguration.

13

The fire burns away what is false.
But preserves what is real.
God is not trying to destroy the person.
He is freeing the person from everything that prevents him from becoming himself. The false identities.
The defensive habits.
The fears.
The need to prove.
The need to possess.
The need to control.
And beneath them something deeper remains.
A person capable of love.
A person created in the image of God.
A person called to communion.
This cannot be rushed.
Years of returning.
Years of beginning again.
The modern mind asks:
Why is this taking so long?
The desert asks:

14

Why are you in such a hurry? Fruit ripens slowly.
The heart does too.
Repent.

Return.
Begin again.
†
Eventually something changes.
Not dramatically.
Almost imperceptibly.
A provocation no longer has the same power.
A need for approval loosens.
A resentment becomes harder to sustain.
We can be misunderstood without immediately defending ourselves. We need fewer explanations from God.
The heart begins to rest.
This is the fruit of the furnace.
Not perfection.
Freedom.
The passions may still knock at the door.

15

But they are no longer masters of the house. Now the saying begins to make sense: “Give blood and receive the Spirit.”
We give what binds us.

God gives what frees us. We give self-will.
He gives liberty.
We give resentment.

He gives mercy.
We give fear.
He gives trust.
We give illusion.
He gives truth.
We give our carefully protected life. He gives us life itself.

†
The furnace is not a detour from desire. It keeps desire from becoming fantasy. It is not the enemy of freedom.
It is where freedom is born.

16

It is not God’s refusal of us.
It is His refusal to leave us divided.

The fire that first awakened longing now consumes what prevents longing from becoming love.

At first we said:
I want God.
Then:
I want God more than these other things. Then:

I want God even if He gives me none of the things I imagined. And finally, perhaps:
I want only what allows me to belong completely to Him.
The spark has become flame.

The flame has entered the furnace.
And now the heart is being prepared for the final mystery: not merely to desire the fire,
not merely to endure the fire,
but to become what the fire has touched.
To become all flame.

17

There is something almost frightening in the severity of St. Isaac’s counsel.

A brother asks what appears to be a question about charity. He possesses something necessary for his life of stillness. Another person needs it. Moved by compassion, he gives it away. Yet afterward the loss of what he needs forces him into anxiety, activity, searching, conversation, and distraction. His stillness is broken. His prayer is disturbed. His mind, once gathered before God, becomes scattered among many things.

What should he do?

Should he not give?

Should mercy have limits?

St. Isaac’s answer is deliberately shocking:

“May that righteousness perish, and every form of mercy, love, compassion, or whatever is thought to be for God’s sake, which hinders you from the practice of stillness.”

We should not hurry past the violence of those words. Nor should we make them harmless by turning them immediately into metaphor.

Isaac means what he says.

The solitary has been entrusted with something exceedingly fragile and exceedingly precious: a heart gathered into the remembrance of God. His cell is not simply a place where he happens to live. His silence is not a preference. His withdrawal is not an eccentric arrangement of circumstances. These things belong to the particular form his obedience has taken.

He has left the world in order to stand before God.

Therefore, what might be virtue in another form of life can become infidelity in his.

This is one of the difficult truths of the spiritual life: not everything that appears good is ours to do.

There are acts of generosity that can arise from vanity. There are forms of service that conceal an inability to remain still. There is a compassion that allows us to become necessary to others because we are afraid of becoming nothing. There are good works that slowly carry us away from the one thing God has actually asked of us.

The question is not merely:

Is this good?

The deeper question is:

Does this preserve me in the obedience God has given me?

For the solitary, Isaac’s answer is uncompromising.

Guard the cell.

Guard silence.

Guard prayer.

Guard the senses.

Guard the remembrance of God.

Guard what has been entrusted to you as though guarding a flame in a great wind.

The extraordinary saying of the elder makes this almost painfully clear. He says that even leaving his place briefly “to pass water” shakes him from his habitual recollection and disturbs the order of his spiritual work.

We may find such sensitivity incomprehensible.

But perhaps that is because we have grown accustomed to dispersion.

We move continually from one thing to another. We receive messages, conversations, images, obligations, opinions, news, anxieties. We scarcely notice the violence done to attention because fragmentation has become our ordinary state.

The elder notices because he has discovered another way of being.

He knows what it is for the heart to become still.

And once a man has discovered such stillness, even a small movement can be felt like a stone dropped into clear water.

This is the uniqueness of the solitary vocation. We should not pretend that everyone is called to live in this way. Isaac himself distinguishes the solitary from “men who live in the world.” The solitary has been entrusted with an almost terrible simplicity: to relinquish many good things in order to preserve the one thing for which he entered solitude.

Yet hidden within Isaac’s severe counsel is a word for every Christian.

Because everyone has something entrusted to him that must not be sacrificed even in the name of apparently good things.

For the solitary, it may be the silence of the cell.

For another, it may be the person sitting across the table.

This is where Isaac’s teaching becomes uncomfortable in another direction.

We can lose Christ through distraction even while doing things “for Christ.”

A husband can become consumed with apostolic work and cease to see his wife.

A mother can become so anxious about everything that must be accomplished that she no longer beholds the child before her.

A priest can become absorbed in ministry and cease to recognize the human beings entrusted to him.

A Christian can spend hours discussing theology, defending truth, following ecclesiastical controversies, reading spiritual books, or performing works of service while becoming increasingly impatient with the person who interrupts him.

We may even call this sacrifice.

But sometimes what we are sacrificing is precisely what God gave us to love.

There is a strange inversion here.

The solitary must sometimes say no to another person in order to remain faithful to God.

The person living in the world must sometimes say no to a hundred distractions in order to remain faithful to the person God has placed before him.

Both are guarding the same mystery.

Presence.

The refusal to abandon the place where God is waiting.

This is why another sentence in Isaac’s passage is so important.

If the visitor is “one of the fathers or a wearied stranger,” Isaac says:

“Reckon his company in the place of your longest prayers.”

Suddenly the fierce guardian of solitude opens the door.

And this tells us everything.

Stillness is not an idol.

Prayer is not an achievement to be protected against love.

The cell exists for communion with God, and therefore when God Himself arrives hidden beneath the weariness of another human being, receiving that person may become prayer.

Not an interruption of prayer.

Prayer.

This requires discernment of a very high order because the same encounter can be distraction in one moment and obedience in another.

The idle talker may need to be comforted briefly and dismissed in peace.

The weary stranger may need the door opened.

The solitary must know what protects the flame and what merely consumes its oil.

So must we.

We often imagine spiritual discernment to concern great decisions: vocation, ministry, monasteries, marriage, work, where we belong, what God wants us to accomplish.

But much of the spiritual life is quieter than this.

It concerns what we allow to occupy the heart.

What receives our attention.

Whose face we actually see.

Whether we are capable of remaining where love has placed us.

The tragedy is that we can spend our lives searching for the will of God while neglecting the form His will has already taken before us.

A face.

A voice.

A responsibility.

A suffering we did not choose.

A person who needs patience rather than correction.

Someone whose story we have heard a hundred times and whom we are asked to hear once more.

Someone whose slowness interrupts our efficiency.

Someone whose weakness rearranges our plans.

And perhaps here we discover the deeper meaning of the cell.

The cell is not merely four walls.

It is the place of fidelity.

For one person it may indeed be a hermitage.

For another it may be a kitchen table.

A hospital room.

A marriage.

A child’s bedside.

The care of an aging parent.

A community one has promised not to abandon.

The ordinary place where one’s life is being spent without spectacle.

The temptation is always elsewhere.

For the solitary, elsewhere may be activity, usefulness, conversation, even apparently charitable works.

For those living in the world, elsewhere may be the imagined spiritual life we think we would have if only the people around us stopped interrupting it.

But Christ is very often hidden inside the interruption.

And so the command is the same:

Remain.

Guard what has been given.

Do not allow what appears important to steal from you what is precious.

Do not confuse movement with obedience.

Do not confuse usefulness with love.

Do not imagine that because something is good it is therefore yours to do.

And above all, do not go searching for Christ so far away that you fail to recognize Him in the person He has already placed before you.

There is a stillness deeper than physical solitude.

It is the stillness of a heart that has ceased fleeing the life it has been given.

Such a heart can live in a desert or in a crowded house.

It can pray beneath a monastic cowl or while preparing another person’s meal.

Its essential movement is the same.

It remains before God in what God has given.

Perhaps this is why Isaac’s words remain so severe.

Love requires guarding.

Attention requires guarding.

Prayer requires guarding.

The person before us requires guarding.

Everything precious in this life is easily lost through dispersion.

And the enemy does not always need to tempt us with evil.

Sometimes it is enough to offer us another good thing.

Another responsibility.

Another conversation.

Another cause.

Another place where we might be useful.

Another life in which we imagine we could serve God better.

Until at last we have become strangers to the very place where He was waiting for us.

The solitary closes his door.

The mother puts down her phone.

The husband turns toward his wife.

The caregiver sits beside the one entrusted to him.

The monk returns to his prayer.

Different gestures.

The same renunciation.

The same love.

The same refusal to abandon Christ where He has chosen to be found.

And perhaps the whole wisdom of Isaac can finally be gathered into this:

Know what God has entrusted to you, and do not surrender it lightly—even for something that bears the appearance of holiness.

For sometimes the longest prayer we can offer is to remain.

And sometimes the person before us is the cell we must not leave.

---

Text of chat during the group:

00:25:57 Suzanne Romano: Frodo and Gandalf talked all night. 😊

00:27:14 Jonathan Grobler: Just had a phone call with a friend that lasted over 3 hours. But it was a back and fourth wrestle with the faith. On the essentials of the faith, difficult questions being asked etc. I loved it, it's rare to find someone willing to wrestle with difficult theological questions for hours on end.

It felt extremely refreshing and fulfilling. Iron sharpens irons, and it's feels nice to be challenged at times.

00:30:22 Maureen Cunningham: Wise Virgins 5

00:34:02 Linda Frasier: We can trample over more good pasture than we feed upon

00:39:03 Ben: Anna: I'm not sure how to begin this question. It seems to me that the life of a solitary is not for most of us. That we are supposed to have interactions with others, including conversations that may make prayer harder but if we don't we can become wrapped up in ourselves and lose charity when dealing with others. It brings to mind the religious sister who said, "If it wasn't for all these people I would be a saint." It seems to me that most of us need that rock tumbler of other people to make us smooth. Not that we should never have periods of silence because we meet God in the silence but there are some of us who I think retreating from others could cause more harm than good.

00:39:15 Linda Frasier: We read scripture but need to slow down so it can read us

00:42:26 Jesssica Imanaka: I used to get aggravated when my husband or daughter would interrupt me in prayer. Eventually, I got to a point where it irritated me little or not at all and now I can just pick right up where I left off. Feels like a blessing to practice perpetual prayer. Also practice in patience and doing what the prayer is calling me to actually be doing in life!

00:43:06 Ben: Reacted to "I used to get aggravated when my husband or daughter would interrupt me in prayer. Eventually, I got to a point where it irritated me little or not at all and now I can just pick right up where I left off. Feels like a blessing to practice perpetual prayer. Also practice in patience and doing what the prayer is calling me to actually be doing in life!" with ❤️

00:48:44 Joan Chakonas: Your books are going to be read for many years by many people- truth, the deposit of the faith. Do not doubt for a second. Write ss long as the holy spirit moves you.

00:50:08 Thomas Medwig: To me it seems like stillness is definitely the best thing. I can't seem to make myself believe that any way of life is equal to it. But I wonder if this is simply that the idea of "Give Blood and Receive Spirit" seems so understandable to me, that anything that seems to give less blood seems like it is worse (like helping somebody instead of praying).

00:50:45 Thomas Medwig: Is this a thing to learn through experience, what is actually good?

00:53:36 Janine: Reacted to "Is this a thing to learn through experience, what is actually good?" with 🩷

00:54:30 Mia: "Zacharias Zacharou" is so fun to say. I've been seeing his name in Endnotes of The Monastic Heart, and always have to say it out loud.

00:55:21 Una: Reacted to ""Zacharias Zacharo..." with 😂

01:06:02 mel k: This is encouraging to hear him struggle with this. That it's not always so clear.

01:06:41 Nancy Pagan: Hello Father.. speaking of illusion.. is it not a good thing however , to have a some organization , a pattern one follows to help us in our pursuit of Union in our desire of loving God? And who was the author of the last book you mentioned? Thank you!

01:14:09 Una: Every night, my father would kneel down by his bed in his PJs and say his prayers. That image is still with me.

01:18:47 Janine: That story you told makes things very clear…”what is the most precious thing you want to protect?”

01:23:15 Una: Isaac every night!

01:23:16 mel k: 🙂 🙏

01:23:16 Jesssica Imanaka: God bless you Father Charbel and your mother and Ren!

01:23:17 Una: Good night

01:23:18 Bob Čihák, AZ: Thank you and God bless you, Father.

There is a kind of vigilance born of fear, and there is another born of love.

The first watches because it is afraid of punishment. The second watches because it has discovered something precious and cannot bear to lose it.

The Fathers of the Evergetinos speak with great severity about examining the heart, guarding the senses, resisting even the smallest sin, and neglecting none of the virtues. Yet beneath their severity lies an extraordinarily beautiful vision of the spiritual life. They are teaching us how the heart behaves when God has become precious to it.

St. Ephraim compares us to merchants who examine their accounts at the end of every day. They ask what has been gained and what has been lost. So too, he tells us, we should enter the heart morning and evening and ask:

Did I anger God in anything?

Did I wound my brother?

Did I speak uselessly?

Did I pray with my lips while my mind wandered elsewhere?

Did I entertain a thought that should have been dismissed?

Did the cares of this world make me forget God?

Read superficially, this can sound like an exhausting examination of faults. But that is not its deepest meaning.

The merchant counts carefully because the merchandise matters to him.

The lover remembers because the Beloved matters to him.

We examine the heart because something has been entrusted to us there.

God has drawn near.

And once the soul begins to understand this, it no longer asks merely, How much sin can I permit myself without becoming separated from God? Such a question becomes almost incomprehensible. Love asks something entirely different:

How can I protect what has been given to me?

This is why the Fathers refuse to speak casually about “small” sins.

We often divide our spiritual lives into things that matter and things that do not. We tolerate a little resentment, a little vanity, a little curiosity, a little judgment, a little indulgence of the imagination. We tell ourselves that these are minor matters.

But love does not measure things this way.

A tiny crack matters when the vessel contains something precious.

A small opening matters when one is guarding a city.

A single room matters when the house belongs to God.

This is precisely the image St. Pachomios gives his disciples. Imagine a house of a hundred rooms. If one room has been sold to another, the new owner has the right to enter it. Ninety-nine rooms may remain yours, but there is now within the house a place belonging to someone else.

The image is unsettling because it reveals how differently the Fathers understood the heart.

They did not want Christ to possess most of it.

They wanted Him to possess everything.

Not because God is a tyrant demanding territory, but because love desires wholeness. The divided heart cannot know the simplicity for which it was created.

Thus Pachomios warns against neglecting even one virtue. The enemy does not necessarily need the entire house. An unguarded room is enough. One cherished resentment, one vanity we refuse to surrender, one attachment we continually excuse, one corner of the heart into which we will not allow Christ to enter—these become openings through which fragmentation returns.

And yet Abba Poimen immediately protects us from another danger: imagining that holiness consists in becoming spectacularly accomplished in one virtue.

“I prefer a man to have a small share in all of the virtues than to cleave exclusively to one alone.”

There is enormous wisdom here.

A person may fast greatly and remain harsh.

He may pray for hours and remain proud.

He may cultivate silence while neglecting mercy.

He may possess theological knowledge while remaining impatient with the weakness of another.

The Fathers seek something more beautiful than spiritual specialization.

They seek the restoration of the whole person.

A little humility.

A little patience.

A little chastity.

A little mercy.

A little courage.

A little gentleness.

A little watchfulness.

A little willingness to forgive.

And then, by grace, a little more.

Holiness is not one virtue enlarged until it eclipses everything else. It is the gradual gathering of the fragmented human person into the wholeness of Christ.

St. Isaiah carries this vision still further.

He reminds us of the widow who placed two mites into the treasury. God does not demand from everyone the same measure. The great offer according to their greatness; the small according to their smallness. What God receives is the intention of the heart.

This saves vigilance from becoming perfectionism.

The Fathers are uncompromising, but they are not perfectionists.

Perfectionism looks anxiously at the self.

Repentance looks longingly toward God.

The question is not whether I have accomplished everything. The question is whether I am withholding anything.

The widow possesses almost nothing, yet she gives everything.

And this is precisely the spiritual life.

Not achievement.

Not accumulation.

Not the construction of an impressive religious self.

Gift.

Wholehearted gift.

St. Isaiah therefore turns to the Exodus and offers one of the most beautiful images in these passages. Israel leaves Egypt carrying the vessels of the Egyptians, and the Fathers interpret those vessels as our senses—the very faculties that had once been enslaved to Pharaoh.

The eyes that wandered can learn to behold.

The ears that delighted in distraction can learn to listen.

The tongue that judged can bless.

The imagination that scattered itself among fantasies can become still.

The mind that wandered endlessly through earthly cares can learn remembrance of God.

Nothing human needs to be destroyed.

It needs to be liberated.

The vessels taken from Egypt become materials for the Tabernacle.

What once served slavery can become an offering.

What once belonged to Pharaoh can belong to God.

But Isaiah adds something crucial: the cloud of Divine Presence did not overshadow the Tabernacle while it remained unfinished.

The whole dwelling had to be prepared.

Here again we encounter the uncompromising tenderness of the Fathers. God desires the whole person because He desires communion with the whole person.

Our spiritual life therefore cannot be reduced to correcting isolated faults. It is the construction of a dwelling.

Every act of repentance places another stone.

Every resisted thought closes another breach.

Every act of mercy prepares another chamber.

Every forgiveness offered cleanses another room.

Every return of the wandering mind lights another lamp.

Every small virtue makes the heart more capable of receiving the One for whom it was created.

And perhaps this is why the Fathers examined themselves so carefully.

They had glimpsed what was coming.

The cloud.

The Presence.

The peace of God resting upon the completed dwelling.

Their vigilance was not an obsession with sin.

It was desire for God.

This changes everything.

We do not guard the heart because God is waiting to catch us failing.

We guard it because Someone precious dwells there.

We do not refuse the smallest sin because we imagine that every imperfection makes God turn away from us.

We refuse it because love has made us sensitive to anything that diminishes communion.

We do not cultivate every virtue in order to become impressive spiritual persons.

We cultivate them because every virtue opens another place within us where Christ may live.

Perhaps, then, the evening examination St. Ephraim proposes should not end merely with the question:

Where did I fail today?

We might also ask:

What did I fail to protect?

Where did I allow resentment to enter?

Where did I surrender peace unnecessarily?

Where did I forget the One who was present?

Where did I fail to love?

And then there must be no despair.

The merchant who discovers a loss does not burn down his shop.

He begins again.

He recovers what was lost.

He becomes more attentive.

So too the Christian rises, repents, sets the guard again at the door of the heart, and continues.

Morning and evening.

Falling and rising.

Losing and recovering.

Repenting and returning.

Until vigilance itself becomes love.

Until virtue ceases to feel like a collection of obligations and becomes simply the shape taken by a heart that belongs to God.

Until there are no rooms we deliberately keep locked.

And perhaps this is what the Fathers desire above everything else: not that we become frightened souls endlessly measuring our failures, but that we become undivided.

The whole mind.

The whole heart.

The whole strength.

The senses reclaimed.

The virtues gathered.

The doors guarded.

The dwelling prepared.

And then, in the time known only to God, the cloud descends.

Not because we have made ourselves worthy of Him.

But because love has finally taught us to make room.

---

Text of chat during the group:

00:11:59 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: Volume III Hypothesis X page 67 C2

00:31:23 Jamie Hickman: The line from Saint Ephraim: "we are spiritual merchants...calculate their profit...strive ... to recover it" gives me joy, for my baby girl will be baptized tomorrow. Her name is Margaret Frances and her name in Latin Margarita means pearl. She is our pearl of great price, for we had to wait a long time to receive the Lord's gift of a child and now she will receive new life, the life of God. I've greatly loved your reflections on baptism the last week or two. Thank you, Father.

