Isaac of Stella, Sermons

all cares and anxieties lulled to sleep, so that for the while the miser thinks nothing of money, the ambitious man nothing of honour, the vain man nothing of glory; it neither rejoices outside, nor grieves, nor desires, nor fears, while it is swallowed up by this one and only pleasure: so surely, nay much more, the whole spirit, soberly drunk, strongly unstrung, will be all-powerful in God, will rejoice in all things, when through the fullest truth, virtue and charity it cleaves to Him who in all His own will be all. It will gaze on Him for His own sake; it will love Him for His own sake, so that in all things it delights to see nothing other than Him whom it loves: to see nothing other than Him whom it sees. By vision it will be enlightened to love, by love it will be inflamed to vision, so that, being helped always from the one to the other, it may follow the circuit of infinite happiness, in which none but the devout will ever walk: worthy to see and to know because it loves, longing to love because it knows. For He cannot be seen and not be loved, nor ought He not to be shown to the one who loves. And I, He says, will show Myself to him (John 14:21).

These, dearly beloved, are those wings of the blessed seraphim with which they fly for ever towards Him who sits upon the throne (Isa. 6:2), on whom all the angels desire to look (1 Pet. 1:12): because of their desire always looking, because of their looking always desiring. So, brethren, to close at last a lengthy sermon, I set down this as the sum of all religion, the aim above all of the spiritual exercise. For just as among the orders of the heavenly angels the cherubim and seraphim are known to be the highest in their heaven, so in our heaven, that is, in the soul of the just man, in which wisdom sits, since the same orders and degrees of virtues can and ought to be there, as its own angels, lest our heaven be without angels, knowledge and love, as cherubim and seraphim, hold the primacy, and to these all the hosts of the virtues ought to be subject and do service. This, unless it has slipped from you, you can remember having heard from us once before. Therefore, I beg you, my brethren, let your labour sweat, your solitude go rough, your intention keep watch, whether of bodily exercise or of spiritual study, for nothing else than this: that, vices driven out, conduct set in order, virtues brought in, by which, living soberly and justly and devoutly in this world, as good men of the active life, you may cleanse the heart for contemplation and kindle it to love the blessed hope of the divine vision, in which full peacemaking will confer the noble sonship of God: which may He deign to grant us through the Son, in the Holy Spirit, who lives and reigns, God, through infinite ages of ages. Amen.

SERMON VI. ON THE SAME FEAST VI.

Jesus, seeing the crowds, went up into the mountain (Matt. 5:1). Today, dearly beloved, one may see the heavenly Physician unsealing the alabaster jars of ointment which He brought with Him when He came from the bosom of the Father, that He might heal the wounds of him who

going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, fell among robbers. For this man going down is Adam, the common [father of all]: who, because he went down of his own accord and foolishly, justly fell among robbers. For Adam could have stood fast in that peace in which he had been created, had he wished, a peace rich in all things, secure from every assault. So he did not fall under compulsion, but because he willed to go down; and because he went down, he fell into violent hands, so as to suffer what he would not; he who would have suffered nothing had he willed to stand fast. These robbers are the evil spirits, and also the manifold passions of our body and spirit: wounded among them, he laments thus: How many and grievous tribulations hast Thou shown me! (Ps. 70:20). These he suffers indeed unwillingly, but he justly deserved to fall among robbers, and through them into pains, he who, as has been said, went down willingly. For in no way would he have been allowed by the merciful Lord to fall into hands so cruel, had not He, towards Whom he ought to have kept his strength, first been deserted by him within himself, through an inmost and innate vice. So, when he deserted, he went down; and because he went down, he was deserted by Him Who remained. Deserted, then, he fell into the hands of him to whom he was given over, that is, the devil, who spared him in nothing, but stripped him, wounded him, and left him half alive. Wholly dead? He left him half alive; for if half alive, then certainly half dead. For such is the mortal life of men that there is also a living death: but the death of the devil is wholly mortal, having nothing whereby it may be called back to life, just as the life of an angel is wholly living, having nothing whereby it may incline towards death.

