Or assuredly such are those tears of which it is sung in the hundred and first psalm: 'For I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping.' Which it is certain are not brought forth by that affection whereby in the sixth psalm they arise in the person of a penitent, but for the anxieties of this life and its straits and hardships, by which the righteous, placed in this world, are pressed down. This too not only the text of the psalm itself, but also its title, plainly shows; which, in the person of that poor man of whom it is said in the Gospel, 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,' is thus inscribed: 'The prayer of the poor man, when he was anxious, and poured forth his supplication before God.'
From these tears, therefore, those differ greatly which are pressed out of dry eyes from a hardened heart. Which, although we believe them to be not wholly unfruitful (for their emission is attempted with a good purpose, especially by those who have not yet been able either to attain to perfect knowledge or to be cleansed to purity from the stain of former or present vices), nevertheless, from those who have already passed over into the affection of virtues, an outpouring of tears ought by no means to be extorted in this manner, nor are the weepings of the outer man to be strenuously affected; for even if they be somehow produced, they will never be able to attain to that abundance of spontaneous tears.
For they will rather humble the suppliant's mind by their own efforts, dragging it down and sinking it toward human things, and will bring it down from that heavenly sublimity in which the astonished mind of one praying ought to be fixed unswervingly, and will compel it, its attention to its prayers being relaxed, to languish over sterile and forced little drops of tears. And that you may perceive the affection of true prayer, I will bring forward to you not my own opinion, but that of the blessed Antony. We have known him at times so to persist in prayer that, while he was frequently praying in the same excess of mind and the sunrise had begun to be poured forth, we have heard him in the fervour of spirit crying out: 'Why dost thou hinder me, O sun, who now risest for this, that thou mayest draw me away from the brightness of this true light?'
Of him also is this heavenly and more-than-human saying concerning the end of prayer: 'That prayer is not perfect,' he says, 'in which the monk understands himself or the very thing which he prays.' And that we too, according to the measure of our slenderness, may dare to add something to this admirable saying, we will bring forward the indications of the prayer which is heard by the Lord, so far as we have experienced. When, as we pray, no hesitation has interrupted us and cast down the confidence of our petition by any despair, but we have felt that by the very outpouring of prayer we have obtained what we ask, let us not doubt that our prayers have effectually penetrated to God.
For each one will merit to be heard and to obtain just so much as he shall have believed that he is either looked upon by God, or that God can grant it. For irretractable is that saying of our Lord: 'Whatsoever ye ask when ye pray, believe that ye shall receive, and it shall come unto you.' GERMANUS: This confidence of being heard we believe assuredly to emanate from purity of conscience. But as for us, whose heart the thorn of sins still pricks, how can we have it, having no meritorious deeds to plead, whereby we might confidently presume that our prayers are to be heard? ISAAC: The evangelical or prophetic utterances testify that there are diverse causes of being heard, according to the diverse and varied state of souls.
For you have the fruit of being heard in the agreement of two, sealed by the Lord's own voice, according to this: 'If two of you shall agree on earth concerning any thing whatsoever they shall ask, it shall be done for them by my Father who is in heaven.' You have another in the fullness of faith which is compared to a grain of mustard seed: 'If you shall have faith,' He says, 'as a grain of mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain: Remove hence, and it shall remove, and nothing shall be impossible to you.' You have it in the assiduity of prayers, which, on account of the untiring perseverance of petitions, the Lord's discourse named 'importunity': 'For amen I say to you, that if not because of friendship, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as much as he needs.' You have it in the fruit of almsgiving:
'Shut up alms,' He says, 'in the heart of the poor, and it shall entreat for thee in the time of tribulation.' You have it in the amendment of life and in works of mercy, according to this: 'Loose the bands of wickedness, undo the bundles that oppress.' And after a few words, in which the barrenness of unfruitful fasting is chastised: 'Then,' He says, 'shalt thou call, and the Lord shall hear thee; thou shalt cry, and he shall say: Behold, here I am.' Sometimes indeed even the excess of tribulations causes one to be heard, according to this: 'In my trouble I cried unto the Lord: and he heard me,' and again: 'Ye shall not afflict the stranger, for if he cry unto me, I will hear him, because I am merciful.'