00:32:27 Carol Nypaver: Reacted to "The line from Saint Ephraim: "we are spiritual merchants...calculate their profit...strive ... to recover it" gives me joy, for my baby girl will be baptized tomorrow. Her name is Margaret Frances and her name in Latin Margarita means pearl. She is our pearl of great price, for we had to wait a long time to receive the Lord's gift of a child and now she will receive new life, the life of God. I've greatly loved your reflections on baptism the last week or two. Thank you, Father." with ☺️

00:32:38 Janine: Replying to "The line from Saint Ephraim: "we are spiritual merchants...calculate their profit...strive ... to recover it" gives me joy, for my baby girl will be baptized tomorrow. Her name is Margaret Frances and her name in Latin Margarita means pearl. She is our pearl of great price, for we had to wait a long time to receive the Lord's gift of a child and now she will receive new life, the life of God. I've greatly loved your reflections on baptism the last week or two. Thank you, Father."

How wonderful!

00:32:48 Suzanne Romano: Replying to "The line from Saint ..."

Deo Gratias!

00:32:49 Carol Nypaver: Replying to "The line from Saint ..."

Congratulations!

00:32:55 Suzanne Romano: Reacted to The line from Saint ... with "❤️"

00:34:11 Jamie Hickman: Thank you so much

00:36:21 Bob Čihák, AZ: P 68, 3

00:36:28 Julie: Sorry I’m trying to multitask 🙏

00:49:24 Bob Čihák, AZ: P 69

00:56:43 Julie: Reminds me of the parable of the onion

00:58:48 Janine: YouTube

01:01:18 Julie: https://youtu.be/bvO8eRhdvsY

01:01:39 Julie: Hope the link works

01:12:29 Jamie Hickman: Father, sorry my connection keeps dropping. In Nun Christina's translation, we read "When the people were in Egypt, they ate and drank in abundance, but they served Pharaoh" in contrast with the other translation "they were in bondage under Pharaoh" or similar words. The emphasis seems to remind us that in our own slavery to sin, yes we are in bondage but perhaps we actually delight in our afflicted state, similar to how we hear that hell's door is locked from the inside where the damned do not want to open up to the Lord. In my own sin, I often know that some temptation whether big or small

01:12:49 Jamie Hickman: Will greatly wound my relationship with the Lord but then I still

01:12:52 Jamie Hickman: Give in

01:12:58 Una: Reacted to "Hope the link works" with 👍

01:16:46 Larry Ruggiero: A lot to refect on and review over and over

01:16:59 Julie: 🙏

01:18:14 Maureen Cunningham: Thank You Blessing I think link is ok thank you M

01:19:03 Rebecca Thérèse: Thank you☺️

01:19:04 Julie: Reacted to "Thank You Blessing I think link is ok thank you M" with 🙏

01:19:27 Janine: Prayers for you Father!

01:19:28 Suzanne Romano: 🌞

01:19:33 Lorraine Green: Thank you so much!

01:19:52 Suzanne Romano: 🙏

01:20:04 Suzanne Romano: We all get lazy!

01:20:12 Bob Čihák, AZ: Thank you and God bless you, Father.

Reflection Two

The Desert

“One Thing Is Necessary”

“Flee, be silent, pray always.”

— Word given to Abba Arsenius

There comes a point when desire begins to simplify the heart.

At first we may think that our longing for God will simply add something to our lives: more prayer, more reading, more spiritual discipline, perhaps a greater seriousness about the Gospel.

But genuine desire does something more demanding.

It begins to rearrange everything.

Things that once seemed necessary begin to lose their hold.

Noise becomes exhausting.

Distraction becomes painful.

The need to explain oneself diminishes.

The appetite for recognition weakens.

And increasingly the soul begins to long for one thing:

to remain near God.

This is where the desert begins.

Not first as geography.

As simplification.

As the stripping away of what divides the heart.

As the discovery that much of what we call necessary is not necessary at all.

†

When Christ comes to the house of Martha and Mary, Martha is busy with many things.

Mary sits at His feet.

And Christ says:

“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is necessary.”

One thing.

The whole desert is hidden in those words.

The Fathers did not despise the world because creation was evil.

They fled because the heart had become crowded.

They wanted to discover what remains when everything unnecessary is removed.

Arsenius, a man of extraordinary education and refinement, prays:

“Lord, lead me in the way of salvation.”

The answer comes:

“Arsenius, flee from men, and you will be saved.”

Later the word deepens:

“Flee, be silent, pray always.”

These words can sound severe.

But they are not contempt for humanity.

They are medicine for a divided heart.

Flee what fragments you.

Be silent enough to hear what lies beneath the noise.

Pray until the heart becomes gathered around God.

This is the desert.

†

The first monks did not begin by inventing a system.

There were seekers.

Men and women.

Ascetics.

Solitaries.

People withdrawing to the edges of villages and others moving farther into the wilderness.

Only gradually did stable forms emerge.

The life came before the institution.

The charism before the structure.

The fire before the lamp.

This does not diminish the importance of structure. Rules became necessary. Communities developed. Obedience protected people from delusion. Common life became a crucible of charity.

But the beginning was much more elemental.

A person wanted God.

And that desire became strong enough to change how he lived.

Everything that followed was meant to protect that desire.

Rules.

Obedience.

Silence.

Fasting.

Solitude.

Community.

All of it ordered toward one end:

communion with God.

When that is forgotten, the means can quietly become the end.

The desert therefore continues to ask the Church—and each of us—a disturbing question:

Does the form still serve the fire?

†

This is particularly important when we speak about obedience.

The purpose of obedience in the desert was not to make a person passive.

It was to make him free.

Free from self-will.

Free from compulsive self-protection.

Free from the need to control outcomes.

Free from the tyranny of his own thoughts.

Free enough to hear God.

The disciple went to the elder because the elder knew the human heart.

He could see where desire was true and where ego had attached itself to desire.

He could say:

Stay.

Go.

Wait.

Be silent.

Do not trust that thought.

Persevere.

Return to your cell.

Forgive your brother.

The authority of the elder arose from discernment.

The deeper question was never merely:

What are you allowed to do?

It was:

What is God doing in you?

†

But the desert also teaches us not to romanticize desire.

Not every desire is holy simply because it feels spiritual.

We may desire solitude because we cannot tolerate others.

We may desire silence because we fear intimacy.

We may desire the desert because ordinary responsibilities humiliate us.

We may reject authority in the name of freedom while merely protecting self-will.

The desert exposes all of this.

You do not escape yourself in the desert.

You meet yourself.

The anger you blamed on others is still there.

The need for approval is still there.

The fear is still there.

The desire to be important is still there.

The desert does not immediately make us holy.

It makes us visible to ourselves.

And that visibility can be painful.

This is why the Fathers continually tell the monk:

Remain in your cell.

The novice imagines holiness is somewhere else.

Another monastery.

Another elder.

Another place.

Another set of circumstances.

But the elder says:

Stay.

Your cell will teach you everything.

Wherever you go, you bring your heart with you.

And unless the heart is purified, every new place eventually becomes another setting for the same passions.

†

Yet there is another danger.

The fear of illusion can become so great that every unusual movement of grace is treated with suspicion.

We can become safer than the Gospel.

Safer than Antony.

Safer than Arsenius.

Safer than Mary of Egypt.

There is a difference between discernment and domestication.

Discernment asks:

Is this from God?

Domestication asks:

Does this fit what we already know how to manage?

Those are not the same question.

The Spirit does not despise order.

But neither is He confined by our categories.

Sometimes the charism appears before the structure capable of receiving it.

Sometimes circumstances make the usual paths impossible.

And then we must remain humble enough to ask whether God may be revealing another form of fidelity.

God has always been capable of making paths where none seem visible.

†

This is where solitude must be understood correctly.

Solitude is not misanthropy.

It is not rejection.

It is not refusal of responsibility.

At its deepest, solitude gathers the heart.

The solitary withdraws not because others do not matter, but because they matter enough to be carried before God without possession.

Slowly the heart learns how to love without possessing.

How to pray without controlling.

How to carry suffering without making itself central.

How to remain hidden.

This is why the greatest solitaries often became astonishingly compassionate.

They withdrew from crowds and became fathers and mothers of multitudes.

Solitude, when authentic, does not shrink the heart.

It enlarges it.

†

And perhaps this is why the desert becomes increasingly intelligible as life passes.

Much of our earlier life is concerned with becoming.

Building.

Choosing.

Accomplishing.

Serving.

These things are good.

But time strips away illusions.

Positions change.

Health weakens.

People die.

Recognition fades.

The future shortens.

And the question becomes simpler:

What remains?

God remains.

A person who once asked,

“What am I called to accomplish?”

may begin asking,

“How am I called to belong to God?”

That is not a lesser vocation.

It may be the ripening of every vocation.

†

The desert teaches us that the call of God does not always add.

Often it subtracts.

Fewer words.

Fewer distractions.

Fewer ambitions.

Fewer identities to maintain.

Fewer explanations.

Not emptiness for its own sake.

Space.

Room for God.

And this desert is not only for monks.

Every Christian needs a desert.

For one person it may be solitude.

For another, an hour before dawn.

A quiet chapel.

A sickroom.

A nightly prayer.

A period of illness.

A chair beside an elderly parent.

A season when usefulness has diminished.

The desert takes many forms.

What matters is what happens there.

Do we fill the emptiness immediately?

Or do we remain?

Do we flee silence?

Or allow it to become inhabited?

Do we immediately try to recover our former importance?

Or allow ourselves to become hidden?

†

“One thing is necessary.”

Not one religious practice.

Not one state of life.

Not one external form.

One center.

One love around which everything else finds its proper place.

When God becomes the center, everything else is not destroyed.

It becomes rightly ordered.

We can love others more freely because we no longer ask them to be God.

We can serve without needing service to define us.

We can be alone without being abandoned.

We can work without worshiping accomplishment.

We can rest without feeling useless.

This is what the desert seeks.

Not emptiness.

Undividedness.

And so perhaps the question is not:

Should I go to the desert?

It is:

What within me must become desert so that God can become everything?

What noise must grow quiet?

What identity must loosen?

What fear determines too many decisions?

What need to be understood keeps me from hiddenness?

What good thing has quietly become more necessary than God?

These are not accusations.

They are invitations.

†

Arsenius prayed:

“Lord, lead me in the way of salvation.”

And the answer was:

Flee.

Later:

Be silent.

And then:

Pray always.

There is a movement here.

Flee what fragments the heart.

Become silent enough to encounter what remains.

Pray until the whole person becomes gathered into God.

Then something remarkable begins to happen.

The desert that seemed empty becomes inhabited.

Solitude becomes communion.

Silence becomes prayer.

Renunciation becomes freedom.

And the heart discovers that the loss of many things has made room for the One Thing Necessary.

The desert was never the destination.

God was.

Desire awakens.

The heart simplifies.

The unnecessary begins to fall away.

And somewhere in the silence, the small flame from which we began grows steadier.

The fire has found room to breathe.

There is something extraordinarily beautiful in the way the aged elders speak to Isaac.

They do not flatter him. Neither do they crush his zeal. They recognize that his desire is good, but they also recognize something Isaac himself cannot yet see: even the desire for humility can become a hiding place for pride.

Isaac proposes something apparently severe. He will sit publicly outside the church eating in the morning so that people will see him, judge him, and think less of him. He has read of the great ascetics deliberately courting dishonor in order to escape human praise. Why should he not do the same?

The elder sees through it immediately.

Not because Isaac’s intention is wicked, but because it is premature.

The great fathers who behaved strangely before men were not experimenting with humility. They had already passed through long years of obedience, watchfulness, restraint, tears, and purification. Some had become famous through miracles and holiness, and therefore deliberately accepted disgrace in order to escape the poison of human glory.

Isaac does not need to manufacture dishonor.

Providence will provide enough of it.

This is the elder’s remarkable counsel: if you desire humility, do not create theatrical opportunities to be humbled. Receive peacefully the humiliations God permits to come without your choosing. Do not become angry with the person who misunderstands you. Do not defend yourself unnecessarily. Do not despise the one who dishonors you.

There is a profound distinction here between seeking the appearance of humility and consenting to be humbled.

The first can still contain a hidden movement of the ego.

The second crucifies it.

We can secretly become proud even of our attempts to destroy pride. We can admire our renunciations, our fasting, our silence, our willingness to be misunderstood. The ego is extraordinarily capable of surviving beneath religious clothing.

The elder therefore returns Isaac to measure.

There is a time for everything.

There are practices appropriate to beginners, others to those who have acquired some stability, and still others that belong only to those purified by long struggle. To seize prematurely what belongs to another stage of the spiritual life is not zeal. It is a failure of discernment.

The inexperienced merchant, the elder says, can lose everything by attempting a great venture. He learns first through smaller transactions.

So too the soul.

We want the extraordinary when God is asking for fidelity to the ordinary.

We want some heroic humiliation when God has already placed beside us someone who irritates us.

We want great silence while neglecting the silence required not to answer back.

We want mystical prayer while resisting the prayer rule before us.

We want to imitate the freedom of the saints without first accepting the discipline by which they became free.

And then the elder gives Isaac one of the most severe sayings in the entire passage:

“Reckon every prayer, wherein the body does not toil and the heart is not afflicted, to be a miscarriage, for this prayer has no soul.”

This is not contempt for quiet prayer. Nor does it mean that prayer must always be emotionally painful or physically exhausting.

It means that prayer cannot remain exterior to the person praying.

Something must enter the fire.

The body must learn fidelity. The mind must be gathered. The heart must stand naked before God. Prayer must eventually touch that place within us where repentance becomes more than an idea.

The fathers speak so fiercely because they know how easily prayer itself can become slothful. The lips continue. The rule is completed. The appointed words are said. Yet the heart has never appeared before God.

We can pray without surrendering anything.

We can even cultivate stillness while carefully protecting ourselves from repentance.

The elder will not allow Isaac that illusion.

Prayer has a soul when the human person is actually present within it.

This is why toil and affliction of heart belong together. The toil is not payment offered to God. Grace cannot be purchased by exhaustion. Rather, toil reveals desire. I remain here because I seek You. I gather the wandering mind again because I seek You. I rise when I would rather remain asleep because I seek You. I endure the poverty of prayer because I seek You.

And the afflicted heart says something even simpler:

Have mercy on me.

The same wisdom appears when Isaac asks another elder what to do with visitors who continually interrupt his prayer and seem interested only in idle conversation.

The answer is magnificent because there is no anger in it.

The elder does not tell Isaac to condemn them.

He does not tell him to lecture them about wasting time.

He does not even tell him to refuse them hospitality.

Let them come.

Let them sit awhile.

Receive them.

And then pray.

“Brother, let us pray.”

There is tremendous spiritual intelligence here.

The elder teaches Isaac to establish a boundary without hostility. He does not have to surrender his rule in order to appear loving, nor does he have to become harsh in order to preserve it.

He simply remains what he is before them.

When the hour of prayer comes, he prays.

And wonderfully, he invites the idle brother into the very thing the brother has been avoiding.

Not accusation.

Invitation.

“Make but one prayer with me.”

That may be one of the gentlest forms of ascetic correction imaginable.

The elder does not say, You are idle.

He says, Come and pray with me.

He does not argue against the man’s way of life. He reveals another way of life by living it peacefully in his presence.

And Isaac is told to make the prayer longer than usual.

There is almost a holy humor in this.

Eventually those who truly desire nothing but idle conversation will stop coming. But perhaps another possibility remains: one of them may stay.

One may bow.

One may pray.

One may discover that beneath all his restlessness and conversation there was a hunger he did not know how to name.

This is how the elders correct.

They do not manipulate. They do not shame. They do not anxiously attempt to change everyone who enters their cell.

They simply refuse to abandon the center.

This entire passage is really about that center.

Do not manufacture humility.

Do not imitate spiritual states beyond your measure.

Do not confuse religious eccentricity with freedom.

Do not call prayer alive when your heart remains untouched by repentance.

Do not allow another person’s idleness to make you idle.

But neither condemn him.

Receive him.

Love him.

And when the hour comes, stand before God.

“Brother, let us pray.”

There is an entire theology of spiritual fatherhood contained in those four words.

The aged elders possess authority precisely because they no longer seem interested in exercising authority. They have nothing to prove. Their wisdom has been purchased through decades of remaining in the cell, guarding the heart, falling, rising, repenting, and discovering their own weakness.

They know that pride can disguise itself as humility.

They know that zeal can disguise self-will.

They know that prayer can disguise sloth.

And they know that correction without love can become another expression of the very pride we imagine ourselves to be correcting.

Therefore they continually bring Isaac back to what is small, concrete, and true.

Remain within your measure.

Accept the humiliations you did not choose.

Let prayer cost you something.

Guard the heart you have struggled to purify.

Do not despise the weak.

Do not surrender your rule to accommodate their weakness.

Invite them instead into your prayer.

And then leave the rest to God.

Perhaps this is why the words of these old men still possess such weight. They are not theories about the spiritual life. They are words spoken by men who, as Isaac says, had tasted the tree of life “through the sweat of the soul” from youth until old age.

Their wisdom has become simple because it has become lived.

We do not need to invent a cross.

We do not need to manufacture humility.

We do not need to seek extraordinary struggles.

The day itself will give us everything necessary.

Receive what comes.

Keep the heart.

Say the prayer.

Repent.

And when another wanders into the cell looking for distraction, make room for him without abandoning the One for whose sake you entered the cell in the first place.

Then bow gently and say:

Brother, let us pray.

---

00:02:15 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: Page 227 paragraph 7

00:03:16 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: https://www.philokaliaministries.org/city-a-desert-press

00:04:39 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: https://www.philokaliaministries.org/post/fall-retreat-to-become-all-flame-1

00:06:30 Janine: Hi Father…not going on camera tonight but happy to be here!

00:06:31 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: Page 227 paragraph 7

00:07:33 Bob Čihák, AZ: P 227, # 7, third full paragraph on page

00:09:37 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: https://www.philokaliaministries.org/post/fall-retreat-to-become-all-flame-1

00:11:53 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: P 227, # 7, third full paragraph on page

00:12:15 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: https://www.philokaliaministries.org/city-a-desert-press

00:13:53 Jesssica Imanaka: The email with the Zoom link didn't come through today.

00:14:16 Una: Correct. It didn't. I used an oldone

00:14:29 Bob Čihák, AZ: P 227, # 7, third full paragraph on page

00:14:33 Jesssica Imanaka: Me too. I found an old email.

00:14:39 Kate T.: I didn’t get a link either. Had to go digging!

00:15:48 Jacqulyn: Oh! I was wondering if it was only me. I didn't get an email link today either.

00:15:53 Janine: A young girl from our church, St. Nicholas, became a nun there, Mother Natalia!

00:16:44 Janine: It is Watervliet New York

00:17:29 Julie: Hi to all will be listening, but I am working at the same time. Multi tasking for a few weeks .Sorry

00:17:33 Janine: I dint get the email either today

00:19:42 Jacqulyn: Register for the weekly groups: https://www.philokaliaministries.org/weekly-groups

00:20:57 Bob Čihák, AZ: P 227, # 7, third full paragraph on page

00:40:01 Maureen Cunningham: Would that be pure of heart,

00:41:14 Ben: Anna: You mentioned complaining. I think I found a trick to ward off the complaining and it's to drown out the complaining with gratitude. I don't know if that's a special gift/grace for me or if that works for everybody.

00:45:00 Maureen Cunningham: The prayer of Saint Francis show pardon

00:48:06 Bob Čihák, AZ: P 228, # 11, last full paragraph on page

00:59:10 Jesssica Imanaka: PG-13 has way too much violence... most should be rated R.

