Isaac of Stella, Sermons

adversity to fear less, and in prosperity more; but in neither to grow slothful or drowsy; lest in the one he despair, or in the other he grow vain. Therefore, brethren, set between fear and hope, let us keep watchful in ourselves the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

SERMON XIV. ON THE SAME FEAST II.

And when He had fallen asleep, there arose a great storm (Matt. 8:24). What, dearly beloved, did the Lord work by sleeping in the body, unless it was to rouse disciples who were, as it were, asleep in heart? For sleeping, Power was at work, bringing forth the winds out of His treasuries; and wholly silent and asleep, the Word spoke, teaching the danger, if they let the master be silent, be idle, sleep. Wisdom, indeed, is learned in leisure, but not in idleness. For nothing is busier than that leisure, nothing more laborious than that being free; where wisdom is learned, where the Word of God is questioned and heard. Martha laboured, Mary was at leisure (Luke 10:39–40); she did not languish: but Lazarus did languish, falling from languor into death, from death into stench (John 11). O how many today, at rest outwardly from the usefulness of work, inwardly sluggish and slothful, careless of necessary things, intent on idle tales and on thoughts that are without understanding, have lost Martha's care and by no means found Mary's devotion! Hence even in Bethany, that is, in the house of obedience, they have fallen into the languor of sloth. O wretched men! who, with virtue present, are weak; with wisdom present, foolish; in the light, blind; with the Word, dumb; with the bread of life and understanding set before them, waste away with hunger; of whom it is written: Their soul abhorred all food, and they drew near even to the gates of death (Ps. 106:18). And as there the Lord says that the one languishing came to death, so that he might be raised from it: so here He Himself willed to sleep while the apostles were, as it were, languishing, or signified such men, so that at least by those in peril He might be awakened. Outwardly, then, He fell asleep, from whom such men had, as it were, already fallen asleep inwardly. What they were inwardly, He showed them outwardly. But since gentle and subtle instruction did not take hold in them, they are admonished more harshly from without. Wonderful, then, are the surges of the sea, so that the Lord may appear wonderful on high. Sleeping, He instructs by the storm those who are wrongly secure; awakened, He teaches by the calm those who are rightly troubled. Believe me, brethren, both are a word of that holy Word, the storm and the calm: both that He sleeps and that He wakes. For sleeping, by the word of the storm He condemns sloth, on which follows the tossing of thoughts, like a kind of inward and intolerable tempest: and awakened and watchful, by the speech of the calm He commends watchfulness of mind and fervour of spirit.

So we must watch with the utmost care, my brethren; and all the more attentively, the more remote the desert we have chosen, so that the Word of God, which in itself never sleeps or slumbers, may never sleep in the boat of our inner man, to whom the outer man is as the sea. Christ cannot watch for us idle; and, to put it briefly, He always wishes either to be asked something,

or to be questioned; or at least, while He Himself speaks, to be heard. For if, brother, while He speaks you begin to sleep to Him, at once He too sleeps to you. But woe to you if He sleeps to you! The wind is awake, the sea is awake, the storm is awake, and the flood of thoughts, and a thousand heats of temptation are awake for you, if He alone sleeps to you. Therefore, when you pray, say to Him with the Prophet: Enlighten my eyes, O Lord, that I may never sleep in death (Ps. 12:4). Indeed, unless you first begin to sleep to Him, He will always be wide awake for you. Peter could not watch one hour with Christ, and therefore he could deny Christ three times. For he had fallen asleep when the Lord said to him: Watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation (Matt. 26:41), as into a tempest of the mind. Where are those who nod off over their books in the cloisters, snore at the readings in the oratories, or sleep at the living voice of the sermons in chapter? In all these the Word of God speaks, and is neglected. The Lord, the Master, speaks, and man, the disciple, sleeps. There are three things: reading, meditation and prayer. By reading, or by a sermon, which is itself a kind of reading, God speaks to you: for which reason He says: He who has ears to hear, let him hear (Luke 8:8). By meditation you question Him; by prayer you ask Him. For which reason He says: Ask, and you will receive; knock, and it will be opened to you (Luke 11:9). Prayer asks, meditation knocks. Those know what I say who have their senses trained by spiritual practice through habit. For the animal man does not perceive such things, even if he be spiritual in life. For there is, as I always repeat to you and wish you to remember, one who is animal in sense and spiritual in life, just as another is animal in life but spiritual in sense. A third is animal in life and in sense; a fourth is spiritual in both. In these three, then, that is, reading, meditation and prayer, all the exercise is of spiritual sense alone, and a kind of dwelling in heavenly things by the mind; where, like Moses on the mountain, a man may speak, hear, and converse with God as with his neighbour, but in sense alone. For life too has its own kind of approach to the Lord apart. Hence: Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you (Jas. 4:8). Some, then, as we have said, are near in sense, far in life; others near in life, far in sense; others far in both; others near in both. Near, then, in sense, nearer in life, one becomes nearest in both.