You see, therefore, by how many ways the grace of being heard is obtained, so that no one, by the despair of his own conscience, should be broken from obtaining those things which are salutary and eternal. For, granting by the contemplation of our miseries that we are utterly destitute of all those virtues which we mentioned above, and that we have neither that praiseworthy agreement of two, nor that faith compared to a grain of mustard seed, nor those works of piety which the prophet describes—can we not at least have that importunity which is at the command of everyone who wills it, through which alone the Lord promises that He will give whatever He shall be asked?
And therefore, without the unfaithfulness of hesitation, we must persevere in prayers, and must by no means doubt that by their constancy we shall obtain all things which we shall have asked according to God. For the Lord, wishing to bestow those things which are eternal and heavenly, exhorts us in a manner to constrain Him by our importunity—He who not only does not despise nor reject the importunate, but even invites and praises them, and most kindly promises that He will bestow on them whatever they shall have perseveringly hoped for, saying: 'Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall be opened'; and again: 'All things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.'
'And nothing shall be impossible to you.' And therefore, if all the causes of being heard which we have mentioned fail us entirely, let at least the instancy of importunity encourage us, which, without any difficulty of merit or of labour, is placed in the power of anyone who wills it. But let no suppliant doubt for certain that he is not to be heard, when he has doubted that he is heard. And that we must supplicate the Lord unwearyingly, we are taught also by that example of the blessed Daniel, who, being heard from the first day on which he began to pray, after the one-and-twentieth day obtained the effect of his petition. Whence we too ought not to cease from the intent purpose of our prayers once begun, if we shall have felt that we are heard rather late.
lest perchance either the grace of being heard be usefully deferred by the dispensation of the Lord, or the angel bearing the divine benefit to us, having gone forth from the face of the Almighty, be delayed by the resisting devil—whom it is certain cannot present the transmitted longing of the gift, if he shall have found that we have ceased from the intent purpose of our proposed petition. This too could without doubt have happened to the aforesaid prophet, had he not by incomparable virtue prolonged the perseverance of his prayers to the one-and-twentieth day. From the confidence of this faith, therefore, let us be broken by no despair whatsoever, when we shall have felt that we have by no means obtained the things we prayed for, nor let us hesitate concerning the promise of the Lord, who says:
Whatever you ask in prayer, believing, you shall receive. For it is fitting that we reconsider that saying of the blessed evangelist John, by which the ambiguity of this question is plainly resolved. 'This,' he says, 'is the confidence which we have toward Him, that whatsoever we ask according to His will, He hears us.' Therefore He has bidden us have a full and undoubted confidence of being heard only concerning those things which accord not with our own conveniences nor with temporal comforts, but with the will of the Lord. And this we are also enjoined to weave into the Lord's Prayer, saying, 'Thy will be done'—Thine, that is, not ours.
For if we also call to mind that word of the Apostle, that 'we know not what we should pray for as we ought,' we understand that we sometimes ask things contrary to our own salvation, and that they are most beneficially denied us by Him who beholds what is profitable to us more rightly and more truly than we do ourselves. And there is no doubt that this happened even to that teacher of the Gentiles, when he prayed that the angel of Satan might be taken from him—the angel who by the Lord's will had been beneficially set to buffet him—saying: 'For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And He said to me: My grace is sufficient for thee; for strength is made perfect in weakness.'
This same disposition our Lord Himself, when praying in the person of the manhood He had assumed—that by His own example He might set before us also, as He did other things, a pattern of praying—thus expressed as He prayed: 'Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as Thou wilt'—though indeed His will in no way differed from the will of the Father. For He had come to save that which had perished, and to give His life a ransom for many, concerning which He Himself says: 'No man taketh My life from Me, but I lay it down of Myself; I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.' And in His person, concerning the unity of His will which He unceasingly possessed together with the Father, it is thus sung also through the blessed David in the thirty-ninth psalm:
'To do Thy will, O my God, I have desired.' For if of the Father we read, 'For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son,' of the Son also we no less find, 'who gave Himself for our sins.' And just as it is reported of the one, 'who spared not even His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all,' so of the other it is related, 'He was offered because He Himself willed it.' And thus the will of the Father and of the Son is shown to be one in all things, so that even in the very mystery of the Lord's resurrection the working is taught to have been not discordant. For as the blessed Apostle proclaims that the Father wrought the resurrection of His body, saying:
'and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead,' so the Son testifies that He would raise up the temple of His own body, saying, 'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.' And therefore, instructed by these examples of the Lord which we have set forth, we too ought to conclude all our supplications with a like prayer, and always to join this utterance to all our petitions: 'yet not as I will, but as Thou wilt.' It is quite plain, however, that he who supplicates with an intent mind cannot observe that number of the threefold bowing which is wont to be performed in the gatherings of the brethren for the concluding of the collect.