01:00:24 Eleana Urrego: PG is trying to normalize sexualization of the children

01:11:25 Eleana Urrego: I heard from a priest that we can't pray with non Catholics, because we believe in the communion of saints.

01:12:26 Maureen Cunningham: I think of Icons of our family pictures

01:12:36 Eleana Urrego: Reacted to "I think of Icons of our family pictures" with ❤️

01:14:12 Maureen Cunningham: Beautiful Icon for REN

01:19:38 Maureen Cunningham: Thank You Blessing always praying for all . Thank You

01:20:19 Janine: The baby getting Big Ben and Anna!🩷👶

01:20:32 Bob Čihák, AZ: Thank you and God bless you, Father.

01:20:43 Ben: Reacted to "The baby getting Big Ben and Anna!🩷👶" with ❤️

There is an intensity in the Fathers that can sometimes frighten us.

They speak of vigilance, struggle, examination, tears, watchfulness, and the danger of negligence. St. Synkletike tells of a servant of God who watched the movements of his thoughts so carefully that he knew which appeared first, how long each assault lasted, and whether the struggle had grown stronger or weaker than the day before. Abba Nisthero tells the monk to examine himself morning and evening. Abba Isaiah says simply: consider every day where you have fallen short.

Nothing about this is casual.

The Fathers understood that the heart can grow sleepy. We forget ourselves. We forget God. We become accustomed to movements within us that should trouble us. Resentment settles quietly into the heart. Judgment becomes habitual. Prayer becomes mechanical. Desire scatters itself among a hundred things. We begin tolerating what once would have brought us quickly to repentance.

And so they tell us: pay attention.

Not anxiously.

Not morbidly.

But truthfully.

There is a zeal necessary for the spiritual life because love itself makes demands upon us. The one who desires God cannot become indifferent to what keeps him from God. The one who desires to love cannot simply make peace with everything within himself that prevents love.

Yet there is something crucial here that can easily be missed.

Christian self-examination is never meant to leave us staring at ourselves.

Its movement is relational.

We look within so that we may turn again toward the Other.

Toward Christ.

This changes everything.

Repentance is not primarily the examination of a defective self attempting to repair itself. It is the movement of a wounded person toward the Physician. We look honestly at what we have become because we desire the One into whom we have been baptized.

“For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”

This is the deeper measure of the Christian life.

Not merely: Have I behaved well today?

But: What in me still resists the life of Christ into whom I have been baptized? Where have I refused love? Where have I protected myself rather than given myself? Where have fear, anger, vanity, resentment, or self-will obscured His likeness within me?

And then, perhaps most importantly:

Will I allow Him to heal me?

This is why the Fathers can speak with such severity about negligence while being equally severe about despair.

Despair is not humility.

It can masquerade as humility because it speaks incessantly about our failures. But its gaze remains fixed upon the self.

“I have failed.”

“I should be better than this.”

“After all these years, I am still struggling with the same thing.”

“I have ruined everything.”

The Fathers interrupt this monologue.

St. Synkletike gives us the image of the ninety-nine sheep.

One has been lost.

Go find it.

Do not burn down the sheepfold because one sheep wandered away.

Do not abandon the whole life of grace because you discovered something within yourself that still requires healing.

Above all, do not flee from the Master.

That may be the most important line in the entire passage.

Do not flee from the Master.

Our failures often awaken the strange instinct to hide from God. It is as old as Eden. We discover our nakedness and withdraw among the trees. Shame tells us to remain away until we have made ourselves presentable again.

But repentance moves in exactly the opposite direction.

When you fall, turn toward Him.

When you discover anger, turn toward Him.

When prayer has become cold, turn toward Him.

When an old passion you thought long dead suddenly awakens, turn toward Him.

When you discover that after years of prayer you are still capable of pettiness, vanity, impatience, jealousy, or fear, turn toward Him.

Do not flee from the Master.

Because the Master is good.

St. Synkletike says it without qualification: “The Master is good and accepts you whenever you return to Him.”

Here the ascetical struggle reveals its deepest character. We are not struggling to persuade God to give us grace. Grace has already been given. We are not trying to make ourselves worthy of Christ. We have been baptized into Christ. We have been clothed with Him. His life has been given to us freely.

Our struggle is to cease resisting the gift.

This is why examination of conscience should ultimately become an examination of love.

Where today did I refuse the love that was offered to me?

Where did I fail to love the person placed before me?

Where did I choose myself?

Where did I close the heart?

Where did I forget Christ?

And where, perhaps quietly and without noticing it, did grace carry me beyond what I could have done by myself?

Abba Isaiah insists upon this last point. Even when we discover that some passion has weakened, we are not to congratulate ourselves. “Do not trust in yourself; for it was God Who had mercy on you and gave you the power to overcome it.”

Even progress becomes relationship.

Even victory becomes thanksgiving.

Even repentance becomes communion.

There is therefore no contradiction between the extraordinary vigilance of the Fathers and their refusal of despair. Both arise from the same conviction: everything depends upon remaining turned toward God.

Negligence is dangerous because it gradually turns us away.

Despair is dangerous because it tells us that after falling we cannot turn back.

Grace says otherwise.

Abba Moses asks Abba Silouan one of the most beautiful questions preserved in the Gerontikon:

“Can a man make a new beginning every day?”

Silouan’s answer goes further.

“If he is a true laborer, he can make a new beginning at every moment.”

Every moment.

This is the freedom of repentance.

There is no hour in which Christ ceases to be Christ.

There is no failure that makes His mercy less merciful.

There is no moment in which the heart cannot turn.

The spiritual life therefore requires zeal, but it is not the grim zeal of someone attempting to achieve perfection by force. It is the zeal of the lover who does not want anything within himself to remain closed to the Beloved.

We watch the heart because we want the whole heart.

We repent because we want to love fully.

We examine ourselves because there are still places within us that have not learned how to love.

And when we discover them, we need not be astonished.

We need not despair.

We need not flee.

We simply bring them into the presence of Christ.

Perhaps this is what it means to “walk the royal path,” as Abba Benjamin says. We look honestly at the road we have traveled without becoming intoxicated by our progress or crushed by the distance still before us.

We remain attentive.

We remain humble.

We begin again.

And eventually we discover that the deepest question of repentance was never simply, What have I done?

It was:

Toward whom am I turned?

For the Christian life is not finally the perfection of the self.

It is the healing of the person through communion.

We have been baptized into Christ.

We belong to Him.

And every act of repentance, however small, is simply the heart remembering this and turning again toward the One who has never turned away.

The mistake need not become despair.

The wound can become encounter.

The failure can become prayer.

And even now—especially now—we can begin again.

Not because we are strong.

Because the Master is good.

---

Text of chat during the group:

00:14:47 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: Volume 3 page 65 paragraph 3

00:14:52 Anna: My husband broke that TV habit by getting rid of it.

00:16:34 Suzanne Romano: Reacted to "My husband broke t..." with 👍

00:22:08 Bob Čihák, AZ: P 66, A

00:31:55 Bob Čihák, AZ: P 66, A 3

00:34:08 Carol Nypaver: Reacted to " P 66, A 3" with 👍

00:35:16 Bob Čihák, AZ: P 66, B

00:42:48 Suzanne Romano: I find that the self examination is a journey of actually understanding who we are in the mind of God. I am sure that I am full of false selves, so much so that I know not who my true self is. I find that my prayer life is a quiet rest in waiting for the Lord to reveal to me, slowly and gradually, what my own self really is. It helps me to find Saints I am very attracted to. I look at them, and their lives, as in a mirror, no matter how far away from their perfection I know myself to be. I get glimpse of myself in them - not often, but I never tire of seeking this way.

00:42:56 Larry: These readings reminds me of the formation of St Ignatius and all the things he read before he compilied the EXAMEN.

00:43:26 Maureen Cunningham: Te evil one wants to steal our joy.

00:49:44 Janine: Becoming fascinated with our unworthiness…I think you said it in your blog.

00:54:30 Bob Čihák, AZ: P 67, 2 “…make a new beginning at every moment.” WOW!

00:55:03 Suzanne Romano: Hopeful message, as I am a perpetual beginnier! LOL!!

01:06:50 Anna: When a priest is impatient and only accepts lists, no act of contrition inside but only outside confession, doesn't even ask if sorry, no one hears the blessing of forgiveness but says he said it while we listed sins: is it a legitimate confession? I really appreciate you saying the priests being compassionate!!! Thank you.

01:09:05 Anna: Thank you Fr Charbel for sharing this way of confessing sins!

01:13:20 Maureen Cunningham: The video of priest dong mass When he wept when lifting the cup.

01:16:23 Danny Moulton: My mind keeps going back to the idea of repenting every minute. To start again ever moment reminds me of gaining muscle memory through repeated motion. It is a spiritual discipline in itself. Perhaps continuous repentance is the natural and necessary complement to praying unceasingly.

01:17:10 Carol Nypaver: Reacted to "My mind keeps going back to the idea of repenting every minute. To start again ever moment reminds me of gaining muscle memory through repeated motion. It is a spiritual discipline in itself. Perhaps continuous repentance is the natural and necessary complement to praying unceasingly." with ❤️

01:19:21 Maureen Cunningham: Thank You Blessing to all .

01:19:32 Rebecca Thérèse: Thank you☺️

01:19:38 Bob Čihák, AZ: Thank you and God bless you, Father.

01:19:52 una: Thank you!

01:19:53 Janine: So great to have you back

01:20:09 una: Welcome back

Reflection One: The Spark

“I Have Come to Cast Fire upon the Earth”

“I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled!” — Luke 12:49

There are moments in the spiritual life when a person becomes aware of a desire that he cannot entirely explain.

Nothing outward may have changed. He may have prayed for years, received the sacraments faithfully, struggled against familiar sins, and tried sincerely to live according to the Gospel. Yet somewhere beneath all of this another longing begins to emerge.

It may first appear as dissatisfaction.
Not dissatisfaction with God, but with everything that has taken His place.

Words no longer seem sufficient. Religious activity no longer satisfies as it once did. Accomplishments lose some of their attraction. Even good and necessary things begin to feel strangely secondary.

Silence begins to attract us.

Prayer becomes less a matter of saying things and more a desire simply to remain before God.

The Name of Jesus acquires a sweetness that cannot be explained by the syllables themselves.

Solitude no longer feels empty.
And somewhere within all of this the heart begins quietly to say: I want God.
We may imagine that this is the beginning of our search for Him. St. Isaac the Syrian would tell us otherwise.
It is the discovery that God has already begun searching for us. The first movement is never ours.

God loved before we loved.

God desired before we desired.

God called before we listened.

What we experience as our hunger for God is already evidence that grace has touched the heart.

The fire does not originate in us.

God strikes the spark.

†

We speak often about our desire for God. Much less frequently do we speak about God’s desire for us.

Yet Scripture is filled with it.
God searches for Adam: “Where are you?”
He calls Abraham.
He speaks to Moses from the burning bush.
He pursues Israel through the prophets with the language of a wounded lover. And finally He comes Himself.
The Word becomes flesh.

Christ does not stand at a distance waiting for humanity to find its way back to Him. He enters our condition. He eats with sinners. He touches lepers. He weeps beside the grave of Lazarus. He receives betrayal, abandonment, nails, and death.

On the Cross the desire of God for man is revealed without reserve. This is not a reluctant God finally persuaded to love us.
This is Love pursuing His creature even into death.

2

St. Isaac understood this with extraordinary clarity. Creation itself flows from divine love. Providence is love. God’s dealings with humanity are ordered toward healing, restoration, and communion.

We exist because God desired that we exist.

And we are called into communion because Love desires union with the beloved.

The Christian life therefore begins not with obligation but with being desired.

Before asking what we must do for God, we must stand in wonder before what God has done—and continues to do—for us.

Christianity is not fundamentally the story of man’s search for God. It is the story of God’s relentless search for man.
†
This makes Christ’s words startling:

“I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled!” Christ desires something to burn.

The Fathers saw in this fire the Holy Spirit, divine love, purification, illumination, the burning away of sin, the transformation of the human person.

Pentecost makes the image visible.
The Spirit descends as tongues of fire.
And those upon whom the fire rests are changed.
Peter, who trembled before a servant girl, publicly proclaims Christ.
The frightened disciples emerge from behind locked doors.
Men who argued about which of them was greatest begin laying down their lives. The fire of God has entered human flesh.
This is Christianity.

3

Not merely believing truths about God.

Not merely behaving according to moral principles.

Not merely belonging to an institution founded by Christ.

Christianity is participation in the life of God.

The Eastern Fathers call this theosis: by grace, the human person becomes a participant in what God is by nature.

They loved the image of iron placed in fire. The iron remains iron.

Yet gradually it begins to glow. It becomes incandescent. It takes on the properties of the fire.

This is what grace desires to accomplish in us.

†

Perhaps one of the tragedies of the spiritual life is not that we desire too much.

It is that we desire too little.

We ask God to solve our problems, protect those we love, strengthen our ministries, remove suffering, give us peace.

None of these prayers is wrong.

But God desires to give us something infinitely greater.

Himself.

And this frightens us because receiving God eventually means surrendering everything that prevents communion with Him.

We would often prefer improvement to transformation.
We want Christ to make us somewhat more patient, peaceful, disciplined, virtuous.

4

Christ wants resurrection.

We want renovation.

God wants a new creation.

We want a better religious life.

God wants the whole heart.

This is where the Desert Fathers become unsettling.

When Antony heard Christ say, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess ... and come, follow me,” he went.

Not because every Christian must imitate Antony’s external action, but because Antony heard within the Gospel a total claim.

Christ wanted everything.
And Antony discovered that somewhere within himself he wanted to give everything. That desire was the spark.
†
But here we must be careful.
There is a counterfeit desire that can masquerade as zeal.

We can desire holiness because we want to become extraordinary. We can desire mystical experiences, spiritual knowledge, recognition. We can even desire the desert because it allows us to imagine ourselves as someone different from who we actually are.

The Fathers are merciless toward such fantasies. True desire makes a person simpler.
Humility deepens.
Judgment diminishes.

The need to be noticed weakens.

5

Compassion grows.

Prayer becomes quieter.

Repentance becomes more natural.

Holiness is not becoming impressive.

It is becoming transparent.

The saint becomes so transparent that Christ can be seen through him.

Our own fire produces intensity, ambition, and eventually exhaustion.

Divine fire produces something different.

It produces love.

†

Sometimes this desire becomes unmistakable only later in life.

We tend to imagine vocation as something belonging to youth:

What will you become?

What will you accomplish?

Where will you go?

But Scripture is less constrained by age.

Abraham is called into an unknown land when the great movements of his life should seemingly have been behind him.

Moses encounters the burning bush after decades in Midian. Perhaps there are desires God allows to mature slowly.
A person may need decades before ambition loses its attraction. Decades before he discovers the limits of his own strength.

6

Decades before failure teaches compassion.
Decades before mortality ceases being an abstraction.
And then something extraordinarily simple emerges.
Not:
I want to accomplish something great.
But:
I want God.
We should be careful before dismissing such a desire.
It may contain exhaustion or disappointment. It certainly may need purification. But it may also be grace.
The question is not simply, How strong is this desire?
The question is:
Where did this fire come from?
†
This is why discernment, obedience, and patience remain essential.
But discernment must never become domestication.
The Church does not manufacture charisms.
She receives them.
She tests them.
She purifies them.
She gives them form.

7

But the Spirit blows where He wills.

The earliest monks remind us of this.

They did not begin with an institution called “monasticism” and decide to join it.

Something happened first.

A hunger.

A word of Scripture.

A wound of love.

A desire for prayer.

A longing for undividedness.

A sense that Christ was asking for everything.

The fire preceded the form.

Only afterward came structures intended to protect and transmit the life that had appeared.

The trellis exists for the vine.
The lamp exists for the flame.
The monastery exists for communion with God.
The rule exists to make the heart free.
Obedience exists to liberate us from self-will so that we may hear God. Everything exists for communion.
†
Yet perhaps this still sounds extraordinary.
Most of us will not become Antony.

8

Few will live in deserts.
Most will not become hermits.
That does not matter.
The fire usually begins very small.
Perhaps it is the desire to remain five minutes longer in silence.
The impulse to forgive.
The realization that we no longer need to win an argument. Compassion appearing where resentment once lived.
The Name of Jesus quietly returning to the heart during the night. Tears we cannot explain.
Gratitude.
The desire to pray when no one knows we are praying.
Or the strange realization that we want nothing from God except God. Do not despise this small flame.
Do not immediately analyze it.
Do not turn it into a project.
Protect it.
Feed it with prayer.
Shelter it with silence.
Purify it through repentance.
Test it through obedience.
Let it deepen through patience.

9

And above all, wonder at it.

Because perhaps the most astonishing realization is this:

The desire within you for God is already evidence of God’s desire for you.

You did not light the fire.

You discovered it burning.

Christ still stands before the human heart saying:

“I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled!”

And He means us.

Not only Antony.

Not only Isaac.

Not only the saints.

Us.

The exhausted.

The distracted.

The wounded.

The aging.

The uncertain.

Those who have failed.

Those who have spent years around holy things and suddenly discover that they are still hungry for holiness itself.

Those who, after everything, find one prayer rising from somewhere deeper than words:

I want You.

10

That is enough for the beginning.

The spark has already been struck.

Our task is not to manufacture the fire.

It is to stop smothering it.

And perhaps, if we allow God to do what He desires within us, the little flame we barely perceive today will one day reveal the astonishing truth Abba Joseph showed Abba Lot:

“If you will, you can become all flame.”

11

There is a sentence here from St. Isaac that overturns almost everything we are inclined to think about asceticism: You suppose these things were ordained simply to oblige you to labor.

We imagine the vigil primarily as something difficult. Sleep is surrendered. The body is constrained. Psalms are prayed while the world sleeps. Nature protests and the monk remains standing before God. Looked at from the outside, it appears to be an extraordinary act of discipline.

But Isaac tells us that if this is all we see, we have not yet understood the vigil.

The question is not how much a man can endure for God. The question is what begins to happen within the heart of a man who desires God enough to seek Him in the night.

Something is born there.

This is why Isaac speaks so fiercely about the following day. The tragedy would not simply be that we failed in some ascetical rule. The tragedy would be that we received something precious and then lived carelessly enough to lose it.

Seeking the One Who Has Already Come to Us

The night vigil is born from desire.

The monk rises because Someone is there.

This is what distinguishes Christian asceticism from mere religious exertion. We are not trying to force our way toward an absent God. We are responding to the God who has already drawn near, already called us, already awakened desire within us.

The Beloved has come seeking us.

And eventually the heart begins seeking Him.

There comes a moment in the spiritual life when prayer is no longer adequately described as obligation. The language of duty becomes too small. A man discovers within himself a hunger for silence because silence allows him to hear more clearly. He desires solitude because solitude removes the thousand competing claims upon his attention. He rises in the night because there are hours when the world has become quiet enough for the heart to recognize what it has always desired.

Isaac knows this experience.

This is why he speaks of Scripture as well. Reading is not merely preparation for prayer or the acquisition of religious knowledge. Scripture “sows” something within the soul. It gathers the scattered mind. It irrigates prayer. It plants the remembrance of God. It makes the understanding subtle enough to perceive things that previously escaped it.

Scripture, silence, prayer, vigil—all begin converging upon the one thing necessary.

Christ Himself.

And once the heart begins to taste this, the whole ordering of life must change.

The Day Must Become the Guardian of the Night

Here Isaac becomes extraordinarily demanding.

What sense is there, he asks, in sowing throughout the night only to scatter the seed during the day?

We stand before God in darkness, struggling to gather the mind. Perhaps after a long while the thoughts settle. Something softens. The Name descends more deeply. Scripture opens itself in a way that cannot easily be explained. A stillness appears that we could never manufacture.

Then morning comes.

And we throw ourselves back into dispersion.

Conversation. Curiosity. News. Opinions. Tasks that did not need to be done. Encounters that did not need to occur. Words that did not need to be spoken. The endless grazing of the mind among things.

Isaac’s question is devastatingly simple:

Why would you do this?

