Isaac of Stella, Sermons

the greatest: therefore the whole is given or forgiven in the Holy Spirit; but He Himself, with all His use, through the Son, through Whom in the Spirit all things are given or forgiven by the Father, as it were by the principal and fountain goodness, from Whom.... And so, brethren, giving thanks to God the Trinity for this His light and illumination, let us for the rest ask the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit that it be revealed to us why He willed to go out, He Who lacked nothing within, to Whom nothing could be added from outside; and to sow what, kept within, could not fail, nor, sown outside, be multiplied. But here, wearied, let us rest for today, to speak tomorrow from another beginning, which the eternal Giver and Gift, the Holy Spirit, will deign to give: to Whom be honour and dominion for ever. Amen.

SERMON XXV. ON THE SAME FEAST VIII.

As we search out, beloved, the final cause of the universe, it first occurs to us that the Almighty could not have made anything from necessity, nor He Who has all things from desire, nor Wisdom from curiosity, nor Truth from vanity; but by a gratuitous will, and by a certain gift of His own bounty; and that He did not conceive it newly in His mind, but had from eternity in His mind and will what at length He accomplished in the work. For since He is of such a nature as can in some measure be grasped and shared, and exults in Himself, from Himself, with an unbroken, stable and ineffable joy, it belonged not only to His natural goodness but also to the nature of joy itself to will to have a sharer in so great and so delightful a good. Nor is it, as often in us, a fault of curiosity or boasting not to be able not to communicate an inward joy to another, and the greater it is, the less to be able to hide it: but it is the grace of bounty itself, and the nature of goodness, and the gratuitous and natural good of gladness too, to will to pour itself out upon many, or into them, and freely to gather them into a share of itself. For bounty can never be avaricious, nor goodness envious, nor charity idle; nor does gladness seek to be hidden or solitary. And so, when He willed, the undivided Trinity, which never began to will, undividedly made from nothing a nature capable of Himself, fit to share His delight, pleasure, peace and joy: namely the rational mind, after His own image. Because there was nothing but nothing from which He might first make something, by a gratuitous bounty, as has been said, and not by a necessity of His nature, as some have said, as though He could not be idle, but by natural goodness, only because He willed. Happy, nevertheless, the nature that compels to do good: for what is compelled by natural goodness to do good, what does it do but do it freely and gladly? Natural goodness, then, was the cause of the work, and the inward delight of the mind: the work, I say, of the rational spirit, and that spirit itself [the cause] of all corporeal nature. For the whole corporeal nature serves the rational spirit for its instruction, and in a manner speaks of its own principle, and nothing is without a voice. Therefore the rational spirit was made for this: that it might rejoice and delight together with God in God, and in all things in Him alone. Rational indeed it was made, so that

it might search out God Himself in itself and in all things; concupiscible, that it might love and desire Him alone; irascible, that it might reject all things opposed to this contemplation and delight, as it is written: that he may know, namely through rationality, to refuse, through irascibility, the evil, and to choose, through concupiscibility, the good (Isa. 7).

The one and highest good of the created rational spirit, then, and the natural end of its rational and moral pursuit or exercise, is that for which it was made: namely, to contemplate and to delight in God. And the way to this dwelling is to search out and to imitate, to inquire and to desire: to desire by inquiring, and to inquire by desiring. And its only sin and evil is the turning away from this conversion to God, and from the search and the desire, so that, having conceived it, something else is sought and loved. Come, brethren, why do we run through many things and anxiously seek what we find with difficulty? Short is what is enough; near is what is perfect. It is joy, it is love, delight, sweetness, vision, light, brightness. That is what God requires of us, that for which God made us. True order and religion is to do that for which we were made. Let us contemplate that than which nothing is more beautiful, let us delight in that than which nothing is sweeter; let us be wholly angry at what hinders these things. Let us refer here all our exercise, of labour as of rest, of speech as of silence. For what is not referred here, and is not done by us for the sake of that for which we were made by God, so that the cause and intention of His work and of ours be the same, is neither virtue nor deserving of reward. For there and thence, and that, will be the reward of our deeds, where and whence and what was the gift that we should be made. That is our beginning and end: a final beginning and a principal end. A beginning perfect, on account of the end; an end infinite, on account of the unbroken beginning. For what always ends where it begins, and always begins where it ends, can neither lack progress nor incur defect. In every habit, in every place, in every person, religion pure and unspotted before God and the Father is this; this alone is to be followed, and for its sake to keep oneself unspotted from this world (Jas. 1). But since in practice it is difficult to live in the world and not be defiled by it, for this reason too one must flee from the world. Yet, since only a rational love and care for one's neighbour holds one back blamelessly, or even laudably, from this so sweet and lovable leisure of contemplation, in which every power of reason is to be exercised and every effort of affection fixed, the Apostle is believed to have inserted into the tenor of the sentence above: to visit orphans and widows in their tribulation (ibid.). And so let all our discipline, if it is true, always labour at contemplation and delight, or love: either in the free leisure of God alone, or in the ordered business of our neighbour. For only the solicitude undertaken by ordered charity towards our neighbour bends the mind excusably, and sometimes even profitably, away from this unbroken and watchful contemplation. For that we allow ourselves the labour of bodily exercise, so that there be no lack