Let us watch, then, brethren, and above all against the plague of sloth, which [the soul] is wont to bring forth from untimely security, so that in the more perfect, indeed, they recline secure in a good conscience, as though the vices were already subdued, since there is no one to frighten them; but in the less perfect, [secure] in bodily necessities, as being men for whom, while others provide everything, all things are readily at hand. Hence it is, dearly beloved, that the holy Fathers, whose steep and narrow footsteps we men, burdened and broadened, not to say fattened or grown gross, have dared to attempt, laid poverty as the corner-stone of the spiritual building, as of both its walls, dividing it in two and drawing it off to either side, that is, poverty of sense and of spirit, so that he who

sees himself slender in both may, being watchful and careful in both, be slothful in neither.

For this reason, dearly beloved, we have brought you too into this remote, dry and squalid solitude; shrewdly indeed, where you can be humble but cannot be rich. Into this solitude, I say, lying far off in the sea, having almost nothing in common with the world, so that, deprived of all worldly and almost all human comfort, you may be wholly silent to the world, you for whom, apart from this little island, the last of all lands, there is now no world anywhere. O Lord, going far off I fled, and fleeing I went far off, so that I do not know at all where I might flee and go farther off; Thou knowest. Long desirous of flight and thirsting for solitude, I have at last landed in this desert, so vast and so remote: whither some of those who had, as it were, sworn themselves with me to this expedition fell away, and very few followed: to whom the very dread of solitude is a dread, which, I confess, is sometimes not lacking to me either. There has grown up besides, O Lord, solitude upon solitude, silence upon silence. For that we may be more eloquent and more familiar with Thee alone, we are compelled to be silent with one another. But it greatly concerns us too, dearly beloved, to attend with thanksgiving and praise to the mercy of God, in which we have hoped, wrought upon us: which by its condescension has so tempered this our exile for us that to pray, to meditate and to read is free, but to labour is necessary; so that there may not be lacking what we may give to that which suffers need, namely the body, still animal. For in the sweat of our own face, rather than of hirelings or of oxen, we ought to eat our bread.

So, brethren, my fellow captives and my fellow fugitives, as the prophet says: You who remember the Lord, do not be silent, and give Him no silence (Isa. 62:6–7). Watch for Him, lest He sleep to you. But I will always cry to Thee, O Lord; and Thou, my God, be not silent to me, lest Thou be silent to me and I become like those in peril on the sea; knocked by meditation, open; questioned, answer; prayed to, hear. Which Thou wilt surely do most kindly and abundantly: unless, when Thou speakest, Thou hast turned away from our hearing. Heard, Thou hearest; heeded, Thou heedest: but he who turns away his ear so as not to hear Thy law, his prayer will be an abomination. Speak, then, Lord, for Thy servant hears; and answer him who speaks: let neither sleep while both are sailing. For if Thou sleepest to me Thy servant, the sea does not sleep, the memory of the world does not sleep. The flood and heat of thoughts does not sleep, if Thou sleepest. If I sleep to Thee, the flesh does not sleep to me. So, Lord, my refuge at last, who couldst have been my strength before, that I might not flee from Thee, roused by my sobs and the groans of my heart and by my very need, which is never silent, awake. Arise, command the winds and the sea; save me from faintness of spirit and from the storm, that there may be a great calm without and within; and let men and angels, to whom we have been made a spectacle, see, and with wonder

say: What sort of man is this, that the sea and the winds obey Him? Which, beyond doubt, brethren, will be done for us if we obey Him who lives and reigns, God, for ever.