So man is left half alive: alive, but of himself unable to turn aside from death; dead, but still restorable by medicine. Wounds, it says, being laid upon him (Luke 10:30). But let us see with what wounds: which, however, we examine better by feeling them than by discoursing on them. Leaving aside, then, the infirmities and wounds of the body, which are multiplied beyond number, the wounds with which the human race was corrupted in the first man, by the first parent, are seven in kind, many in species, but infinite in number. For there are seven general and original corruptions of ours, from which is born the whole perverse generation and viperous brood of vices, or sins. These are the roots of bitterness springing up, the tinder of sin, the lairs of demons, the cradles of death. The first, then, going downwards, in number and in vice, in order and in malignity, is pride. Pride is the love of one's own excellence. It is pride that, by robbery, so far as lies in it, makes itself equal to the Most High; and while it disdains to give the glory of its works to another, from this firstborn is born the offspring envy, for every arrogant man must needs be envious. Envy is hatred of another's happiness.

Anger follows it, that is, disturbance of mind: for towards one whom you envy you cannot be calm. If this settles more deeply in the mind, it gives birth to sadness; which, swallowing up the disturbed man beyond measure, plunges him into the abyss of despair: there avarice, that is, love of the world, taking him up as one bereft of better hope, consoles him smoothly and gently, and afterwards hands him over to gluttony,

Soul, he says, you have many goods laid up for very many years; feast and drink (Luke 12:19). Gluttony, swallowing him down, will void him through lust, so that from a most precious man he becomes the vilest dung, and there is fulfilled in him what is said: They that were brought up in scarlet have embraced dung; and this: The beasts have rotted in their own dung (Lam. 4:5). See how man, who did not understand his honour, is compared to beasts, not only senseless but also unclean, and has become like them. Pride stripped him of God, envy of his neighbour, anger of himself; sadness laid him low on the ground, avarice bound him, gluttony devoured him, lust befouled him. These are what war against the soul, what lie in wait for the wretched soul. These are the robbers who beset the way of him who goes down, into whose hands he who goes down has fallen: the flesh, the world, the devil. From the flesh come voiding and gorging, lust and gluttony; from the world, avarice and sadness; from the devil, anger, envy and pride. These are the carnal and worldly desires, and the spiritual wickednesses in the heavenly places. Through pride the angel fell; through envy he cast man down; anger, through Cain, committed the first fratricide (Gen. 3 and 4); sadness first drove that same fratricide to despair; avarice, through that same despairing man, first founded the earthly city; gluttony and lust, for

Without Ceres and Bacchus [Liber] Venus grows cold, (Terence, Eunuch, act IV, scene 5, line 5)

because it confounded the order of distinction between the sons of God and the daughters of men, drove God Himself to repentance for having made man, brought on the flood, and blotted man out. For whoever is such is blotted out from being man and is changed into a beast; except that what the beast is by nature, he becomes by vice. These are the wounds of the common Adam, natural or original corruptions, because they are both born with us in our origin and arise with us along with our nature. Here our father the Amorite and our mother the Hittite have forsaken us. He who is born such is the seed of Canaan, and not of Judah. He who is born such is not washed with water, nor salted with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling clothes, nor is his navel cut. For there is no one to do him any of the mercies that such need. See what parents we have had on earth, earthly ones from the earth. Parents not of nature sooner than of guilt, or of punishment. Parents not of life sooner than of death, sowing what they have; giving what they found; begetting what they are: and everywhere, as the father, so the son. And as they reaped from diverse sources, so they sowed diverse things: from God nature, from the devil guilt. Hence we too must needs draw our descent from both, so as to be sons of God and sons of the devil: from the Good, good and well made; from the evil one, evil and evilly corrupted: from the one having the nature by which we are something, from the other drawing the guilt by which we have been made nothing. And this is the whole work of the devil, our nothing: which the Son of God came to undo, and to free and save our something. For He came to repair what is His own, to destroy what is another's; to bind back to Himself what is His own, whence religion is named; to loose what is another's; in short, His own

from what is another's, and what is another's from His own, as the precious from the vile, to separate. If you separate, says the Prophet, the precious from the vile, you shall be as My mouth (Jer. 15:19). The mouth of the Father, then, is His Christ.