Why labor through the night to gather what you willingly scatter during the day?

This reveals something essential about the monastic heart. Vigil cannot be isolated from the rest of life. There cannot be one life before God and another life afterward. Isaac says that we must place “no wall of separation” between the night and the day.

That phrase is astonishing.

The stillness of the night is meant to flow into the day.

The remembrance of God cultivated in darkness must become the hidden atmosphere in which we move beneath the light of the sun. The silence of the cell must follow us. The Name must remain near. Our encounters, our speech, our work, even the manner in which we allow ourselves to think must begin to be governed by one question:

Will this help me remain with the One whom I have found?

This is not narrowness.

It is love.

Love Makes a Man Careful

When something becomes precious to us, we become careful around it.

This perhaps explains Isaac’s asceticism better than almost anything else.

The Fathers guard the senses because something precious has been entrusted to the heart. They guard speech because words can disturb what silence has gathered. They flee unnecessary encounters because the mind can quickly become populated by images, arguments, memories, anxieties, and judgments. They restrain curiosity because the heart cannot gaze simultaneously in every direction and remain simple before God.

From outside, such a life may appear severe.

From within, it is tenderness.

A man in love does not experience every renunciation as deprivation. Some things simply become less interesting because something infinitely more beautiful has appeared.

This is why the ascetical life is so counterintuitive. We ordinarily construct our days around what must be accomplished and then attempt to fit prayer somewhere within them. Isaac reverses the order.

Order the day around what must not be lost.

What if the most important thing that happened today occurred while the world was sleeping?

What if the deepest work was not something we accomplished but the quiet gathering of the heart before God?

What if the purpose of tomorrow were, in part, simply not to lose it?

Then discernment changes.

We begin asking not merely whether something is sinful, permissible, useful, interesting, or productive. We begin asking whether it preserves the heart’s capacity for God.

This is a much more demanding question.

“You Would Have Embraced Jesus’ Bosom”

And then Isaac says something almost unbearably beautiful.

Had the monk allowed his daytime life to correspond to the meditation of the night, had he placed no division between them, Isaac says that “in a short time you would have embraced Jesus’ bosom.”

Here the entire meaning of vigil is unveiled.

Not achievement.

Not spiritual heroism.

Not mastery over sleep.

The bosom of Jesus.

Communion.

Intimacy.

Rest in the Beloved.

Everything else exists for this.

We constrain ourselves because we desire freedom from everything that prevents love. We become silent because we desire to hear. We remain awake because we desire to see. We read because we desire the mind of Christ. We guard ourselves because we have discovered something worth guarding.

Even the night itself becomes sacramental in this sense. The darkness strips things of their urgency. The machinery of the world slows. The identities we carry during the day become less important. There is less to perform and less to defend.

There is simply the creature before the Creator.

The beloved before the Beloved.

And the Name.

Lord Jesus Christ.

The New Life Begins in the Night

Isaac finally speaks of those who desire “knowledge of the new life.”

That is what vigil opens before us.

A new life.

Not merely a more disciplined version of the old one.

Perhaps this is why the call to stillness can become stronger rather than weaker as the spiritual life deepens. The field of vision narrows. Things once regarded as indispensable reveal themselves as secondary. Activities that once seemed important begin to feel strangely weightless. Even good works must find their proper place.

Not because love has diminished.

Because desire has become concentrated.

One thing is necessary.

The night teaches this with a clarity the day rarely permits.

And so perhaps Isaac’s teaching on vigil reaches far beyond the question of how many hours we sleep. He is teaching us how to construct an entire life around the remembrance of God.

Receive the night as gift.

Read until the mind is gathered.

Call upon the Name.

Stand before God when nothing seems to be happening.

Remain.

And when something begins to awaken within you—some tenderness, some compunction, some clarity, some quiet awareness of the One who has been waiting for you—do not rush away from it.

Guard it.

Carry it into the morning.

Let your speech become quieter because of it. Let your choices become simpler. Let unnecessary things fall away. Let the day itself become an extension of the vigil.

For the purpose of the vigil was never simply that we should remain awake.

It was that we should awaken.

And having awakened, that we should refuse to return to sleep.

The Fathers went into the night because they had begun to glimpse the astonishing truth hidden beneath all asceticism:

God is worth seeking.

God is worth waiting for.

God is worth arranging an entire life around.

And once the heart has begun to discover Him in the silence, wisdom consists largely in learning not to lose during the day what Love has given us in the night.

---

Text of chat during the group:

00:21:49 Ambrose Little: It’s supposed to make your head hurt. 😄

00:23:34 Ryan Ngeve: Father could reading itself become a distraction from prayer

00:25:11 Maureen Cunningham: The :ight to mind

00:28:16 Bob Čihák, AZ: P 223, # 5, middle paragraph on page

00:37:28 Ben: Anna: My eldest daughter and I were chatting this morning and she remarked that some babies take longer to talk or walk if their parents are living in a constant state of stress, and it brought me to wondering how much a life of contemplative prayer would help parents to keep their peace in the midst of the trials that inevitably come.

00:41:46 Nypaver Clan: St. Charbel’s mother sang to him as a baby, “May he love fasting, may he love prayer….”

00:44:09 Nancy Pagan: Back then, raising my kids and doing my wifely chores of everyday life, while calling on the Lord constantly all day. at night by the time I sat alone to Practice, I didn’t have to search too much He was already there. However didn’t happen always. I apologize if this is confusing.

00:54:46 Julie: Father a retreat on night vigil would be great

00:57:39 jonathan: I always fell asleep during adoration, for some reason, the church has always been the most peaceful place on earth to nod off. Its like falling asleep on your parents lap.

00:59:59 jonathan: I am also guilty of falling asleep during these lessons, but no better way to fall asleep than listening to the words of the fathers.

01:01:57 Ben: Anna: Father Matteo Crawley-Boevey was promoting night adoration in the home for those not able to make it somewhere in a church. (My other question was answered by your answer to Julie)

01:07:33 Julie: So if Vigils are so pleasing to God we should be preparing our day around them for the graces receive during the day for our life and family how much more planting the seeds for the day

01:08:32 Erick Chastain: How do we deal with the effect of sleep deprivation from vigils on the increase in temptations?

01:10:06 Nypaver Clan: Reacted to "How do we deal with the effect of sleep deprivation from vigils on the increase in temptations?" with 👍

01:10:32 David Swiderski: I used to get up every night to feed both of my son's. My oldest was a baby during the first Iraq war. It was amazing I didn't think about the news, or anything the house was quite and often felt it was the "between" time. The past day ended the next had not begun. They were some of my favorite moments and when I do vigil I feel the same as when I used to hold them close to God and Love.

01:11:09 Julie: Reacted to "I used to get up every night to feed both of my son's. My oldest was a baby during the first Iraq war. It was amazing I didn't think about the news, or anything the house was quite and often felt it was the "between" time. The past day ended the next had not begun. They were some of my favorite moments and when I do vigil I feel the same as when I used to hold them close to God and Love." with ❤️

01:11:12 Eleana Urrego: Reacted to "I used to get up every night to feed both of my son's. My oldest was a baby during the first Iraq war. It was amazing I didn't think about the news, or anything the house was quite and often felt it was the "between" time. The past day ended the next had not begun. They were some of my favorite moments and when I do vigil I feel the same as when I used to hold them close to God and Love." with ❤️

01:11:40 Nypaver Clan: Reacted to "I used to get up every night to feed both of my son's. My oldest was a baby during the first Iraq war. It was amazing I didn't think about the news, or anything the house was quite and often felt it was the "between" time. The past day ended the next had not begun. They were some of my favorite moments and when I do vigil I feel the same as when I used to hold them close to God and Love." with ❤️

01:13:58 Ben: Anna: When is a vigil a vigil? After 10pm? before 4am? Is getting up an hour early a vigil?

01:14:42 Jesssica Imanaka: Replying to "Anna: When is a vigi..."

Great questions. Thanks!

01:18:19 David Swiderski: Thank you Father may God bless you, your mother, Ren and her Husband and everyone in this group.

01:18:29 jonathan: God bless father!

01:18:29 Jesssica Imanaka: Reacted to "Thank you Father may..." with ❤️

01:18:29 Nancy Pagan: Thank U

01:18:30 Maureen Cunningham: Thank you

01:18:37 Nancy Pagan: Hehe

There is something almost frightening about the stories preserved for us in the Evergetinos. They are frightening not because they portray extraordinary wickedness, but because they reveal how quietly the heart can change.

The monk described by Palladios is not a beginner. He is a man of profound silence and prayer, one who has surrendered himself so completely to God that even the necessities of his bodily life have been entrusted to Providence. His life has become contemplation. Prayer is his delight. God provides for him in a miraculous manner. He has tasted something of the life of the age to come.

And yet the beginning of his fall is almost imperceptible.

He sleeps a little longer.

His prayer becomes somewhat shorter.

His attention wanders.

Earthly concerns begin to occupy a little more space within him.

Thoughts once immediately rejected are permitted to remain for a moment.

Nothing, at first, seems catastrophic.

That is precisely the warning.

The Fathers understood that the great falls of the spiritual life rarely begin as great falls. They begin with small permissions. Something formerly guarded carefully is treated casually. Something that once troubled the conscience is dismissed as insignificant. A thought is entertained rather than rejected. Prayer is postponed. Vigilance relaxes. A little comfort is allowed to become necessary. The heart whispers that such things hardly matter.

But they matter because the heart matters.

There is something extraordinarily precious hidden within the human person: the place of communion with God. The Fathers speak of guarding the heart so insistently because they know what has been entrusted to us. Grace has entered there. The Name has been received there. Desire for God has been awakened there. A fire has been kindled that does not originate in ourselves.

The spiritual life, therefore, is not primarily the anxious avoidance of infractions. It is the guarding of a treasure.

This changes how we understand vigilance.

We do not guard ourselves because God is waiting to punish the smallest mistake. We guard ourselves because love is delicate. Communion can be obscured. Desire can cool. The eye of the heart can become clouded. What has become luminous through prayer can gradually become opaque again.

The evil one understands this very well.

He does not always attempt to tear a person immediately away from God. With someone who has given himself deeply to prayer, such an assault might be too obvious. Instead, he waits. He works through what appears negligible. A little negligence. A little self-confidence. A little relaxation of watchfulness. A thought that seems harmless enough to entertain.

The enemy is patient because he knows that a heart need not renounce God explicitly in order gradually to lose sight of Him.

Palladios gives us an extraordinary image of this darkening in the bread.

At first the monk receives heavenly bread, pure and provided by God. As his interior life becomes disordered, the bread appears grimy and gnawed. Later it is almost entirely spoiled. What is happening visibly to the bread corresponds to what is happening invisibly within the monk. The gift has not ceased to be gift, but his capacity to receive it has become corrupted.

The tragedy is not simply that temptation has appeared. Temptation comes to everyone. The decisive moment comes earlier: he notices the diminishment and does not respond to it.

He regards the first symptoms as trivial.

This is one of the most penetrating insights in the story. The monk does not suddenly decide to abandon his vocation. He fails to take seriously the cooling of his love.

The Fathers would have us become sensitive to precisely this.

When prayer becomes burdensome, notice.

When mercy toward another begins to disappear, notice.

When resentment becomes pleasurable, notice.

When the imagination begins feeding upon something we would once have rejected, notice.

When silence becomes uncomfortable and distraction increasingly necessary, notice.

When we begin excusing in ourselves what once brought us immediately to repentance, notice.

Not because every movement of weakness is a catastrophe, but because small movements reveal the direction in which the heart is turning.

The story attributed to St. Maximos makes the warning still more sobering. The young monk possesses astonishing spiritual authority. Even wild animals obey him. Those around him naturally interpret such gifts as evidence of sanctity.

St. Anthony is less impressed.

He sees a ship filled with precious cargo and says, in effect: Yes—but will it reach the harbor?

Everything is contained in that image.

Grace received is not yet grace preserved.

Virtue acquired is not yet virtue safely possessed.

Spiritual gifts are not guarantees.

Years of asceticism are not guarantees.

Miracles are not guarantees.

The harbor is reached only through perseverance.

This is why Maximos interprets the command to “turn away from evil, and do good” as something more than the avoidance of sin. We must fight to diminish the passions; we must labor to acquire the virtues; and then—we must remain awake in order to preserve what has been given.

He connects this with Adam’s vocation in Eden: to cultivate and to keep.

The heart is a garden.

Grace cultivates it with us. Prayer waters it. Tears soften its soil. The remembrance of God makes it fruitful. Virtue slowly becomes something beautiful and living within us.

But the garden must also be kept.

Perhaps this is why the Fathers can appear severe about things modern people consider insignificant. Their severity is not necessarily born from fear. At its deepest, it arises from wonder.

They know what the heart can become.

They have seen human beings filled with God.

They have seen the mind made luminous through prayer, the passions transfigured, the hardened heart made merciful, and ordinary human beings become bearers of the Holy Spirit. Having seen such things, they cannot regard anything that gradually extinguishes that life as trivial.

The treasure is too precious.

And yet neither story finally teaches despair.

Palladios’ monk awakens. Remarkably, his awakening comes while he is teaching others. He hears himself speaking truths that he has ceased to live, and suddenly sees himself. The contradiction becomes unbearable. He runs back into the desert, casts himself upon the ground, and repents.

God receives him.

The angel’s words are filled with mercy: “God has accepted your repentance and has had mercy on you.”

Something has nevertheless changed. The miraculous bread does not return. His remaining years are marked by mourning. This is not because God refuses forgiveness. Rather, the story preserves the terrible seriousness of freedom. Forgiveness is complete, yet our choices are real. Grace is not magic, and repentance does not make our history unreal.

The Fathers hold together what we so often separate: immense mercy and immense seriousness.

Never despair.

But never presume.

Never imagine that a fall places you beyond the mercy of God.

But never imagine that what darkens the heart is therefore insignificant.

The Christian life is lived between these truths.

Perhaps the most important question, then, is not simply, Have I committed some great sin?

It may be much quieter:

What is happening to my desire for God?

Is the flame growing brighter or dimmer?

Is prayer becoming more truthful or merely habitual?

Is my heart becoming softer or harder?

Am I becoming freer to love, or increasingly absorbed in myself?

Have I begun calling “small” those things that slowly make me forget the One whom I love?

The evil one is willing to wait. He knows that great falls can grow from tiny seeds of forgetfulness.

We too must learn to wait—but differently.

We remain before God.

We keep the heart.

We cultivate the garden.

We guard the treasure.

And when we discover even the smallest cooling of love, we do not panic and we do not despair. We turn again toward Christ. Immediately. Simply. Humbly.

For vigilance, rightly understood, is not living in terror that we might lose God.

It is living with the knowledge that nothing is more precious than having found Him.

---

Text of chat during the group:

00:08:19 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: Page 61 Section C

00:14:06 Jacqulyn Dudasko: I received my books today! Even had a bit of time to start reading! 🙂

00:17:08 James Hickman: This will be my only day for a while: I’ll be working with the parish on Wednesday evenings, but I should be able to keep up on Mondays.

00:18:49 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: Page 61 Section C

00:58:18 James Hickman: The Lord in his strange yet beautiful goodness bestows on this fallen monk the great gift of compunction, bathing him with his tears. Our Father gives us “the revenge of mercy” (Archimandrite Mark Malone of Holy Transfiguration in McLean preached yesterday of this revenge of divine mercy).

01:10:14 Larry: Dont put off confession today

01:10:30 Nancy Pagan: Many concerns

01:11:47 James Hickman: Can we read it in an alternative light? He, if sincere, desired forgiveness. The Lord in mercy reduced his earthly suffering by five days, taking him, perhaps to heaven, a little early. In hope, can we lean on the Lord’s mercy for this young monk?

01:13:03 Larry: We have confession every day except Sunday and always long lines of people waiting.

01:13:06 James Hickman: Certainly for me I don’t want to presume for me. But for others deep hope.

01:13:08 Anna: It's a great suffering when priests aren't willing to be present for confession outside the line that's so minimal weekly.

01:19:15 Nancy Pagan: Christ the King Monastery in Cullman AL everyday before 8am Mass.

01:23:21 Anna: If we all were radically accessible for souls, wow what graces

01:24:34 Maureen Cunningham: Thank You, Blessing

01:24:39 Janine: Thank you Father!

01:24:51 Nancy Pagan: Thank you Fr

There are passages in St. Isaac that can sound almost impossible to modern ears. His words on vigil are among them.

“Do not imagine,” he tells us, “that among all the works of monastics there is any practice greater than night vigil.”

We hear such words and immediately think of sleep deprivation, bodily exhaustion, long hours of psalmody, standing in darkness while the rest of the world sleeps. We wonder whether such a practice belongs to another age, another kind of human being, perhaps even another understanding of the spiritual life.

But this is precisely where we can misunderstand Isaac.

Vigil becomes incomprehensible when it is separated from desire.

If we begin with asceticism, vigil appears severe. If we begin with love, it begins to make sense.

The lover understands the night.

There are moments when we do not want an evening to end because we are with someone we love. There are conversations in which we cease looking at the clock. A mother remains awake beside a sick child without calculating the sacrifice. Someone awaiting the return of the beloved listens for every sound in the night.

Love changes our experience of time.

And so it is with the saints.

They did not remain awake because they despised sleep. They remained awake because they had discovered Someone for whom it was worth losing sleep.

This is the secret of vigil.

“That I May Be With You”

The Fathers understood the spiritual life far less as the fulfillment of religious obligations than as the awakening of desire. Beneath fasting, silence, solitude, tears, prostrations, psalmody, and vigil lies a single movement of the heart:

I want God.

Not merely His gifts.

Not consolation.

Not religious experiences.

Not even virtue considered as a possession.

God Himself.

This is why St. Isaac describes the mind of the one who keeps vigil as becoming light and buoyant, taking flight “as it were on wings.” The ascetic is not merely staying awake. Something within him is being released.

During the day the mind is scattered among a thousand things. We speak. We answer. We plan. We remember. We anticipate. We defend ourselves. We attend to necessities. Even when these things are good, the heart becomes divided among them.

Then comes the night.

The voices diminish.

The demands cease.

The world grows quiet.

And the soul discovers again the One whom it has been seeking beneath everything else.

This is why vigil was so precious to the Desert Fathers and remains so in the teaching of the great modern elders. It creates a space in which the heart can become undivided.

The night says:

There is nowhere else I need to go.

There is nothing I need to accomplish.

There is no one before whom I need to justify myself.

There is only God.

And I am here.

The Recovery of Wonder

Yet there is something even deeper in Isaac’s teaching.

Vigil is not merely about attention.

It is about wonder.

Isaac tells us that the one who perseveres in vigil begins to “gaze upon” heavenly realities. His language is deliberately extravagant: the soul comes to possess “the eyes of Cherubim.”

What does this mean?

It means that purification changes how we see.

The tragedy of fallen existence is not simply that we commit sins. It is that we gradually cease to be astonished by God.

We become accustomed to everything.

Accustomed to the Gospel.

Accustomed to the Eucharist.

Accustomed to the name of Jesus.

Accustomed to the Cross.

Accustomed even to the astonishing claim that the Creator of heaven and earth desires communion with us.

And when wonder disappears, desire soon weakens with it.

The Fathers knew that the heart must be awakened again.

This is one reason vigil has such power. In the silence of the night, familiar words can suddenly become new.

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God…”

We may have spoken those words ten thousand times.

Yet in the stillness something can happen.

Jesus.

The Name becomes luminous.

God is here.

God sees me.

God desires me.

God has called me into existence that I might share His life.

And suddenly prayer is no longer something we are performing.

It is encounter.

Wonder gives birth to desire, and desire gives birth to greater attention.

Then the soul begins to understand why the saints stayed awake.

The Vigil of the Lover

This is why we must be careful not to turn Isaac’s teaching into another spiritual program.

Stay awake longer.

Say more psalms.

Sleep less.

Accumulate hours.

Isaac himself warns against precisely this distortion. A person may endure “prolonged psalmody,” weariness of the tongue, and “night-long standing,” and yet receive little fruit because the mind is elsewhere.