SERMON XV. ON THE SAME FEAST III.

When Jesus went up into the boat, etc. (Matt. 8:23). O curiosities of men, and bold presumption in fragile things! What first seemed good to wretched mortals, that, as if straitened by the bounds of their own lands, they should cross the seas, entrusting their lives to fragile wood? See, the sea is before our eyes; the boat, as you see, brethren, is tossed by the waves. What, I ask, separates those wretched sailors between life and death, except wood, as we have said, fragile, and that very thin? But let us sit a little while and consider this more deeply, and, as is our custom, draw the outward things we see to inward instruction. We are already tired, and some of the hour remains. Believe me, brethren, if we compare this sea with this world, those you see on the sea do not seem to me to be in greater danger than all men in the world, or in the flesh. For our very flesh may not unfittingly be called a sea. For them at least, between the breathable and life-giving air and the thick and deadly brine, there lies something, however thin, fragile and untrustworthy; but for us nothing at all comes between the soul and the flesh, nor does anything divide the flesh from the world. Hence, from the time we came into this corruptible flesh, we surely came into death: not conceived in it before being taken up by its whirlpool; not brought into life before being plunged into death; not men before sinners; not born before shipwrecked. From the time we came into the world, at once we were unclean from the world. But while we are in the flesh, we cannot please God; while we are of the world, we cannot be of the kingdom of Christ. This shipwreck the blessed Prophet foresaw. Hence too he cries out mightily: Save me, O God, for the waters have come in even to my soul. I have come into the depth of the sea, and the storm has sunk me (Ps. 68:2–3). But you say: Have all souls, then, been sunk and imperilled in the flesh, and have all who come into the world suffered shipwreck? Certainly. For we have this too excellently signified in that general and famous flood, where the deep, like a garment, was the clothing of the earth, where the waters stood above all the mountains, so that the dry land appeared nowhere at all (Gen. 7). For that there a few living souls were saved by wood, as here too you see in the boat, is a type of the life-giving wood, or of the life-giving cross of Christ, by whose sole interposition and defence a few elect are saved; many having been called, and more not called, being sunk.

By the sole and solid wood of faith, then, the division is made for us between life and death. The cross itself, then, I would gladly take as the boat into which the Saviour went up, where He separated death from us, or us from death: from the world, the flesh and the devil He drew us away, separated us, set us free. He went up, it says. Not unwilling, not dragged, but in His strength. He went up, He sacrificed voluntarily to the Father, Himself the sacrifice

and priest, He Himself offered because He willed it. He laid down His life when, how, and for as long as He willed, He who ran with joy to the contest set before Him. Where are the grumblers and complainers, the fearful, the lukewarm, the slow, and those whom it is necessary to drag and to drive to the cross and passion of the Order and of the penance to which they are sworn and bound? His disciples, it says, followed Him (Matt. 8:23). For it is fitting that disciples follow the master, servants the lord, sons the father. For all who will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. And if an outward persecutor is lacking, the disciples of Jesus must crucify their own outer man with [his] vices and concupiscences; the inner man too must be fastened to the gibbet of the obedience of Jesus, so that in absolutely all things the humble disciple may say to his spiritual father: Abba, father, not what I will, but what you will. And if the weak flesh is weighed down, if the soul is troubled and, sorrowful, begins to fear and to be weary, yet let the spirit always be ready, to which alone judgement belongs together with God, so that it may hold down the lower things and make them obey it, while it itself obeys what is higher. This discipline of your profession, and the hidden desert, I would not undeservedly call a cross: where, as solitude separates you from others, so the discipline of obedience separates you from yourselves; you for whom nothing that pleases is permitted; who have neither ownership of property nor of body, nor freedom of work nor of rest. What is this, I ask, if not to be fastened for Christ by certain nails of obedience to the rigour of another's command, to be crucified with Christ? Now what the sleep of Christ in the little boat meant comes to mind of itself from what has been said. For to sleep in the ship is to die on the cross, according to that saying: I have slept, and have taken my rest (Ps. 3:6). For who with such ease, or power, falls asleep when he will while waking, or wakes while sleeping, as the Lord laid down His life when He willed, and when He willed took it up again? But while He sleeps the sea is lifted up, burst forth by the winds, and the disciples, troubled, fear shipwreck; while He dies the Jews, driven by demons, exult and insult; but the disciples almost despair, subdued by fear. These things, most well known in the Gospel, we have thought should be noted rather than treated at length. For what tranquillity the awakening of Christ, as resurrection from the dead, brought about first in the hearts of the apostles, and afterwards in the universal Church, the world now subdued and its prince bound: whoever does not marvel at it with joy, he in his stupor stands forth, with sorrow, as a thing to be marvelled and wondered at.