Above all, indeed, that evangelical precept must be more diligently observed, that entering into our chamber, with our door shut, we should pray to our Father. And this will be fulfilled by us thus: we supplicate within our chamber when, wholly withdrawing our heart from the din of all thoughts and anxieties, we disclose our prayers to the Lord in a manner secret and, as it were, intimate. We pray with the door shut when, with closed lips and in all silence, we make supplication not to the searcher of voices but of hearts. We pray in secret when, with the heart alone and an intent mind, we lay open our petitions to God alone, in such a way that not even the hostile powers themselves are able to discern the nature of our petition.
Wherefore we must pray with the deepest silence, not only lest we distract the brethren standing near by our whisperings or outcries and disturb the minds of those praying, but that even from our very enemies, who most of all lie in wait for us as we pray, the intent of our petition may lie hidden. For thus shall we fulfill that precept: 'From her that sleeps in thy bosom, keep the doors of thy mouth.' On which account we ought indeed to pray frequently, but briefly, lest, while we linger, the treacherous enemy be able to insert something into our heart. For this is the true sacrifice, since 'the sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit.'
This is the saving oblation, these are the pure libations, this is the sacrifice of righteousness, this is the sacrifice of praise, these are the true and fat victims, these are the marrow-filled burnt offerings, which are offered from contrite and humbled hearts; and offering these with that discipline and intentness of spirit which we have described, we shall be able with effectual power to sing: 'Let my prayer be directed as incense in Thy sight; the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.' Which the coming of that very hour and of nightfall also warns us to render with a timely devotion.
Concerning which, although in proportion to the measure of our slenderness much may seem to have been brought forth, and the conference has been long protracted, yet in view of the sublimity and difficulty of the matter we believe that all too little has been discussed. Astounded rather than filled by these discourses of the holy Isaac, when the evening synaxis had been celebrated we relaxed our limbs a little in sleep; and at the first dawn, meaning to return again by agreement to a fuller treatise, we departed to our own cell, rejoicing as much over the acquisition of the precepts as over the assurance of the promises. For we had felt that only the excellence of prayer had been shown us, but that we had not yet fully grasped the order and the power by which its very perpetuity is either to be acquired or held.
CHAPTERS. Preface. Concerning the custom which is retained within the province of Egypt regarding the observance of Easter. Concerning the abbot Sarapion and the heresy of the Anthropomorphites, which he had contracted through an error of simplicity. Concerning our return to the abbot Isaac and the inquiry into the error into which the aforesaid old man had fallen. A reply concerning the origin of the heresy comprehended above. For what reasons Christ Jesus appears to each of us either as lowly or as glorified. Wherein our end or perfect blessedness consists. A question concerning the discipline of perfection, through which we may be able to attain to the perpetual remembrance of God. A reply concerning the efficacy of the understanding which is gathered through experience. Concerning the establishment of perpetual prayer.
Concerning the perfection of prayer, to which one ascends by the aforesaid tradition. A question, in what manner spiritual thoughts may be held unmovingly. Concerning the mobility of thoughts. A reply, in what manner stability of heart and of thoughts may be acquired. Amid these sublime institutions of the anchorites, which, so far as by God's gift is possible, have been set forth—though by an unskilled pen—the very order of the narrative compels us to insert and interweave something which may seem, as it were, to add a certain blemish to a beautiful body:
although I do not doubt that even from this very thing no small instruction may be imparted to certain simpler folk concerning the image of Almighty God which is read of in Genesis—especially since the matter of so great a doctrine is at stake, that ignorance of it cannot exist without enormous blasphemy and detriment to the catholic faith.