The body is standing before God while the heart is wandering through the world.

Isaac asks, with characteristic directness: Why sow so much seed if we continually prevent it from bearing fruit?

Vigil without attention becomes habit.

Vigil without desire becomes endurance.

Vigil without love becomes religious achievement.

And religious achievement can quietly feed the very ego that asceticism is meant to dismantle.

The true vigil begins somewhere deeper.

Stay with Me.

This is the invitation hidden within the night.

Christ in Gethsemane asked His disciples, “Could you not watch with me one hour?”

Perhaps every vigil is, in some mysterious way, our answer to that question.

Yes, Lord.

I will stay.

Not because I am strong.

Not because I am an ascetic.

Not because I want to imagine myself among the saints.

I stay because You are here.

Why Vigil Requires the Day

This also explains something that Isaac emphasizes strongly and that can easily be overlooked.

The vigil cannot be separated from the way we live during the day.

If we spend the day deliberately filling the mind with noise, agitation, curiosity, argument, distraction, and endless encounters, we should not be surprised if those same things accompany us into prayer at night.

Isaac therefore insists that the monk who desires the fruit of vigil must guard himself from unnecessary disturbance during the day.

This is not contempt for the world.

It is custody of the heart.

The Fathers understood something about human consciousness that our age desperately needs to rediscover: what we give ourselves to leaves traces within us.

Everything enters the heart.

Images.

Conversations.

Arguments.

News.

Resentments.

Fantasies.

Fears.

The opinions of others.

The desire to be seen.

The need to respond.

The mind carries these things into silence.

Thus vigil actually begins long before nightfall.

It begins with how we guard the heart throughout the day.

The School of Freedom

This is one reason the disappearance of vigil from much contemporary Christian life is significant.

We have not merely lost an ascetical practice.

We have lost one of the great schools of desire, attention, and freedom.

The modern world teaches us to flee silence. It places a device in our hand capable of filling every empty moment. It trains the eyes to seek novelty and the mind to expect constant stimulation.

The Fathers move in precisely the opposite direction.

Be still.

Remain.

Watch.

Wait.

Listen.

Do not flee the emptiness.

Because eventually you may discover that it was never empty.

Someone was waiting for you there.

The purpose of vigil is not to prove that we can conquer the body. It is to become free enough to recognize the presence of the Beloved.

“I Sleep, but My Heart Is Awake”

The goal, then, is ultimately something greater than remaining physically awake.

The goal is wakefulness of heart.

“I sleep, but my heart is awake,” says the Bride in the Song of Songs.

There is the mystery.

The deepest vigil eventually becomes a state of the soul.

A person begins to live before God.

The Jesus Prayer continues beneath thought.

The remembrance of God becomes increasingly continuous.

The heart waits for Him.

Looks toward Him.

Listens for Him.

Desires Him.

This is the angelic quality Isaac sees in vigil. The angels do not merely “stay awake.” They exist in ceaseless attention to God.

Their life is beholding.

And Isaac dares to say that through vigil the human person begins to participate in this same movement.

The eyes of the heart open.

Wonder returns.

Desire intensifies.

Prayer deepens.

The mind grows light.

And gradually the soul discovers that the ascetical life is not fundamentally a life of deprivation.

It is a life of fascination.

The Night Is Not Empty

Perhaps this is what we most need to recover from Isaac.

We will never understand the asceticism of the Fathers if we begin with what they gave up.

We must begin with what they saw.

They saw a Beauty before which the beauties of the world grew pale.

They tasted a sweetness that made lesser consolations seem small.

They discovered a Love so immense that solitude became communion, silence became fullness, fasting became hunger for God, and vigil became the refusal to leave the presence of the Beloved.

This is why the teaching on vigil belongs so naturally beside the language of desire and wonder.

The ascetic does not remain awake merely because a rule commands it.

He has glimpsed something.

And because he has glimpsed it, he wants to see more.

Wonder awakens desire.

Desire gathers the scattered heart.

The gathered heart becomes attentive.

Attention becomes prayer.

And prayer becomes communion.

Then something remarkable happens.

What once appeared burdensome becomes precious.

The night that once seemed long becomes too short.

Silence that once frightened us becomes the place we long to enter.

And the prayer that once seemed an obligation becomes something from which we are reluctant to depart.

The saints kept vigil because they discovered that the night was not empty.

The Beloved was there.

And once the heart knows this, the deepest question is no longer:

Why would anyone remain awake to pray?

It becomes:

How could love not want to remain?

---

Text of chat during the group:

00:18:08 Bob Čihák, AZ: P 222, Homily 20

00:23:28 David Swiderski: The last time we discussed this and sleeping 8 hours straight and for most of time people at least in Europe slept "2" times I went back to my Grandfather's diary and it appears the wood stoves in Northern Wisconsin only lasted 4hrs and you would need to get up and feed the fire so they naturally did vigils and took advantage of the break in sleep. In Spain and Latina America they have a nap in some areas due to the heat (2 hour lunch) and are up till 1 or 2 am. It seems modern western society is a new adaptation of what was a practice for hundreds of years.

00:25:10 Ryan Ngeve: Father what is one to do if these practices and deprivations make us more agitated/irritated and downcast, especially towards others, as they tend to do?

00:39:01 Gwen’s iPhone: my cat does!

00:39:24 James Hickman: Is it safe to call vigils a means to the end, which is nearness to the Lord, such that a super practical means to find closeness with the Lord is this watching for him when there are fewer distractions (not that we are safe from distractions in the night, but that the many combating us in the day are perhaps different in kind or number than those distractions of the night)?

00:42:15 Rod Castillo: I pray my daily rosary at 2 am. It’s the only time the house is quiet enough to allow me to devote myself completely to it.

00:43:46 James Hickman: Reacted to "I pray my daily rosary at 2 am. It’s the only time the house is quiet enough to allow me to devote myself completely to it." with 🫡

00:48:52 David Swiderski: Just one other thing I am embarrassed about. A protestant friend and I were discussing the real presence in the tabernacle and adoration and he bluntly told me if you really believed that why don't you stop at any church during the day just to say hello and ask for forgiveness. I really felt a lot of shame he is right. This was really common when I lived in Mexico people would just stop after lunch, on the way home for traffic to die down and do a short prayer along the way. Made me really think and have been trying to do this more when possible. My mind makes it out to be such a huge disruption but I have been going to stores closer to where they have adoration and always feel better after just 5 minutes which I waste all the time in traffic or other things and still struggle to do this more. It seemed easier in Mexico where all my friends and even some clients would just drop in but there 95% of churches are catholic so you don't need to look far.

00:49:14 Myles Davidson: Reacted to "I pray my daily rosa..." with ❤️

00:52:49 Tracey Fredman: For those who say we shouldn't read the desert fathers might not be aware that the Rule of St. Benedict mentions them: "As for those who are hurrying toward the perfection of conversation, there are the teachings of the fathers whose observance may lead a person to the heights of perfection. For what page or what word of divine authority in the Old or New Testament is not the most perfect standard of human life? Or what book of the holy, catholic fathers does not resound with this, so that we may, by this straight path, reach our Creator? 5 Are there not the Conferences of the Fathers and their Institutes and Lives as well as the Rule of our Holy Father Basil?"

00:53:56 Tracey Fredman: Benedictine Oblates study the rule, even today.

00:56:07 James Hickman: Father, your chapter for priest pastors in The Monastic Heart really made me think so many American pastors need to take a week off and read that one chapter a few times.

00:56:25 James Hickman: The chapter after The Domestic Church

00:57:18 James Hickman: Reacted to "Benedictine Oblates study the rule, even today." with 💯

00:59:16 Maureen Cunningham: I Knew a man he was 85 he would awake art 3:00 am for years he had so much joy and he always said why would"t you get up. It is all joy

01:08:11 Janine: I feel like this was a retreat!

01:08:53 Eleana Urrego: Thank you

01:08:53 David Swiderski: I have been practicing psalmody on a holy hour on Friday and have looped through the sections (orthodox) a few times. It seems when I love others or make sacrifices it is like I see something else I never saw before. While some are repetitious a lot depends what I did during the week.

01:10:04 David Swiderski: My Mom used to call me David or Beloved interchangeably and since the psalms are from David well it really hits me

01:11:03 Janine: Yes! It’s beautiful

01:11:11 Janine: Lent

01:11:18 Melanie: It’s been my experience that anxiety about lack of sleep is much more tiring than actual lack of sleep. This is relevant in my work as a lactation consultant… helping moms to see that waking at night to feed their babies will not make them perish of exhaustion. Similar with vigils. <3

01:15:25 Rebecca Thérèse: Thank you☺️

01:15:29 Maureen Cunningham: Thank you sure please send it PDf

There is something almost relentless about the teaching of the Fathers on watchfulness. They will not allow us to imagine that there comes a point in the spiritual life when vigilance is no longer necessary. Age does not free us from it. Knowledge does not free us from it. Years of prayer do not free us from it. Even great spiritual gifts do not free us from it.

“As long as you are in the body, do not leave your heart unguarded.”

Until the last breath.

At first this can sound severe. The image given by Abba Isaiah is striking: he is like a sparrow tied by the foot. It may fly upward and imagine itself free, but the cord remains. A single tug can bring it back to the earth. Likewise, the Fathers tell us that the enemy waits at the crossroads, lays traps along the path, makes use of small thoughts and seemingly insignificant compromises, and patiently seeks an opening into the heart.

Yet if we read these sayings merely as a catalogue of demonic strategies, we have misunderstood their purpose.

The Evergetinos is not trying to make us fascinated with evil. Nor are the Fathers trying to produce souls that are perpetually looking over their shoulders, anxiously examining every movement of the heart. They are teaching us watchfulness because they desire something infinitely greater for us.

They want us to discover how precious the heart is to God.

Indeed, hidden within these rather frightening descriptions is one of the most beautiful statements in the entire passage. The enemy himself is forced to confess concerning the monks:

“You and your fellow-servants have a good Master, Who speaks to you gently and watches over you as His own children.”

A good Master.

One who speaks gently.

One who watches over us as His own children.

This is the heart of the teaching.

We guard the heart because God guards the heart.

Our vigilance is meant to become a participation in His vigilance over us. The commandments, prayer, repentance, the remembrance of God, the cutting off of thoughts—all of these are expressions of a divine solicitude that surrounds the human person. God desires to protect within us that which He has created for Himself. He desires that nothing should enter the heart that diminishes its freedom, darkens its vision, wounds its capacity for love, or turns its desire away from Him.

The Fathers therefore teach us to recognize temptations, but recognition is not the end. We do not study the passions in order to become experts in the passions. We learn their movements so that we might become free to love.

This distinction is everything.

One can become extraordinarily knowledgeable about the spiritual life and still remain outside of its mystery. Abba Isaiah goes so far as to say that a man might possess knowledge, perform miracles, endure hardships, and yet still find himself vulnerable. None of these things constitutes the final security of the soul.

Only love does.

And so the passage unexpectedly opens into the words of the Apostle:

“Love never faileth… but beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.”

Here the teaching reaches its true center.

The Fathers are not leading us toward an ever more sophisticated fear of temptation. They are leading us toward perfect love.

Watchfulness exists for love.

Asceticism exists for love.

The guarding of the heart exists for love.

Repentance exists for love.

Even the fear of God, rightly understood, is gradually drawing the soul toward that love in which fear itself is transformed.

This is why the smallest thoughts matter. Not because God is fastidious or because the Christian life consists in anxiously avoiding infractions. The smallest things matter because love notices what interferes with communion.

When one loves another deeply, one becomes sensitive to anything that introduces distance. So too with God. The vigilant heart begins to recognize thoughts of resentment, vainglory, judgment, self-pity, lust, anger, curiosity, or self-will not simply as violations of a rule but as movements that draw the heart away from the One whom it loves.

The Fathers repeatedly tell us that great falls ordinarily begin very quietly. A thought is entertained. Then revisited. Then befriended. What first appeared insignificant gradually acquires familiarity, and familiarity acquires power.

“The Devil disdains small sins; yet without them, he cannot lead man into greater sins.”

But precisely the opposite is also true.

Small acts of fidelity gather strength.

A thought rejected for Christ.

A moment of irritation surrendered.

A judgment withheld.

A temptation met immediately with the Jesus Prayer.

A movement of vainglory quietly ignored.

A moment of fear answered by trust.

A suffering borne without abandoning God.

These things too form habits of the heart. Grace upon grace. Fidelity upon fidelity. Love answering Love.

This is why the teaching about vigilance should never leave us preoccupied with the enemy. Abba Makarios does not continue his journey thinking about the devil. He gives thanks to God and goes on his way rejoicing.

That detail is extraordinarily important.

The fruit of true watchfulness is not anxiety.

It is thanksgiving.

It is the growing realization that we are being kept.

The Elder who asked to see the demons surrounding men discovered something similar. He saw them “like bees,” gnashing their teeth. Yet among them stood the Angel of the Lord rebuking them. The revelation was not given so that the Elder might become terrified by the number of demons. It revealed something far greater: the mercy of God was already there.

Before we perceive the danger, God sees it.

Before we understand the temptation, God knows it.

Before we cry out, He has already drawn near.

This is why the proper response to our weakness is not self-reliance but the prayer Abba Isaiah places continually upon our lips:

Help me. Have mercy upon me.

Perhaps this is one of the deepest lessons the desert has to teach us. Watchfulness eventually reveals not how strong we are but how utterly dependent we are upon God. The vigilant man discovers more and more clearly that he cannot preserve himself.

And strangely, this discovery becomes peace.

St. Isaac the Syrian understood this profoundly. The knowledge of one’s weakness is itself a doorway into the knowledge of divine mercy. When a man begins to understand how fragile he is, he ceases trusting in himself and casts himself upon God. Then prayer becomes less an accomplishment and more a cry of the heart.

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.

Not because God is reluctant to give mercy.

Because mercy is already rushing toward us.

This also changes the meaning of constancy.

We remain vigilant until death not because God stands waiting for us to make one final mistake. We remain vigilant because love desires to remain with the Beloved until the end.

The question becomes less, How do I avoid falling?

And more:

How do I remain with Him?

This is the deeper meaning of guarding the heart.

To remain.

To abide.

To keep the inner door turned toward Christ.

To allow nothing to become more compelling than His presence.

There will always be thoughts. There will always be temptations. There will always be some cord around the foot of the sparrow as long as we remain in this present life. The Fathers are remarkably sober about this. There is no moment when we may say, “Now I am beyond danger.”

But neither is there a moment when we are beyond mercy.

And perhaps that is what gives watchfulness its tenderness.

We do not stand guard alone.

The One who tells us to watch is Himself watching over us.

The One who tells us to guard the heart has already claimed that heart as His dwelling.

The One who warns us against the snares of the enemy does so because He desires our freedom infinitely more than we do.

He does not expose the traps in order to frighten His children.

He exposes them because He loves His children.

And gradually the spiritual life becomes less and less a struggle to defend ourselves and more an abandonment to this love. We discover that the safest place for the heart is not in its own vigilance, strength, knowledge, or experience.

It is in Him.

So until the last breath we watch.

Until the last breath we repent.

Until the last breath we cry out.

Until the last breath we refuse the thought that would carry us away.

But beneath all of this there is something deeper and quieter:

we allow ourselves to be drawn.

Drawn by mercy.

Drawn by beauty.

Drawn by the gentleness of the good Master.

Drawn by the One who has watched over us as His children from the beginning.

And perhaps, in the end, perfect watchfulness is simply this:

to love Him so deeply that the heart no longer wishes to go anywhere else.

---

Text of chat during the group:

00:24:33 Bob Čihák, AZ: P 59, first paragraph on page, above #9

00:27:52 Bob Čihák, AZ: P 59, #10

00:31:33 James Hickman: The tug doesn’t seem to be with the most tremendous force either, for the feeling or illusion of freedom or thinking in pride that we have overcome our vices, we get a tiny jerk on the rope and get caught off guard, falling hard. I see in my own life, I think a certain sin is behind me and then seemingly out of nowhere a tiny tug sends me hurling down, crashing and burning.

00:32:26 Forrest: Reacted to "The tug doesn’t seem to be with the most tremendous force either, for the feeling or illusion of freedom or thinking in pride that we have overcome our vices, we get a tiny jerk on the rope and get caught off guard, falling hard. I see in my own life, I think a certain sin is behind me and then seemingly out of nowhere a tiny tug sends me hurling down, crashing and burning." with 👍

00:32:54 Nancy Pagan: Even beautiful thoughts? And “ wonderful” new ideas…right? When trying to pra

00:33:10 Nancy Pagan: Practice

00:41:59 Danny Moulton: Putting on Christ seems to be essential if we are to avoid self-hatred for repeated falls. I think seeing ourselves as God sees us is just as important as seeing others as God sees them.

00:51:48 Una: John of the Cross also uses the image of a bird tethered by the thinest of threads is still tethered and not free.

00:55:28 Nancy Pagan: Even down to his last garment… does that mean his last attachment that is his own .. not Gods? Or something else?

01:01:47 James Hickman: Like a black hole, avoid like the plague or the precipice

01:05:54 Maureen Cunningham: Does the word addiction means to say to

01:06:23 James Hickman: Diction

01:06:25 James Hickman: Ad

There is a danger in reading passages such as this one from St. Isaac and hearing primarily a warning: Do not become negligent. Do not allow yourself to grow lax. Guard your solitude. Avoid unnecessary conversation. Do not permit the mind to become scattered.

Certainly Isaac is warning us. His language is deliberately severe because he knows how fragile the beginnings of prayer can be. A heart newly awakened to God is like the tender blossom of a fruit tree. It possesses within itself the promise of fruit, but it can still be injured by a sudden frost. The mind that has begun to discover stillness can quickly become dispersed again. The heart that has tasted the sweetness of prayer can become strangely cold.

But if we hear only the warning, we may miss something much more beautiful in Isaac’s words.

The great concern of Homily 19 is not simply that we avoid negligence. It is that we recognize what has been given to us and take hold of it.

Isaac is speaking to men and women who have tasted something.

They have tasted God.

“If fiery thoughts arise in you,” he writes, “through the consuming flame of divine things,” and you “enjoy a taste of God,” then guard what has been given to you.

That changes everything.

The ascetical life is not primarily the anxious preservation of spiritual discipline. It is the response of the heart to a gift. We guard prayer because we have discovered Someone in prayer. We seek stillness because within stillness we have begun to hear the voice of the Beloved. We withdraw from unnecessary occupations not because created things are evil, but because something infinitely more precious has begun to draw the heart.

This is why Isaac can speak so dramatically about the loss of fervor.

“Only the man who drinks deeply of this wine, and afterward is deprived of it, only he knows to what misery he has been abandoned.”

One cannot miss the language of desire here.

The tragedy is not simply that the monk has broken his rule. The tragedy is that he has allowed himself to become separated from something he has tasted and loved.

He knows the wine.

He remembers its sweetness.

And now he thirsts.

This is the deeper meaning of vigilance.

Negligence Is Forgetfulness

Negligence in the spiritual life is rarely simply laziness. At its deepest level it is forgetfulness.

The heart forgets what it desires.

Isaac tells us that through excessive conversation, unnecessary occupations, sensory dispersion, and involvement in countless affairs, “the object of her desire is blotted out from her mind.”

That sentence may be the key to the entire passage.

The object of her desire is blotted out.

The danger of distraction is not merely that it wastes time. It obscures desire.

We begin to forget why we are alive.

We may continue doing many good things. We may remain religious. We may fulfill responsibilities. We may even continue praying. Yet somewhere beneath all this activity, the memory of God can grow faint.

And once that memory fades, lesser desires begin to fill the empty space.

The Fathers understood this with extraordinary psychological depth. The heart cannot remain without desire. If it ceases to be gathered toward God, it will inevitably become scattered among countless lesser things.

This is why Isaac says:

“Do not multiply your occupations, and you will not find turmoil in your mind, or in your prayer.”