Let us hear, then, how far He came fortified and prepared for this. There shall come forth, says Isaiah, a rod out of the root of Jesse (for from the foliage it could not), and a flower shall rise up out of his root (Isa. 11:1). Now I begin to hope; for the flower is understood as the hope of fruit. And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him. O how good a fruit! Rightly in Nazareth is conceived, and in Bethlehem is born, the spirit of wisdom and of understanding, and so on. O soul fruitful in virtues, full of graces! Seven on account of seven, and seven against seven. Seven graces in Christ, seven concupiscences in Adam. Seven wounds, seven medicines: everywhere one against one. In Adam, on the one side nature, on the other guilt: yet nature and guilt together. For just as, if wine and water gushed together from one spring, though by different veins, nothing could be drawn but watered wine and wined water: so, O sons of Adam, our wine is mixed with water, so that there arise together both natural guilt and culpable nature; so that you are not good from the Good, by nature, sooner than evil from the evil one, by guilt: and so that, as man is begotten of man, so sinner is begotten of sinner at the same time: and no good nature in us is without evil guilt, nor can evil guilt exist except in a good nature. So consider three things in us, brethren; or attend to yourselves in three things: carnal concupiscence, animal sense, rational mind. These are, in each one's own paradise, the man, the woman, the serpent. Concupiscence itches, animality takes delight, the rational will consents; and sin is accomplished, and the sinner is cast out of his very self. This, brethren, is still done today by man in man, when he sins. For he is tempted by his concupiscence, by some one of those seven; the animal sense takes delight, and sin is conceived; the rational will consents, and it is brought to birth: but sin, when it is completed, that is, born through the full consent of the will, kills both parents, and so works death. For in whatever day they eat what is forbidden, they shall die the death. Every man, says the apostle (Jas. 1:14–15), is tempted, being drawn away and enticed by his own concupiscence; concupiscence, when it has conceived, namely through delight, brings forth sin. And sin, when it is completed through consent, brings forth death to the one consenting and the one delighting, that is, to the man and the woman. This is that crooked and perverse generation, springing up wholly from the root of bitterness, wholly from the viperous and envenomed seed, and gushing continually: without which a son of Adam is neither conceived nor born nor lives nor dies. Hence he is both conceived in filth, born in pain, lives in toil, and does not die without peril. Hence, then, medicine was needed; the man who was in a bad way had need of a physician.

Let the Samaritan come, then; let Him bring the wine of compunction and the oil of consolation, the wine of penitence,

the oil of indulgence. Let the physician come in to the sick man, nay rather, come into the sick man: let Him take up all that belongs to nature, cast out all that belongs to guilt, bear all of the penalty that is expedient, and bring in all that belongs to grace; so that nature, helped at last by grace, may overcome concupiscence, which alone it could not do. For woe to him that is alone; for if he falls, there is none to lift him up (Eccl. 4:10). Since, then, the Lord has entered into man, man has of necessity put on God. For as many of you as have been baptized have put on Christ; as many as have put on Christ have put off Adam, so that now concupiscence attacks from without, grace helps within, and grace becomes natural through this regeneration, as guilt is original through generation. Within let the image of God shine with the newness of truth; without let the likeness of the flesh of sin, still old, lie squalid. So on this side concupiscence, on that side grace; and nature, now in the middle, itches. Concupiscence tempts and suggests: if nature takes delight, it conceives; if it consents, it brings forth; if it brings forth, it dies: for the viperous brood is not born except by bursting its parent. Grace too suggests, and exhorts nature, holds out counsel, offers help; if nature takes delight, it conceives; if it consents, it brings forth virtue: and virtue, once brought forth, brings forth beatitude: so that now it may rightly hear, Blessed are the poor in spirit, and so on (Matt. 5:3). Poverty of spirit is the virtue, the kingdom of heaven the beatitude; this the offspring, that the parent. The grace by which nature conceives through delight, and which brings forth this virtue through consent, is the spirit of fear. From Thy fear, it says, we have conceived and brought forth the spirit of salvation (Isa. 26:18). And the beginning of the ascent to wisdom is the fear of the Lord.

There are, then, charisms, or graces, or gifts of the Spirit, general, and through Christ now original, seven in kind, many in species, infinite in number: each of which begets and forms in the soul of its own, through the consent which they first create, virtues, which merit their own differing beatitudes; so that everywhere and in all things the gift, which is called grace because it is given gratis, may be from God, and virtue and merit from the gift, the reward, which is beatitude, for the merit, and God Himself in the reward. From God, then, is every gift, from God's gift every merit, for the merit the reward, and God the reward itself: that of Him, and through Him, and in Him may be all things. It is grace that goes before, that we may will; that helps, lest we will in vain; that receives us, because we have not willed in vain. There are, then, seven graces against seven corruptions: from which come seven virtues and beatitudes, against seven sins and their seven penalties; all of them general, and each opposed to each. There are besides in the Lord's Prayer seven petitions, each asking for one of the graces. For he who asks receives, and he who receives conquers; so that the campaign of the Christian warfare may be carried on in seven sevens, while life is lived upon earth in this cycle of seven days. But how some are born from others, and contraries are set against contraries, we leave, brethren, to your meditation to compare. For nothing, either here or in the future,