Within the region of Egypt this custom is preserved by ancient tradition: that when the day of Epiphany is past—which the priests of that province determine to be the day either of the Lord's baptism or of His nativity according to the flesh, and therefore they celebrate together the solemnity of both mysteries not on two separate days, as in the western provinces, but under the one festivity of this single day—the letters of the pontiff of Alexandria are sent throughout all the churches of Egypt, in which both the beginning of Lent and the day of Easter are designated, not only throughout all the cities, but even throughout all the monasteries.
According to this custom, therefore, a very few days after the conference had been held with the abbot Isaac which is recorded above, the solemn letters of Theophilus, bishop of the aforesaid city, arrived, in which, together with the announcement of Easter, he also treated in a long disputation against the foolish heresy of the Anthropomorphites, and demolished it with a copious discourse.
But this was received with such great bitterness, out of an error of simplicity, by well-nigh the whole class of monks who dwelt throughout the whole province of Egypt, that on the contrary the greater part of the elders decreed that the aforesaid pontiff must be abhorred by the whole body of the brotherhood as one depraved by a most grievous heresy—namely, because he seemed to assail the sentence of Holy Scripture by denying that Almighty God was formed with the composition of a human figure, whereas Scripture most manifestly testified that Adam had been created after His image.
Finally, even by those who were dwelling in the desert of Scete, and who in perfection and knowledge surpassed all who were in the monasteries of Egypt, this letter was so repudiated that, except for the abbot Paphnutius, presbyter of our congregation, none of the other presbyters—who presided over the three other churches in that same desert—would permit it even to be read or recited in their assemblies at all. Among these, then, who were held by this error, was a man of most ancient strictness and consummate in the active discipline.
consummate in all respects, by name Sarapion, whose unskillfulness in the matter of the opinion of the aforesaid doctrine so far prejudiced all who held the true faith, as he himself surpassed almost all the monks either in the merit of his life or in the antiquity of his years.
And when this man could not be brought back by the many exhortations of the holy presbyter Paphnutius to the path of the right faith—because this persuasion seemed to him novel and never at any time discovered or handed down by the earlier fathers—it happened that a certain deacon, a man of the highest learning, by name Photinus, arrived from the regions of Cappadocia out of a desire to see the brethren who were dwelling in that same desert. Him the blessed Paphnutius received with the greatest joy, and, for the confirmation of the faith which had been contained in the letters of the aforesaid pontiff, bringing him forward into the midst in the presence of all the brethren, inquired in what manner the catholic churches of the whole East interpreted that which is said in Genesis: 'Let us make man after our image and likeness.'
And when he explained that the image and likeness of God were held to be handed down by all the leaders of the churches not according to the lowly sound of the letter, but spiritually, and had proved this with a copious discourse and very many testimonies of the Scriptures—and that nothing of this kind, which could be circumscribed by human composition and likeness, could fall upon that immeasurable and incomprehensible and invisible majesty, seeing that it is a nature incorporeal and uncompounded and simple, and one which, just as it cannot be apprehended by the eyes, so also cannot be estimated by the mind—at last the old man, moved by the many and most forceful assertions of the most learned man, was drawn to the faith of the catholic tradition.
And when at his assent the abbot Paphnutius and all of us had been filled with boundless joy—because, forsooth, the Lord had in no wise permitted a man of such great antiquity and consummate in such great virtues, erring through unskillfulness and simplicity of rusticity alone, to stray to the very end from the path of the right faith—and when, rising up in thanksgiving, we were pouring forth prayers to the Lord together, the old man was so confounded in mind in his prayer, because he felt that anthropomorphic image of the Deity, which he had been accustomed to set before himself in prayer, being abolished out of his heart, that, suddenly bursting forth into most bitter weeping and frequent sobs and casting himself upon the ground, he cried out with a most vehement wailing: 'Woe is me, wretched man!'
'They have taken my God from me, and whom now I may hold I have not, nor do I know any longer whom I may adore or entreat.' Greatly disturbed by this matter, and also with the power of the past conference still lodged in our hearts, we returned to the abbot Isaac, and, beholding him face to face, accosted him with these words: 'Although even apart from the novelty of that thing which has lately arisen, the desire of the past conference which had been set forth concerning the state of prayer would invite us, setting all else aside, to hasten back to thy blessedness, yet there has been added to this desire also the so grave error of the abbot Sarapion—conceived, as we suppose, by the cunning of most wicked demons.'