He is not preaching inactivity. He is teaching simplicity of heart.

The question becomes: What possesses my attention because it possesses my desire?

Take Hold of Grace

There is another danger, however, subtler than negligence.

We may imagine that because everything depends upon grace, we need only wait passively for God to act.

Isaac knows nothing of such passivity.

When grace visits the heart, take hold of it.

When prayer becomes warm, remain there.

When tears come, do not hurry away from them.

When desire for God awakens, feed it.

When silence begins to gather the mind, protect that silence.

When the Name of Jesus descends even slightly from the lips toward the heart, treasure it.

Not because grace can be possessed or controlled, but because love asks for a response.

There is a holy cooperation between divine grace and human freedom. God awakens the heart, and the heart turns toward Him. God gives the thirst, and we begin to drink. God lights the flame, and we cease throwing cold water upon it through negligence.

This is why the Fathers can sound simultaneously so uncompromising about asceticism and so utterly dependent upon grace.

There is no contradiction.

Asceticism is what love looks like when freedom responds to grace.

The Stronger Attraction

And here we reach something even deeper.

Isaac does not ultimately believe that the Christian life is sustained by fear of distraction.

It is sustained by attraction.

The lesser things of life pull upon us. Conversation pulls upon us. Curiosity pulls upon us. Responsibilities pull upon us. Memories, anxieties, pleasures, opinions, news, recognition, work—all of these exert a gravitational force upon the heart.

But there is another gravity.

Divine love.

And it is stronger.

The spiritual life matures when we discover that holiness is not primarily a heroic attempt to tear ourselves away from the world. It is allowing ourselves to be drawn increasingly by the beauty of God.

The Psalmist does not cry:

My soul has disciplined itself for Thee.

He cries:

“My soul thirsted for Thee.”

Thirst is attraction.

Desire is attraction.

Love is attraction.

The heart has glimpsed the Face for which it was created, and suddenly everything else begins to reveal its proper measure.

This is why the saints sometimes appear almost incomprehensible to us. Their detachment can look severe from the outside. But from within, something very different is happening.

They are being drawn.

Christ has become more beautiful than everything they have relinquished.

The Memory of the Wine

Perhaps this is why God sometimes permits us to experience the loss Isaac describes.

We have known moments when prayer was alive.

Moments when the Name of Jesus seemed to contain everything.

Moments when silence was not empty but filled with Presence.

Moments when tears came without effort.

Moments when we knew—not merely intellectually, but existentially—that God was near.

And then the heart became cold.

We became distracted.

We multiplied our occupations.

We returned to noise.

The temptation is to despair over this.

Isaac gives us another way.

Remember the wine.

The memory of grace itself can become a summons.

Not nostalgia for a spiritual experience, but remembrance of the One who gave Himself within it.

The coldness reveals the thirst.

The absence reveals the desire.

And the heart begins again:

Where are You?

Why have I wandered so far from what my soul desires?

When shall I come and appear before Your face?

Even our sorrow over having lost the sweetness of prayer can become prayer.

“If You Will”

There is something here that echoes the great saying of Abba Joseph:

“If you will, you can become all flame.”

Not because we manufacture the fire.

The fire is God.

The desire is awakened by God.

The grace is given by God.

The attraction originates in God.

But the human will must consent to being consumed.

This is the dignity and trembling mystery of our freedom.

Grace comes and says:

Remain.

And we must choose whether to remain.

Love draws and says:

Come.

And we must choose whether to follow.

The flame rises and says:

Give yourself.

And we must decide whether we will continue protecting the thousand little things that keep us divided, or allow ourselves finally to belong to the One who desires the whole heart.

Isaac’s severity therefore conceals extraordinary tenderness.

He is not telling us merely:

Be careful what you lose.

He is telling us:

Look at what you have found.

You have tasted something more precious than everything that distracts you.

You have discovered the hidden wine.

You have felt the beginnings of the fire.

You have heard within yourself the ancient cry:

“My soul thirsted for Thee, the mighty, the living God.”

Do not be afraid merely of negligence.

Be afraid of forgetting what your heart has discovered.

And then turn again.

Take hold of the grace that has taken hold of you.

For beneath all our seeking is a greater seeking. Beneath our thirst is a deeper thirst. Beneath our desire for God is the immeasurably greater desire of God for us.

In the end, it is not our weak attraction toward Him that will carry us home.

It is the stronger pull of His love.

Our task is to cease resisting it.

To remain.

To consent.

And, if we will,

to become all flame.

---

Text of chat during the group:

00:03:04 Bob Čihák, AZ: P 219, paragraph 2

00:10:34 Janine: Oh great Miles is back!

00:12:04 James Hickman: I came across this today. It’s from April 10, so the group might already be familiar. Professor Matthew Minerd a Ruthenian Catholic scholar offers positive reasons for following the approach of The Evergetinos and the Apophthegmata among others as great models of theology for the dialectics and holy anecdotes.

https://www.athomist.com/articles/monastic-stories-casuistry

00:12:16 Alan Henderson: Which work is Myles discussing

00:12:40 James Hickman: “Monastic Stories as a Method of Ascetical Casuistry”

00:13:25 Myles Davidson: Reacted to "Oh great Miles is ba..." with ❤️

00:13:37 Janine: Oh that looks great! Thx James

00:13:38 Myles Davidson: Replying to "Which work is Myles ..."

The Brothers Karamazov

00:14:46 Bob Čihák, AZ: P 219, paragraph 2

00:29:41 James Hickman: Driving is stillness lol

00:29:45 Sr Barbara Jean Mihalchick: Matthew Kelly's new book is THE CONTENT DIET

00:30:04 Sr Barbara Jean Mihalchick: Lots of practical helps...

00:30:18 Anna: No TV in my house for over a decade

00:30:35 Jesssica Imanaka: Reacted to "No TV in my house fo..." with 👍

00:42:17 Janine: Even religious videos which are compelling need to go!

00:42:48 Myles Davidson: YouTube is my guilty pleasure I must admit

00:44:00 Jesssica Imanaka: Should it be at 3am?

00:44:17 Jesssica Imanaka: I mean the retreat!

00:45:01 Bob Čihák, AZ: Replying to "YouTube is my guilty pleasure I must admit"

I agree. I do enjoy the many, modern, blessed short moratlity tales.

00:45:24 Bob Čihák, AZ: Replying to "YouTube is my guilty pleasure I must admit"

oops blessedly

00:46:13 Myles Davidson: Reacted to "I agree. I do enjoy ..." with 😁

00:49:09 Una: Can you give a kinder interpretation of "laymen"?

00:49:37 Una: Perhaps those uninterested in religion?

00:49:52 Myles Davidson: Replying to "YouTube is my guilty..."

@Bob Čihák, AZ yes me too 🙂

00:51:33 Una: Great analogy, Maureen.

00:52:21 Myles Davidson: Would you say there is a ‘muscle memory’ aspect to hesychasm, in that if one loses it one can gain it again quickly?

00:52:36 Una: Reacted to "No TV in my house ..." with 👍

00:52:42 Eleana Urrego: Reacted to "No TV in my house for over a decade" with 👍🏼

00:59:30 Jesssica Imanaka: I struggle with these exact issue at work all the time. The other day, I was bringing these very concerns to my spiritual director. In the university one has to do a lot of talking and many people are not faithful, to the say the least. How to keep returning to God during the flood of all this?

01:01:04 Jesssica Imanaka: I mean: exact issues...

01:03:07 James Hickman: Clausewitz was centuries late on the fog of war as Isaac describes here the inner spiritual struggle, the battle from within. The monk with self-control doesn’t win. He recognizes his need to call for heavy artillery, divine assistance from above.

01:03:37 James Hickman: The self-controlling monk does not win on his own*

01:05:00 Eleana Urrego: What about scapular or Benedict cross? when I go to work in mental health with families in their home I return literally drained

01:05:11 Jesssica Imanaka: Reacted to "What about scapular ..." with 👍

01:08:34 Anna: I would never go without blessed items. Keep them on you always.

01:09:06 James Hickman: Reacted to "I would never go without blessed items. Keep them on you always. " with 💯

01:10:55 Anna: Lol we're all hypocrites. No worries

01:11:24 Wayne: When involved in social work and going into situations that you describe, I found I would pray for protection and pray after and cleanse myself emotionally.

01:11:50 Jesssica Imanaka: Replying to "Lol we're all hypocr..."

Thank you.

01:13:18 Jesssica Imanaka: I want to start getting into prostrations.

01:13:36 Joan Chakonas: I think it’s a good thing to display sacramentals and especially seeing religious in their habits and collars. Their physical presence is a reminder of God no matter where they are. They make God sense perceptible.

01:13:45 Myles Davidson: Reacted to "I want to start gett..." with 👍

01:13:52 Eleana Urrego: Reacted to "I think it’s a good thing to display sacramentals and especially seeing religious in their habits and collars. Their physical presence is a reminder of God no matter where they are. They make God sense perceptible." with ❤️

01:13:54 Jesssica Imanaka: Reacted to "I think it’s a good ..." with ❤️

01:17:33 Jose E's iPad: Reacted to "I think it’s a good thing to display sacramentals and especially seeing religious in their habits and collars. Their physical presence is a reminder of God no matter where they are. They make God sense perceptible." with ❤️

01:17:35 Rebecca Thérèse: Thank you☺️

01:17:37 Jesssica Imanaka: God preserve your health!

01:17:37 David Swiderski: Thank you Father may God bless you, your mother and everyone in this group.

01:17:40 Maureen Cunningham: Thank You Father

01:17:48 Jesssica Imanaka: Reacted to "Thank you Father may..." with ❤️

01:17:53 Janine: Thank you Father

01:17:53 Gwen’s iPhone: Thank you

01:17:53 James Hickman: The image of extreme humility page 539

01:18:22 Janine: I wrote and it hasn’t appeared yet

There is a great mercy hidden within these unsettling sayings from the Evergetinos. The Desert Fathers do not speak to us about spiritual warfare in order to make us preoccupied with the devil. They speak about it so that we might become sober, humble, and utterly dependent upon Christ.

This is one of the great blessings the Desert Fathers continue to offer the Church. They expose what ordinarily remains hidden.

Modern man tends to imagine temptation almost exclusively in terms of dramatic moral choices. We think of sin as something obvious placed before the will: Will I do this or will I not? But the Fathers understood the human heart far more subtly. Long before the temptation becomes an obvious choice, something has often already begun moving within us: a thought entertained, an irritation indulged, a desire awakened, an image cherished, a conversation replayed, praise secretly enjoyed, an injury remembered, a judgment formed, prayer postponed.

The enemy rarely begins by asking us to renounce God.

He asks only that we become slightly inattentive.

And so Abba Simon gives us one of the most important sentences in tonight’s reading:

“Keep watch inside your cell, and keep watch outside it.”

The brother cannot understand why he leaves his cell, becomes caught up in the distraction of others, laughs when they laugh, talks when they talk, and then discovers upon returning that the peace he formerly possessed has disappeared.

He wants to move between recollection and distraction without consequence.

Abba Simon tells him gently but firmly: That is impossible.

The heart carries within itself what it consents to.

This is why nepsis—watchfulness—is so central to the spirituality of the desert. The Fathers discovered that the cell is not merely a physical room. Ultimately, the cell is the heart. We must learn to inhabit it wherever we are. Solitude without vigilance will not save us, nor will activity necessarily destroy us. What matters is whether the heart remains awake before God.

The modern elders say the same. St. Porphyrios continually warned against becoming fascinated with darkness. We do not overcome darkness by staring at it. We turn toward Christ. St. Paisios likewise spoke with great realism about the suggestions of the enemy, yet his emphasis was always upon humility and trust in God. St. Silouan and St. Sophrony understood perhaps most deeply that spiritual warfare is finally a battle over where the heart will abide: in itself or in Christ.

This is precisely why these passages must never be read merely intellectually.

We can study the taxonomy of temptation and still remain utterly blind to ourselves.

Indeed, that may itself become another temptation.

The moment I read these sayings and begin identifying the passions of other people, I have already missed their purpose.

The proper response is much simpler:

There but for the grace of God go I.

“Satan Is Not Dead”

Perhaps the most sobering saying tonight is the Elder’s response to the man who declares, “I am dead to the world.”

“You may say that you are dead, but Satan is not dead.”

What extraordinary spiritual realism.

The Fathers distrust premature declarations about ourselves. I have conquered this passion. I am beyond that temptation. This no longer affects me. I have reached dispassion. I understand myself now.

No.

The desert teaches us never to presume upon yesterday’s victory.

This is not because the Fathers are pessimistic about grace. Quite the opposite. They are so convinced of the power of grace that they refuse to confuse grace with human self-confidence.

A man who knows his weakness can be extraordinarily strong because he clings to Christ.

A man convinced of his strength is already standing dangerously alone.

This is why the account of the dying monk is so striking. Satan says, “You have eluded me,” and even then the Elder replies:

“I do not yet know whether I have eluded you.”

There is no spiritual swagger here. No confidence in accomplishments. No inventory of virtues.

Only vigilance until the final breath.

The Trembling of Agathon

Then comes Abba Agathon.

He has spent his life seeking God. Yet as death approaches and the brothers ask whether he is confident that his deeds have been pleasing to God, he answers:

“God’s judgment is one thing, man’s another.”

This is not neurotic scrupulosity.

It is humility purified of illusion.

Agathon knows something we continually forget: we cannot finally stand outside ourselves and judge our own souls. Even our virtues may contain admixtures we cannot perceive. Generosity may conceal a hunger to be needed. Zeal may conceal anger. Orthodoxy may conceal pride. Asceticism may conceal self-reliance. Service may conceal the desire for recognition. Even repentance itself can become subtly self-absorbed.

Therefore Agathon places himself entirely before God.

And notice how the story ends.

He dies in joy.

This is crucial.

The humility of the Desert Fathers does not lead to despair. It leads to freedom. Agathon has nothing left to defend. Nothing to prove. Nothing to claim for himself. He places everything into the hands of God and ascends “as one who greets his friends and loved ones.”

True humility ends in joy because it has surrendered the impossible burden of saving itself.

The Vessels of the Enemy

The extraordinary vision of Abba Makarios brings all of this together.

The devil appears covered with vessels containing different means of temptation. One attacks prayer with drowsiness. Another Scripture with physical discomfort. Another obedience. Another chastity. Another speech. Another appetite. Another humility through pride. Another virtue through vainglory. Another remembrance of eternity through forgetfulness.

The image may seem strange to us, but its psychological and spiritual insight is profound.

The enemy studies where we are vulnerable.

He does not tempt everyone identically.

And more importantly, he frequently attacks us precisely where we are seeking God.

When we pray, suddenly we become tired.

When we seek silence, a hundred apparently urgent thoughts arise.

When we begin fasting, food occupies our imagination.

When we perform some good work, we begin wondering whether anyone noticed.

When God gives us spiritual insight, we subtly begin thinking ourselves spiritually insightful.

When we experience grace, we may begin secretly believing that the grace belongs to us.

Even virtue can become the material of temptation.

This is why Makarios sees vessels around the devil’s neck filled with pride and human glory. The enemy does not care whether he captures us through obvious vice or apparent virtue. He cares only that the gaze of the heart moves away from Christ and returns to itself.

And perhaps the most frightening vessel is the one containing forgetfulness.

The enemy makes “the memory of these things disappear.”

Forgetfulness is not simply poor memory. In the language of the Fathers, it is an existential forgetfulness of God. We forget who we are. We forget whose we are. We forget death. We forget judgment. We forget mercy. We forget the Kingdom. We forget the presence of Christ.

And once remembrance disappears, almost anything can enter.

This is why the Jesus Prayer is so powerful.

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.”

It is remembrance restored.

The Name gathers the scattered heart. The Name interrupts the conversation with the logismoi. The Name returns us to Presence.

Sitting With the Fathers

This is why we need to journey with the Desert Fathers rather than merely read them.

Their sayings are not curiosities from an exotic period of Christian history. They are maps of the human heart.

We should read them slowly enough that they begin reading us.

Where am I inattentive?

Where have I become confident in myself?

What thought do I repeatedly entertain?

Where do I seek human approval?

What happens to my heart after certain conversations?

What destroys my recollection?

What makes prayer difficult?

Where has forgetfulness entered?

And above all: Where am I relying upon myself rather than Christ?

These questions should not produce anxiety. They should produce humility.

The Desert Fathers were not obsessed with demons. They were captivated by God. Precisely because they desired God so intensely, they learned to recognize everything that sought to draw the heart away from Him.

And they knew they did not fight alone.

We live within the communion of the Church. The angels surround us. The saints intercede for us. The Mother of God shelters us. The prayers of the Church carry us. Our guardian angel accompanies us. And the Name of Jesus is placed upon our lips.

The evil one may indeed be relentless.

But he is not sovereign.

Christ is.

Makarios can interrogate the devil precisely because Christ has already conquered him. The powers of darkness are exposed because the Light has come into the world.

And so vigilance is not fearfully watching for Satan behind every movement of life.

Vigilance is keeping the heart turned toward Christ.

The safest person spiritually is therefore not the one who thinks, I would never fall into that.

It is the one who whispers:

Lord, without You I could fall into anything.

Keep me.

Guard my heart.

Give me remembrance of You.

Send Your holy angels to protect me.

Through the prayers of Your saints, preserve me from deception.

And then we understand why we must keep returning to the desert.

The Fathers know the terrain.

They have watched thoughts arise and disappear. They have suffered temptation. They have fallen and risen. They have learned the terrible danger of self-confidence and the astonishing strength hidden in humility.

They take us by the hand and teach us to watch.

Inside the cell.

Outside the cell.

Until our final breath.

Not because we are terrified of the darkness, but because we have discovered something infinitely more beautiful that we do not wish to lose sight of:

the face of Christ.

---

Text of chat during the group:

00:08:04 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: Volume 3 page 54 number 3

00:56:55 James Hickman: In the past year or so, certain Catholic exorcists have come under attack for describing a bit of their healing ministry. For instance, some attack the priests for revealing that the devil has told them x, y, or z. The attackers, who only seem to attack the priests behind their backs, say that the priests are either lying or that they’ve been misled by the devil, for the demons can’t be trusted. I trust these priests, and here Abba Macarius is just one more witness to the power of the Church to compel the demons, if it be God’s holy will, to share what otherwise we wouldn’t know. I suppose I’m sharing this hoping more of us will pray for these exorcists and for priests in general. Abba Macarius, pray for us!

01:04:00 Forrest: The appearance of the Devil in this story reminds me of an earlier hypothesis where a great saint laughed at a group of demons struggling to lift a single feather. How hard it was for them! Here the Prince of Demons wears many vessels with feathers attached.

01:04:25 Adam Paige: The 35 Doctors of the Church: Revised Edition
by Rev. Christopher Rengers, O.F.M. Cap

01:18:27 Rebecca Thérèse: Uriah the Hittite

01:20:25 Julie: Thank you 🙏🏼

01:21:03 Maureen Cunningham: Thank You ,

01:21:10 Rebecca Thérèse: Thank you☺️

There is a temptation in every generation to believe that the spiritual life consists primarily in learning new methods, acquiring hidden knowledge, or discovering techniques that promise quick access to God. St. Isaac the Syrian gently dismantles this illusion. When he speaks of the deeper forms of prayer, he deliberately refuses to satisfy our curiosity. It is a remarkable act of humility. He knows that the mysteries of prayer cannot be communicated as information because they are received only as a gift. They belong not to those who seek extraordinary experiences but to those who have quietly consented to be transformed through long obedience.

This restraint reveals something profoundly important. The deepest prayer is never mastered. It is given. One does not arrive there through spiritual cleverness but by allowing grace to accomplish its hidden work over time. “Sit in your cell,” the ancient saying declares, “and your cell will teach you everything.” The cell becomes the place where the restless search for novelty dies, where the heart gradually ceases to seek explanations and begins instead to seek only Christ Himself.