Let us consider then, brethren, how great He is, and how safe it is to sail for Him and with Him, and to suffer with Him and die with Him, so that we may fill up in ourselves, that is, in His members, what is lacking of His sufferings. For it is necessary that absolutely all the members suffer with it where the head suffers: and that the whole Christ suffer, and be consummated by suffering, and so enter into His glory. Hence whoever does not suffer with Him will by no means reign with Him. He whom the winds and the sea obey, unless He permits, as though falling asleep, no temptation, neither inner, nor outer, nor higher, nor lower

can [prevail at all]: when He rebukes, it can do nothing. For as the sacred Psalm has it: He spoke, and the stormy wind stood; and its waves were lifted up: they go up to the heavens, and they go down to the depths, etc. And He turned its storm into a breeze, and its waves were still (Ps. 106). For He is faithful, and will not suffer His own to be tempted beyond what they are able to bear; but with the temptation He makes an increase, so that if temptation grows, the strength of patience grows, and through this the crown grows, which perseverance alone receives. Therefore, brethren, whenever temptation seizes you, whether of sickness, or of poverty, or of harsher discipline, or of a more prolonged sojourning, or the weariness too of so remote a solitude and of deep silence, or of whatever kind, for they are wholly innumerable, let us by reading, meditating, praying, awaken for ourselves the sleeping Christ. Let us direct our gaze to the example of His cross and passion for us; as men suddenly bitten by the serpent below, let us contemplate the serpent hanging above (Num. 21). For as the blessed apostle Peter says: Christ suffered for us, leaving you an example, that you should follow His footsteps (I Pet. 2). For from here, most beloved, we shall take not only an example, that we may follow; but also an antidote, that we may not die; not only encouragement to endurance, but also grace for perseverance; not only a pattern for the fight, but also strength for the victory. Here that prudent and simple dove makes her nest in the clefts of the rock, in the hollows of the wall. Here the turtle-dove finds herself a nest, where she may lay her young, Thy altars, O Lord of hosts: from which so sweet an odour of myrrh and frankincense goes up, as it is written: A sacrifice to God is a troubled spirit; a contrite and humbled heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise (Ps. 50). Not ignorant of this, a certain [soul] says, knowing where she was to go and by what way: I will go to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of frankincense (Song 4). For the soul, wearied in herself and troubled within herself, began to be mindful of the Lord Jesus, that is, of the salvation of her countenance, not from the highest heaven, whither He ascended to the glory which He had with the Father before the world was made; but from the land of Jordan, that is, of the ascent, and from the little hill of Hermon, where deep calls on deep, that is, our mortification calls on the death of Christ the Lord, passion on passion, and patience too on patience, for her example and help. On this mountain of myrrh too He had set those whom Paul addresses thus: You are dead, and your life is hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3). Therefore, mindful of our Saviour, and above all of His passion and patience, wherein He showed His greatest love towards us and held forth its pattern, let us be untiring, and let us stand immovable against all kinds of temptations, companions of the sufferings for Him, that we may also be companions of the glory, He Himself granting us this, without Whom we can do nothing, and in Whom we can do all things, Who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, God, through endless ages. Amen.