'For we are cast down with no small despair, considering that, through the fault of this ignorance, he has not only utterly lost the labors so great which he so laudably wrought through fifty years in this desert, but has even incurred the peril of everlasting death. Whence, therefore, or why, this so grave an error has crept upon him, we first desire to learn. Then we beseech to be taught in what manner we may be able to attain to that quality of prayer concerning which of old thou didst dispute not only copiously but even magnificently. For in this alone that admirable conference profited us, that it struck our mind only with amazement, but did not show us in what manner we might be able to perfect or to lay hold of it.' ISAAC:
It is not to be wondered at that a most simple man, and one never at all instructed concerning the substance and nature of the Divinity, could be held or deceived even until now, through the fault of rusticity and the habit of an ancient error—and, to speak more truly, could persist in his former error, which is brought upon him not by a recent illusion of demons, as you suppose, but by the ignorance of former heathenism—while, according to the habit of that error whereby they worshipped demons fashioned in the figure of men, they now also think that that incomprehensible and ineffable majesty of the true Deity is to be adored under the circumscription of some image, believing that they hold or have nothing, if they have not some image set before them, which, being placed in supplication, they may unceasingly entreat, and which they may carry about in their mind and hold ever fixed before their eyes.
Upon this error of theirs is fittingly directed that sentence: 'And they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man.' Jeremiah also says: 'My people has changed their glory into an idol.' And although this error, by the origin which we have described, has grown ingrained in the minds of certain persons, nevertheless it profits nothing.
even in the minds of those also who were never polluted with heathen superstition; under the guise of that testimony which says, 'Let us make man after our image and likeness,' it has been contracted through the working of unskillfulness or rusticity, so that even the heresy which is called that of the Anthropomorphites has arisen under occasion of this detestable interpretation—the heresy which with obstinate perversity contends that that immeasurable and simple substance of the Divinity is composed of our lineaments and of a human figuration.
Yet if anyone shall have been instructed in catholic doctrines, he will detest this as a heathen blasphemy, and thus he will attain to that most pure quality of prayer, which will admit into its supplication not only no effigy of the Deity nor bodily lineaments—which is even unlawful to utter—but will not admit even any memory of any word, or any semblance of a deed, or form of any character whatsoever.
For according to the measure of its purity, as I premised in the earlier conference, each mind is in its prayer either raised up or formed—withdrawing, that is, from the contemplation of earthly and material things just so far as the condition of its purity shall have advanced it, and making Jesus to be seen by the inner gazes of the soul either as still lowly and in the flesh, or as glorified and coming in the glory of His majesty. For they cannot behold Jesus coming in His kingdom who are still detained under a certain Jewish weakness, and cannot say with the Apostle:
'and if we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him so no longer.' But those alone behold His Divinity with most pure eyes who, ascending from lowly and earthly works and thoughts, withdraw with Him into the lofty mountain of solitude—which mountain, free from the tumult of all earthly thoughts and disturbances, and set apart from the admixture of all vices, exalted by a most pure faith and by an eminence of virtues, reveals the glory of His countenance and the image of His brightness to those who deserve to gaze upon Him with the pure gazes of the soul.
For the rest, Jesus is seen also by those who dwell in cities and towns and villages—that is, by those who are in the active mode of life and are engaged in works—but not in that brightness in which He appeared to those who are able to ascend with Him into the aforesaid mountain of virtues, namely Peter, James, and John. For thus also in solitude did He appear to Moses and speak with Elijah.
And our Lord, willing to confirm this and to leave us examples of perfect purity—although He Himself, the inviolable fountain of holiness, needed no outward help of retirement nor benefit of solitude to obtain it (for the fullness of His purity could not be stained by any filth of crowds, nor could He be contaminated by human fellowship who cleanses and sanctifies all that is defiled)—nevertheless withdrew alone into the mountain to pray, instructing us thereby, forsooth, by the example of His withdrawal, that if we too shall wish to entreat God with a pure and whole affection of heart, we likewise should withdraw from all the disquiet and confusion of crowds; so that, while dwelling in this body, we may be able to fit ourselves, at least in some part, to a certain likeness of that blessedness which is promised to the saints in the world to come, and that God may be to us all in all.