For Isaac, stillness is therefore not an escape from the world but the creation of an interior space where the face of Christ can finally be seen without distortion. This is why he speaks so forcefully about abstention from many concerns. The problem is not simply that busyness consumes our time. Far more dangerously, it fragments our attention. It scatters the heart among a thousand anxieties until it loses the capacity to remain before the Lord with loving simplicity.

How striking that Isaac does not first speak about outward activity but about the inability to remain “directly before the face of God.” The Christian life begins here. Before there is ministry, teaching, writing, service, or even ascetic labor, there is the gaze of love. The Father turns His face toward us in His Son, and little by little we learn to return that gaze. Prayer is not first our speaking to God but our remaining before Him long enough for His presence to heal what has been wounded within us.

This changes the whole character of spiritual struggle. We often imagine that holiness is achieved by greater effort, tighter control, or stricter discipline. Certainly there is ascetic labor, and Isaac never minimizes it. Yet its purpose is not self-perfection. It is to remove whatever prevents us from remaining peacefully before Christ. The battle is not ultimately against activity itself but against everything that steals our attention from the One who alone can heal the heart.

Only in such stillness do we begin to notice the subtle movements of the soul. Isaac says that the monk learns to distinguish “what enters into and what comes out” of him. Here we discover the extraordinary psychological and spiritual depth of the desert tradition. Before modern psychology attempted to map the interior world, the Desert Fathers had already entered its hidden landscape. They understood that thoughts, desires, fears, fantasies, and memories continually seek entrance into the heart. Unless one lives before the face of Christ, these movements remain confused and unexamined. But in the light of His countenance they become discernible. His gaze exposes nothing in order to condemn; it reveals everything in order to heal.

This is why the entire ascetical life must remain Christ-centered. Stillness divorced from Christ easily becomes isolation. Silence without Christ becomes emptiness. Solitude without Christ can become merely another form of self-absorption. But when every moment of silence is filled with the awareness of His presence, stillness becomes communion. The heart is no longer occupied with itself but quietly captivated by the beauty of the Lord.

Here, I believe, we begin to understand what I have called throughout these writings desire and wonder. As the heart becomes less driven by endless concerns, it does not become emotionally barren. Quite the opposite. It awakens. Desire is purified because it is no longer dispersed among countless lesser loves but gathered into a single longing for Christ. Wonder returns because His presence is never exhausted. Every moment before Him becomes fresh. Every prayer becomes an invitation into a mystery that can never be possessed, only received.

Perhaps this is the hidden fruit of Isaac’s refusal to explain the higher forms of prayer. He wishes to protect us from seeking experiences rather than seeking Christ. For if we truly stand before His face day after day, if we patiently guard the heart, if we willingly relinquish the tyranny of unnecessary concerns, then prayer itself will teach us. Not because we have become experts, but because Love Himself has become our teacher.

In the end, the goal is beautifully simple. To become men and women whose hearts are no longer scattered but wholly gathered before the Face that has always been turned toward us. And in that Face we discover that every true desire finds its fulfillment, every fear loses its power, and wonder becomes the atmosphere in which the soul learns to live.

---

Text of chat during the group:

00:04:23 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: Page 218 mid paragraph 4

00:07:02 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: https://www.philokaliaministries.org/post/the-name-above-every-name

00:07:22 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: Page 218 mid paragraph 4

00:10:21 Linda Frasier: may I share the link with a friend?

00:10:31 Janine: Father…whatever happened to the gentleman from New Zealand who used to join?

00:10:35 Linda Frasier: thx

00:11:03 Janine: His dad wasn’t well

00:11:12 Janine: Yes I was wondering

00:11:53 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: https://www.philokaliaministries.org/post/the-name-above-every-name

00:12:39 Linda Frasier: already ordered Monastic Heart—arriving Monday!!

00:14:14 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: https://www.philokaliaministries.org/post/the-name-above-every-name

00:15:37 Janine: The baby has joined!

00:27:32 Bob Čihák, AZ: P 218, paragraph 5, bottom of page

00:37:26 Kate: Footnote 1 on page 219 is quite convicting!

00:40:13 Adam Paige: Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come 'round right.

00:58:25 Bob Čihák, AZ: Re: story of Martha and Mary taking the “better path”: Christ doesn’t specify what that better path might be. Many, including St. Augustine, say that it’s the path of contemplation. I think it could be that “the better path” is the path for that person fulfilling the will of God, in that place, at that time. We all have different immediate paths to take, at different times. Obviously, Martha earned Christ’s gentle rebuke which to me suggests that she should consider that her role at that time and place might be providing hospitality.

01:06:19 Nancy Pagan: Why if we can learn by ourselves some desert fathers insist in having a staret?I I really believe we can but I should not trust myself that way?

01:06:27 Nancy Pagan: Sorry

01:07:22 Lee Graham: “Without distractions the devil has no means of entering the soul” the footnote #1

01:13:29 Art: I gain a lot of peace of heart and mind from the Benedictine motto “to work is to pray”. I’ve also seen “Prayer is my work”. Work is my prayer”. It helps me accept whatever it is I need to do

01:13:42 David Swiderski: In loving one another's God is us is made flesh. Simple not complicates but I have this written on my bedroom door because I forget and it has guided me for years. I rise and remember to be simple and the goal clear in the day. I think less words help the most as my grandfather left with me as a high school education tut taught me more than Aquinas or any spiritual father. As my mother said love few and profoundly. As I age I find all the answers where at my hands but I got lost at some times in my life.

01:13:53 James Hickman: Father, is there any distinction between unadulterated entertainment vs perhaps a cultural experience by watching a series or movie not too different from sitting down to read a novel or go to a play performed live? It might be an opportunity for leisure. I think of PBS Masterpiece where I can watch a high quality production of Les Miserables or The Count of Monte Cristo and ponder mysteries of forgiveness or the vices in my life. Certainly I’m not saying this is of greater value than spending two hours in stillness. I’m maybe admitting my weakness here, but I do wonder: is there a place for this in my life? Are there any good distractions? In moderation?

01:17:58 David Swiderski: Amen seeking beauty and what is good shapes our lives and our goals.

01:18:47 James Hickman: I breathe a sigh of relief 😀

01:20:53 Nancy Pagan: Does St Isaac, or another give a plan to live this interior life? I guess it is different for each, but is there a minimum? My experience was a radical unknown calling. Can that be ok and possible maybe even necessary ?

01:26:22 David Swiderski: You feel the presence when someone loves you unconditionally. There is something in their eyes a feeling in your heart that never goes away. At least in my life only two priest or religious have had that impact. Life wave of the ocean what is true returns over and over.

01:26:46 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: https://www.philokaliaministries.org/post/the-name-above-every-name

01:26:53 Jesssica Imanaka: I ordered it today!

01:28:19 Aaron: Thank you Father

01:28:21 David Swiderski: Thank you Father may God bless you your mother, Ren and her husband and everyone in this group you are very much appreciated and loved.

01:28:22 Nancy Pagan: 🙏

01:28:23 Jesssica Imanaka: God bless you, Father Charbel, and your mother. Thank you and here's praying for you every day!

01:29:03 Maureen Cunningham: Blessing

01:29:38 Rebecca Thérèse: Thank you☺️

01:29:47 Lorraine Green: Thank you!

The Fathers never speak of the spiritual life as though it were merely the acquisition of virtues or the mastery of disciplines. At its heart, it is the slow awakening of a human being who learns once again to see. The battlefield is not first the world around us but the hidden kingdom within us. It is there, in the silence of the heart, that every thought seeks entrance, every desire asks for consent, and every movement of the soul quietly bends either toward God or away from Him.

It is therefore no accident that this section of the Evergetinos begins with the conscience. The Fathers do not present conscience as a private opinion, nor as a passing feeling of guilt or innocence. They speak of it as “nature’s book,” a living text written by the Creator Himself within the human heart. Before there were libraries, before there were theological treatises, before there were even spiritual fathers to guide us, God had already inscribed His law upon the depths of our being. The conscience remains that quiet witness which never ceases to speak, even when every other voice has fallen silent.

St. Maximos therefore urges us not to despise it. Every time we ignore that gentle movement toward truth, every time we silence its warnings because they are inconvenient or uncomfortable, we do not simply reject an inner feeling. We reject a gift through which God Himself seeks to lead us. Yet the Fathers also understand that conscience is not formed automatically. Like every faculty of the soul, it can become clouded through neglect, distorted through the passions, or nearly inaudible beneath the constant noise of our own thoughts. Thus prayer and conscience belong together. A purified conscience gives birth to pure prayer, while genuine prayer steadily purifies the conscience. Each heals and strengthens the other until the heart gradually becomes transparent before God.

This is why the Fathers place such extraordinary emphasis upon vigilance. The ascetic life is not one of anxious self-analysis but of loving attentiveness. One learns to ask, “From where has this thought arisen? Toward whom does it lead me? Does it draw me toward Christ, toward humility, toward peace, toward love, or does it leave me agitated, suspicious, self-absorbed, fearful, or filled with hidden resentment?” Such questions are not psychological exercises. They are acts of spiritual discernment.

How beautiful that the Evergetinos allows us here to hear the voice of St. Synkletike. Her presence reminds us that the wisdom of the desert is not confined to the fathers alone. The mothers stand beside them as equal witnesses to the Gospel lived with radical seriousness. Their lives reveal dimensions of spiritual perception that enrich the whole Church. To hear Synkletike is to hear a mother whose authority has been forged in prayer, suffering, and long experience of the hidden warfare of the heart.

Her image of the ship is unforgettable. Storms from without may batter the vessel, yet the greater danger often lies beneath the surface, where unnoticed water slowly fills the hold while everyone sleeps. So too the Christian is often preoccupied with visible temptations, external conflicts, and the sins of the world, while paying little attention to the quiet accumulation of interior movements that slowly weigh down the soul. A single grievance carefully preserved, a subtle spirit of self-importance, an unnoticed judgment against another, a conversation endlessly replayed within the imagination—these may appear insignificant, yet left unattended they become the hidden water that eventually sinks the ship.

The modern elders speak with precisely the same realism. St. Sophrony taught that every thought should first be brought before Christ before it is welcomed into the heart. Elder Aimilianos describes the spiritual life as learning to stand watch over the entrance of the heart with peaceful sobriety. Elder Thaddeus reminds us that “our thoughts determine our lives,” not because thoughts possess magical power, but because every thought eventually shapes the disposition of the heart from which all our actions flow. The enemy rarely begins by demanding great sins. He is content to suggest one small thought that is entertained rather than examined, one interior conversation that slowly becomes an identity, one fear that quietly replaces trust in God.

The Desert Fathers therefore become extraordinary physicians of attention. They teach us that the first victory is often not found in dramatic acts of asceticism but in recognizing a thought before it becomes a passion. The battle is won while the spark is still small, before it has become a consuming fire.

Yet all of this vigilance must be understood correctly. It is never a turning inward born of fear. The goal is not endless introspection. The Fathers are not asking us to become preoccupied with ourselves but to become increasingly available to Christ. We guard the heart because it has become His dwelling place. We examine our thoughts because we desire that His voice, rather than every competing voice, might become the one we recognize most readily.

Perhaps this is why Abba Bessarion’s final words were that the monk should become “all eyes.” He was not describing suspicion but wakefulness. He envisioned a heart so illumined by grace that nothing enters unnoticed and nothing is judged apart from the light of Christ.

In our own age, this teaching may be more urgent than ever. Never has the human heart been so relentlessly surrounded by competing voices, endless images, constant information, and unceasing commentary. Discernment has become one of the greatest ascetical tasks of our generation. We must learn once again to distinguish between the voice of conscience and the voice of shame, between the prompting of the Holy Spirit and the agitation of fear, between divine conviction and the endless accusations of the evil one.

Only a heart that has grown quiet through prayer can make such distinctions.

And perhaps that is where the Evergetinos gently leaves us. Not with fear of the battle, but with hope. God has not abandoned us to navigate these waters alone. He has placed within us the witness of conscience. He has given us the wisdom of the Fathers and Mothers. He has surrounded us with the prayers of the saints. Above all, He has given us His own Spirit, who patiently teaches us to recognize His voice amid every other voice.

The vigilant heart is not merely watchful.

It is a heart that has learned whom it is listening for.

---

Text of chat during the group:

00:01:11 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: Page 52 saying 5

00:07:28 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: https://www.philokaliaministries.org/post/coming-soon-the-name-above-every-name

00:08:08 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: Page 52 saying 5

00:12:59 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: https://www.philokaliaministries.org/post/coming-soon-the-name-above-every-name

00:15:22 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: Page 52 saying 5

00:16:17 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: https://www.philokaliaministries.org/post/coming-soon-the-name-above-every-name

00:28:30 Una: Can you give an example?

00:28:44 Una: Of acting with conscience in a difficult situation.

00:32:01 Janine: 🤚

00:37:59 James Hickman: Rachel Fulton Brown, professor at U Chicago, wrote on the medieval person being fully immersed through the Lady’s Office (as an example) — not merely reading, but by hitting both intellect and passions and other aspects of the person. She wrote on how it worked for the medieval person and decided to listen to her own research and begin praying the liturgy the same way, deeply immersing herself. She loves the change it’s had on her life — not it, but the change God has had on her life through immersion in the liturgy. She teaches classes that include deep dives into Tolkien’s poetry. Her description of this change reminds me of the effect of praying The Jesus Prayer — a real encounter, but it involves the intellect and passions. Not just academic and not just a “fun” experience of spiritual matters.

https://history.uchicago.edu/directory/rachel-fulton-brown

01:03:21 James Hickman: To whom much is given much will be demanded

01:10:20 Maureen Cunningham: Alma's

01:14:40 Maureen Cunningham: Is it on your web page ,so we can bless you

01:15:20 Chukwurah Edmund: Good day everyone

01:15:26 Joan Chakonas: Father would you ever consider creating a group with your writings- you reading your book?

01:17:21 Joan Chakonas: Avoid social media like the plague

01:17:54 Joan Chakonas: Reacted to "Father would you ever consider creating a group with your writings- you reading your book?" with 😭

01:18:15 Una: My budgie likes your voice. She sings along

01:18:25 Joan Chakonas: Reacted to "My budgie likes your voice. She sings along" with 😍

01:18:37 Sheila Applegate: Reacted to My budgie likes your... with "❤️"

01:19:29 Rebecca Thérèse: Thank you☺️

The Name Above Every Name

Conference Four

Becoming Prayer

When the Name Becomes Our Life

“It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”

— Galatians 2:20

Over these past conferences we have spoken of receiving the holy Name, guarding the heart, and learning to stand before God with a broken spirit.

All of these are necessary.

Yet none of them is the destination.

The Jesus Prayer is not an achievement.

It is not even the highest form of prayer.

It is a road.

It leads somewhere.

Or rather, it leads to Someone.

Its purpose is not that we should become occupied with prayer.

Its purpose is that we should become occupied with Christ.

Everything else is secondary.

⸻⸻⸻

When the Fathers speak of unceasing prayer, they do not imagine a person anxiously repeating words every moment of the day.

Such an understanding would quickly become exhausting.
Rather, they speak of a heart that has learned never to depart from Christ.

The words remain precious.
They accompany us throughout our life.

Yet gradually the relationship they express becomes more important than the words themselves.

The prayer begins on our lips.
It descends into the mind.
It finds rest in the heart.
Finally, it becomes the atmosphere in which we live. Not because we are continually conscious of it.

But because Christ has quietly become the center of everything. ⸻⸻⸻

This is why Archimandrite Zacharias insists that the measure of prayer is not extraordinary experiences.

The measure is love.
Has the heart become more patient?
More forgiving?
More merciful?
More truthful?
More humble?
If not, then no matter how many prayers have been recited, the purpose has been missed. The true miracle of the Jesus Prayer is not mystical phenomena.
It is the slow transformation of a human being into the likeness of Christ.
⸻⸻⸻

2

There is a temptation that comes even in the spiritual life. We begin to love prayer more than we love God.
We become attached to certain feelings.
Certain consolations.

Certain moments of peace.
When they disappear, we imagine we have lost everything.

The Fathers quietly remind us that God sometimes removes sensible consolation so that we may seek Him alone.

The Bride must learn to love the Bridegroom more than His gifts. Only then does love become pure.
⸻⸻⸻

One of the most beautiful teachings of St. Silouan, so often repeated by Elder Sophrony and Archimandrite Zacharias, is that the heart gradually becomes capable of embracing the whole Adam.

At first we pray for ourselves.
Then for those closest to us.
Then for those we love.
Eventually, grace begins to enlarge the heart. We discover ourselves praying for strangers. For enemies.

For those who have forgotten God. For those who have wounded us.
For those who have never known love.

3

The circle widens until there are no longer any outsiders. This is not something we accomplish.
It is something Christ accomplishes within us.
His own love begins to beat within the human heart. ⸻⸻⸻

The Jesus Prayer therefore has a profoundly priestly character.
Every baptized Christian is called to stand before God on behalf of the world. We bring before Him those who cannot pray.
Those who no longer believe.
Those crushed by despair.
Those trapped in addiction.
Those overwhelmed by grief.
Those who have forgotten even their own dignity.
We carry them quietly within our hearts.
Not because we are strong enough.
But because Christ carries them within His.
Prayer becomes participation in His own intercession before the Father. ⸻⸻⸻
There is another fruit that often goes unnoticed.
The heart becomes grateful.
Not merely thankful when life is pleasant.

4

Grateful always.
The one who continually invokes the Name slowly discovers that every breath is gift. Every sunrise.
Every meal.
Every encounter.
Every sorrow.
Even suffering becomes a place where Christ may be found.
Thanksgiving begins to permeate ordinary life.
The Eucharist extends into every hour of the day.
⸻⸻⸻
The Fathers speak often of stillness.
Many misunderstand this word.
Stillness is not merely external silence.
Nor is it freedom from activity.
Stillness is the quiet confidence that Christ is present.
A person may live in a monastery or in a crowded city.
He may spend his days alone or surrounded by people.
Stillness is possible wherever the heart has learned to remain with Christ.
The Jesus Prayer becomes the guardian of this hidden peace.
⸻⸻⸻
As years pass, the prayer itself often becomes simpler.
Sometimes the full prayer is spoken.

5

Sometimes only the holy Name.
Sometimes no words at all.
Only the silent awareness of His presence.
The Fathers do not prescribe these movements.
Grace teaches each soul according to its need.
The important thing is never to abandon humility.
The closer we draw to Christ, the more clearly we perceive that everything is gift. Nothing has been earned.
Everything has been received.
⸻⸻⸻
Perhaps this explains why the greatest saints seem so ordinary.
They do not appear remarkable.
They seldom speak about themselves.
They rarely attract attention.
Having forgotten themselves, they have become transparent to Christ.
People leave their presence remembering Him rather than them.
This is the hidden victory of the Jesus Prayer.
Not that we become known as holy.
But that Christ alone becomes visible.
⸻⸻⸻
When we first began this retreat, we asked a simple question.

6

Why this Name?
Now perhaps we may answer it.
Because within this Name dwells the whole mystery of our salvation. The humility of Bethlehem.
The obedience of Nazareth.
The compassion shown to sinners.
The tears shed over Jerusalem.
The Cross.
The silence of Holy Saturday.
The glory of the Resurrection.
The fire of Pentecost.
Everything is contained within the Person whose Name we invoke. Each time we whisper,
“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me,”
we stand before the whole mystery of the Gospel.
Nothing essential is absent.
⸻⸻⸻
Soon this retreat will end.
We shall return to our homes.
To our families.
To our work.
To our responsibilities.

7

The hidden battle will continue. Distractions will return.
Weakness will remain.
But now the holy Name goes with us. It accompanies every step.

It enters every conversation.

It sanctifies every sorrow.

It illumines every joy.

Little by little, almost unnoticed, Christ Himself begins to gather the scattered fragments of our lives into a single offering to the Father.

This is the true work of the Jesus Prayer.
Not escape from the world.
But the transfiguration of the heart within the world.
⸻⸻⸻
Let us therefore ask for no extraordinary gifts.
Let us ask only for faithfulness.
May the Name of Jesus remain upon our lips in times of joy and in times of grief. May it guard us in temptation.
Strengthen us in weakness.
Console us in loneliness.
Humble us in success.
Sustain us in suffering.

8

And at the hour of our death, when every earthly support has fallen away, may the holy Name still be found within our hearts—not as a formula we have mastered, but as the living presence of the Friend who has walked beside us all our lives.

For in the end, the greatest fruit of the Jesus Prayer is not that we have learned to repeat the Name of Christ.

It is that, through His infinite mercy, the Name of Christ has slowly written itself upon our hearts.

And when that has happened, prayer has become life, and life itself has become an unending hymn of love to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

9

The Name Above Every Name
Conference Three
The Broken Heart and the Descent into the Heart Learning to Stand Before God

“The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.”
— Psalm 51:17

There comes a moment in every authentic spiritual life when we discover that we cannot pray as we imagined we would.

We begin with generous resolutions. We set aside time.
We struggle to be faithful.
We seek recollection.

Yet gradually another discovery is made.
The deepest obstacle to prayer is not distraction. It is ourselves.
Not because we are evil.
But because our hearts have become divided. Part of us longs for God.
Another part clings to the world.
Part of us desires silence.
Another part fears it.
Part of us seeks Christ.

Another part still wishes to preserve itself. Prayer slowly uncovers this division.
Not to discourage us.
But to heal us.

⸻⸻⸻

Archimandrite Zacharias often says that the purpose of the spiritual life is not simply to become moral.

It is to acquire a heart capable of standing before the living God. That is a very different thing.
Many people imagine holiness as flawless behavior.
The saints speak instead of relationship.

A man may appear outwardly blameless while never allowing God near his heart.

Another may come before God in tears, unable even to lift up his eyes, and return home justified.

The difference is not perfection.
It is truth.
God can only fill the heart that has ceased pretending.
⸻⸻⸻
This is why repentance occupies such a central place in the Jesus Prayer. “Have mercy on me.”
These words are not born of self-hatred.
Nor are they the cry of someone obsessed with guilt.
They are the language of love.

2

Only someone who has glimpsed the beauty of Christ can grieve over the ways he has turned from Him.

Repentance is therefore not primarily looking at ourselves. It is looking at Christ.
His light reveals everything.
Not harshly.

Tenderly.
Like the rising sun that slowly illumines a valley still covered in morning mist. Nothing is forced.
Everything is revealed in love.
⸻⸻⸻
The Fathers distinguish between remorse and repentance.
Remorse circles endlessly around itself.
Repentance turns toward God.
Remorse says,
“I have failed.”
Repentance says,
“Lord, have mercy.”
Remorse ends in discouragement.
Repentance opens the door to hope.
This distinction is essential.
Many sincere Christians carry burdens Christ never asked them to carry.

3

They believe continual self-accusation is humility.
It is not.
True humility forgets itself because it has become absorbed in Christ. The humble man knows his poverty.
But he knows God’s mercy even more.
⸻⸻⸻
Archimandrite Zacharias writes often about standing before God. This expression appears again and again.
It is wonderfully simple.
Prayer is not first speaking.
Nor thinking.
Nor even feeling.
Prayer is standing.
Standing before the Face of Christ.
Standing in truth.
Standing in poverty.
Standing in hope.
Everything else gradually unfolds from this.
Sometimes words disappear.
Sometimes thoughts become quiet.
Sometimes only tears remain.

4

The Fathers are not disturbed by this.
The heart has begun to speak.
⸻⸻⸻
One of the greatest gifts God grants us is the knowledge of our own weakness. Strangely, we usually resist this gift.

We prefer strength.
Competence.
Success.
Spiritual progress.
God often gives something different. He allows us to encounter ourselves. Not to humiliate us.

But to make us truthful.
Without this knowledge, compassion remains shallow.
We judge others because we have never seen ourselves.
Once we have stood honestly before God, judgment becomes almost impossible. We recognize the same poverty within ourselves.
And mercy begins to flow naturally.
⸻⸻⸻
The publican in the Temple becomes the icon of this prayer.
He possesses nothing.
No arguments.

5

No achievements.
No excuses.
He simply stands.
“God, be merciful to me.” Nothing more.

The Fathers never tire of returning to this image because it reveals the true posture of prayer.

The Kingdom belongs to those who have nothing left except God. ⸻⸻⸻
There is another mystery hidden here.
As repentance deepens, the heart begins to enlarge.

This seems impossible.
One might imagine continual repentance making a person smaller.
The opposite occurs.
Pride narrows the heart.
Humility expands it.
The more we stand honestly before Christ, the more room He creates within us. We begin to carry others.
Their grief no longer feels foreign.
Their wounds become our concern.
Prayer quietly widens until it embraces the whole Adam.
This is why the saints wept.

6

Not because they despaired.
But because their hearts had become vast.
⸻⸻⸻
Archimandrite Zacharias frequently speaks of bearing shame.
This language can trouble modern ears.
Yet he uses it with profound care.
The shame he describes is not humiliation inflicted by others.
Nor is it psychological self-contempt.
It is the willingness to stand before God without hiding.
Adam covered himself.
The saints uncover themselves before Christ.
Nothing remains concealed.
Nothing defended.
Nothing explained away.
And because everything is brought into the light, everything becomes capable of healing. The heart finally stops fleeing.
It remains.
⸻⸻⸻
This is perhaps the deepest work of the Jesus Prayer.
Not continual repetition.
Continual return.

7

Every invocation is another act of trust.
Another refusal to hide.
Another opening of the heart.
The prayer slowly becomes the place where Christ and the soul meet. No visions are required.

No extraordinary experiences. Only faithfulness.
Day after day.
Year after year.

Until standing before Christ becomes more natural than standing before ourselves. ⸻⸻⸻
There comes a point when prayer grows wonderfully simple.
The words become fewer.

The heart quieter.
Silence itself begins to speak.
This is not emptiness.
It is fullness.
The Presence for which words were preparing us has quietly arrived. The Fathers never encourage us to seek such moments.
They teach us simply to remain faithful.
Grace knows its own time.
The flower does not open because we command it.

8

It opens because spring has come.
So too the heart.
⸻⸻⸻
Perhaps this is the greatest lesson Archimandrite Zacharias offers us. The Jesus Prayer is not given so that we may become experts in prayer. It is given so that we may become truthful before God.

The heart that continually cries,

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me,”

gradually loses the need to defend itself.

It no longer fears weakness.

It no longer hides failure.

It no longer seeks admiration.

It desires only to remain before Christ.

And this is already the beginning of heaven.

For heaven is nothing other than the soul standing unveiled before the Face of the One who has loved it from all eternity.

As we leave this conference, let us ask for only one grace. Not extraordinary prayer.
Not lofty experiences.
Simply the courage to remain before Christ without masks. To allow His light to reveal us.

To allow His mercy to heal us.

9

To allow His love to enlarge our hearts until they become capable of bearing both our own poverty and the suffering of the whole world.

For this is the hidden work of the holy Name.

It leads us, not away from ourselves, but through the truth of ourselves into the inexhaustible mercy of God.

10

There is a temptation to read St. Isaac’s description of the ascetic life as though he were outlining a ladder by which we ascend to God through effort. Nothing could be further from his mind. The ascetical life is not an achievement but a preparation. It removes what clouds the eyes of the heart so that grace may reveal what has always been present: the inexhaustible love of God.

Isaac begins with struggle. The soul embraces fasting, watchfulness, vigil, prayer, reading, prostrations, and stillness with determination. Yet these labors are never an end in themselves. They are medicine. They quiet the tyranny of the passions and gather together the scattered powers of the soul. Little by little the heart becomes still enough to receive what no human effort can produce.

Then grace begins to act in a new way.

The mind is granted what Isaac calls the faculty of sight—not physical vision, nor intellectual understanding, but a purified perception of reality. The eyes of the heart begin to open. One starts to see as God sees. The mysteries of faith are no longer merely believed; they begin to be tasted. Scripture becomes transparent with divine life. Every created thing becomes luminous with the presence of the Creator.

This is the healing of sight.

What is seen first is not extraordinary visions but the overwhelming depth of God’s love. The soul discovers that grace has always preceded it, surrounded it, and carried it. What once appeared ordinary now becomes radiant with mercy. Every remembrance of Christ reveals a love deeper than previously imagined. Every prayer uncovers a tenderness that had always been waiting.

From this vision arises what Isaac calls fervor. But this is not emotional excitement or religious intensity. It is the heart set ablaze because it has finally glimpsed something infinitely beautiful. One cannot behold divine love without being drawn toward it.

And here wonder is born.

Wonder is the soul’s astonishment before a Love that continually exceeds every expectation. It is the childlike gaze restored after years of blindness. The more one sees, the more one realizes how little has yet been seen. Every new glimpse enlarges the heart’s capacity for awe.

Wonder, in turn, gives birth to desire.

This desire is no longer restless striving for spiritual experiences. It is the quiet longing to remain forever with the One whose beauty has captivated the heart. Desire has been healed because sight has been healed. One seeks God not from fear or obligation but because Love has become irresistible.

The tears Isaac describes arise naturally from this transformation. They are the language of a heart becoming transparent before God. As tears deepen into abiding peace, the warfare of thoughts gradually subsides. From this peace comes purity. From purity comes clearer vision. From clearer vision comes still greater wonder. From wonder comes deeper desire. Thus the soul moves, as St. Paul says, “from glory to glory,” or, as the Fathers loved to say, from grace to grace.

Even the ascetical practices themselves are transformed. Vigils, fasting, prostrations, and prayer are no longer burdens to be endured but expressions of love. One remains in prayer because one has discovered the Beloved there. Whether prayer multiplies into countless prostrations or becomes gathered into a single wordless contemplation, both are gifts of the same grace working according to the measure God gives.

For Isaac, the entire spiritual life is nothing other than the gradual restoration of vision. We do not become different people so much as truly human. The veil over the heart is lifted. We begin to behold the Kingdom already present. We discover that God has loved us long before we learned to seek Him.

Every genuine ascetical labor serves this one purpose: that our sight may be healed, our wonder awakened, our desire purified, and our hearts transformed ever more deeply into the likeness of Christ. The journey never ends, for the love that is revealed is infinite. Each grace prepares the soul for another grace. Each glimpse opens onto a greater horizon. And so the heart continues its pilgrimage—not driven by fear, but drawn onward forever by the inexhaustible beauty of Divine Love.

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Text of chat during the group:

00:01:00 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: Page 217 Homily 18

00:04:21 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: https://www.philokaliaministries.org/post/a-new-book-from-city-a-desert-press

00:04:57 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: https://www.amazon.com/Monastic-Heart-Future-Church-Fragmentation-ebook/dp/B0H83PJB6R/ref=sr_1_2?crid=CA7O6MNLKS2B&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.UxrtdZ72KKP0IBe2nG2QKWoekj-tDWub-JRHV70F3o_9D8FKLwu3XJQwvaPRSOwXyoLeEkoM3pnCnEfXghYaecmDIjPMYikocLL4oOyECpNa633QwCLIRNEvGeBomRANfezyyKgZUNE_8KLrXsTDyDINbIELyJ_JDlSyMQ366ADfOF8Ko7V9c8zpgjxI-NXGJ8OXoZir32kRKTRw1hzIvS79rq-XnDOglQHeZ3C0ypk.jSo9ogtwHZA38QhTVKjumOyVWU5SWx0imIAZKw7pOPU&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+monastic+heart&qid=1785019600&sprefix=%2Caps%2C111&sr=8-2

00:06:15 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-monastic-heart-and-the-future-of-the-church-charbel-abernethy/1150670922?ean=9798996766413

00:08:19 Aaron: Good evening everyone. Hope you’re all well

00:32:02 Maureen Cunningham: When you see your lack, how do you not have self hate for what you see with in yourself

00:44:45 Ryan Ngeve: Father regarding the last line from the previous paragraph, what purposes does it serve for the tears the overcome a man, leave him, and the come again unceasingly?

00:45:48 James Hickman: Re: the prodigal son, the Father’s fatted calf was always there for either son to enjoy, the fatted calf being the sweet Christ.

00:45:57 Kathryn Rose: Myrrhic tears

00:46:53 James Hickman: The slaughtered fatted calf is like that peace from warfare

00:48:57 Erick Chastain: page #?

01:00:25 David Swiderski: The veil between heaven and earth is thinnest at night. I can't remember the Saint but learned this from someone in Spain in the Picos de Europa looking at the milky way and the sea of Biscay in the distance. I still like to do a vigil looking out a window or outside (in summer)

01:04:19 Aaron: How can one recognise their own limits in spiritual practice so they don’t push themselves beyond what their body can bear?

01:05:07 David Swiderski: I will try. It was a comment from a friend I was so caught up in the moment I cant remember

01:05:19 Julie: Reacted to "I will try. It was a comment from a friend I was so caught up in the moment I cant remember" with 🙏

01:09:02 David Swiderski: My Dad has prostrate issues so he has no problem with that and milk and cookies. In Latin America people don't even have dinner till 11pm but they take naps. Lots of options

01:10:01 Rebecca Thérèse: Before the industrial revolution everyone split the night into two sleeps. Everyone got up at night to work, socialise and visit others. For monks or hermits they were just following social customs rising during the night. Although some still practise this, most of us have different habits of waking and sleeping these days.

01:10:25 David Swiderski: Reacted to "Before the industrial revolution everyone split the night into two sleeps. Everyone got up at night to work, socialise and visit others. For monks or hermits they were just following social customs rising during the night. Although some still practise this, most of us have different habits of waking and sleeping these days." with 👍

01:16:03 Gwen’s iPhone: Get a cat. Better than rooster. lol

01:16:41 Wayne: Reacted to "Get a cat. Better than rooster. lol" with 👍

01:16:44 James Hickman: Reacted to "Get a cat. Better than rooster. lol" with 😂

01:17:03 Erick Chastain: How does one engage in the never-ending torrent of tears he describes? Genuine question

01:17:10 John ‘Jack’: I’m a power napping extraordinaire; 8 min feels like a full night, 🤷🏽‍♂️

01:21:13 Maureen Cunningham: Grief brings many tears ,the lost of a love one, In time the tears are less it could be years later you still weep but not as much as you did .could the tears that your speaking of be similar

01:22:26 David Swiderski: It might be a tradition not a saint- Norther Spain is Celtic so a lot in common with Ireland. In the Celtic Christian tradition there’s a saying that heaven and earth are only three feet apart, but in “thin places” they’re even closer

01:24:59 una: It is IRish. I grew up with that saying

01:26:04 David Swiderski: Thank you Father. May God bless you, your mother, Ren and her husband and everyone in this group.

01:26:27 Joan Chakonas: Reacted to "Thank you Father. May God bless you, your mother, Ren and her husband and everyone in this group." with ❤️

01:26:28 Maureen Cunningham: Thank you Blessing,

01:26:46 Rebecca Thérèse: Thank you☺️

There is a temptation when reading the closing section of Homily 17 to see it as little more than a long list of prohibitions. Do not quarrel. Do not lie. Speak little. Avoid pride. Flee idle disputes. Endure injustice. Keep away from the powerful. Be moderate. At first glance, it can seem as though Isaac is describing a life of relentless restraint.

Yet nothing could be further from his intention.

The asceticism Isaac describes is never an end in itself. It is not a spiritual achievement, nor a demonstration of discipline. It is medicine. Every command is given for one purpose alone: to heal the heart until it can see again.

The passions do not simply lead us into sin; they cloud our vision. Anger, pride, gluttony, argumentativeness, ambition, and constant speech scatter the soul. They fragment our attention until we can no longer perceive the quiet movements of grace. We remain busy with ourselves while becoming strangers to the Kingdom already present within us.

This is why Isaac warns so carefully about seemingly ordinary things. Much talk extinguishes the noetic movements of the heart. Pride drives away the gentle energy of the Holy Spirit. Endless disputes over doctrine can become more about victory than truth. Even legitimate concerns can consume the heart until it loses its capacity for wonder.

Asceticism, then, is not primarily about saying no. It is about making room for a greater yes.

As the heart is purified, something extraordinary begins to emerge. Desire awakens—not the restless desire that seeks to possess, but the deep longing placed within us by God from the beginning. Wonder returns. The world ceases to be merely useful or threatening and becomes transparent to divine love. We begin to recognize that every act of humility, every silence embraced, every injury patiently endured is quietly removing another veil from the eyes of the heart.

Then Isaac arrives at the astonishing conclusion toward which the entire homily has been moving:

“Your soul will see the light of Christ in herself.”

This is not poetic exaggeration. Nor is it a mystical privilege reserved for a few extraordinary souls. It is the destiny of every human being.

The One whom we have sought in prayer, in Scripture, in the sacraments, and in the wilderness is discovered dwelling within the heart itself. The ascetical life has not brought Christ near; it has healed our blindness so that we may finally behold the One who has never departed.

Here desire reaches its fulfillment. Wonder is no longer merely a response to creation but to the Creator living within His creature. Love recognizes Love. The heart discovers that beneath all its restless searching there has always been an eternal Presence waiting in silence.

The Desert Fathers never practiced asceticism because they despised the world. They practiced it because they longed to see. Every fast, every vigil, every hidden act of humility was an act of hope that the eyes of the heart might become clear enough to behold Christ shining from within.

Perhaps this is why Isaac ends not with another command but with a promise.

The goal is not a perfectly disciplined life.

The goal is a luminous heart.

For when the heart is healed, it does not merely believe that Christ dwells within. It begins to see Him there. And in that vision, desire finds its home, wonder becomes ceaseless, and the soul enters even now into the eternal light that can never again be overcome by darkness.

--- Text of chat during the group: 00:02:13 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: https://www.philokaliaministries.org/post/philokalia-ministries-summer-retreat 00:10:02 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: https://www.philokaliaministries.org/post/where-silence-learns-to-speak 00:11:13 Larry Ruggiero: Can you send the ISBN# of the book you are reading from. I’m having a difficult time following in my book translated by Nun Christina 00:11:35 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: Above link is the Charter for City a Desert Press 00:13:17 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: Page 216 para 7 mid paragraph 00:15:34 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: https://www.philokaliaministries.org/post/where-silence-learns-to-speak 00:29:23 James Hickman: Father, no disagreement here, but could you please share a few concrete examples of what Saint Isaac means by “something pertaining to the soul”? I can see why we don’t want to hurt the soul. What does Isaac have in mind that pertains to the soul though? 00:33:23 James Hickman: Thank you 00:46:01 Maureen Cunningham: I put an icon in my car when get urge for fries I look at the Icon of the Holy Face of Jesus 00:46:57 paul g.: ✔️ 00:47:42 James Hickman: The Thomistic Institue just released a podcast recording of a retreat talk on forgiveness by Fr. Andrew Hofer, OP, where he reminds us of the patristic interpretation of the fatted calf as Christ. The saints denied themselves of delicious food because they’ve tasted and seen how good and sweet the Lord is. Far tastier than any food made by human hands is the Fatted Calf. 00:52:57 Maureen Cunningham: Not passed by FDA only baby product 00:53:49 Rebecca Thérèse: Is the supplement research conducted by pharmaceutical companies? 01:04:38 Erick Chastain: this set of passages seems to make the argument you should not often be on social media 01:17:09 John ‘Jack’: They sanctify us 01:20:59 Joan Chakonas: I used to seek truth in economics and current events back in my secular days- but upon finding my faith I know Seeking truth with the help of the desert fathers is all i ever needed 01:21:07 Julie: Thank you Father🙏🏼 01:21:39 Gwen’s iPhone: Thank you. 01:21:41 Maureen Cunningham: Thank You, everyone and Father Love what you read about the church Fathers 01:21:43 Kevin Burke: Thank You Father! 01:22:21 Joan Chakonas: This site is spiritual gold 01:22:32 Rebecca Thérèse: Thank you☺️ 01:22:37 Jesssica Imanaka: Thank you! 01:22:44 Kevin Burke: Reacted to "This site is spiritual gold" with ❤️