wherewith we may supply what is needed to the one that suffers need, namely to the body itself, still animal, we think not altogether foreign to charity towards our neighbour. For what is nearer to the soul than its own body, which it not only ought to love but cannot hate? Since, then, the soul, being still a living soul and not yet a life-giving spirit, is not able of itself alone to give it life, it must provide for it in reasonable order whence it may be helped from outside towards what of itself it is less fully able to do from within. For the spirit is debtor to the flesh, to give it life, not to live according to it. Every care, then, or delight that is not in God alone, except, as has been said, charity towards our neighbour for God's sake, is superfluous and adulterous, and foreign to the cause for which we are men: turned away from God's purpose towards us, and from our duty towards Him.

See then, brethren, with what fervour of spirit and with what tireless effort we need, putting away the thoughts that are without understanding, from which the Holy Spirit of discipline withdraws, fleeing deceit (Wis. 1), to fix our gaze on that deifying light which enlightens to truth and inflames to charity: you who, that you might do this more freely and with more leave, have laid even the anxieties of the animal body upon another. If labour is forbidden them, anxiety is taken away, care is forbidden. For anxiety necessarily troubles, as it is written: You are anxious and troubled about very many things (Luke 10); and care weighs down. Hence that saying of the Lord: Let not your hearts be weighed down with surfeiting and drunkenness and the cares of this world (Luke 21). Anxiety lifts up badly, care presses down worse, acedia dissolves worst of all. For the mind slothful in leisure loses the fruit of action and by no means finds the light of contemplation. Again, pressed down by cares, it never raises itself on high; troubled, it cannot be serene. For a heart that is not tranquil can in no way be serene; and if not serene, not clear either. But the heart of the contemplative must be clear through and through, like a mirror, or very limpid and still water, so that in it and through it, as in a mirror, through a mirror, the mind may see its own image, made after the image of God. For this, then, the heart of one who desires to behold God must be cleansed, not only of harmful and superfluous cares, but even of necessary ones; and roused by reading, meditation and prayer. For blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God (Matt. 5): which may He Himself deign to grant us. Amen.

SERMON XXVI. ON THE SAME FEAST IX.

Made by God through the natural gift of His communicable joy, the rational mind, as it first and alone receives His image, so is capable of knowledge and love [of Him]. For it was made capable of the receivable Godhead through reason and will, that is, the faculty of understanding and of loving, as through certain vessels and instruments of its natural condition, which, as the first gift of grace creates them, that they may be, so the second fills them, that they be not empty, or badly filled. And they are badly filled when steeped either in erroneous sense or in perverse love;

but by God alone, from Whom and for Whom they were created, they can be well filled, though they cannot grasp the whole. For God is greater, says the Apostle, than our heart, and knows all things (1 John 3). And after Him, as nothing is prior to the created rational spirit, so nothing is greater. Hence, even if it can be poured into by something else, it cannot at all be filled. Therefore the spirit that desires anything besides God alone, the more it drinks, the more it thirsts; and while it seeks sufficiency outside God, in its desire whether for money, or praise, or power and the like, it cannot be sated: for it is itself greater than all that it drinks in. As, then, it is a vessel into which the wisdom and power of God pours itself, to flood it with the knowledge and love of Him, so it is also a field in which the same wisdom and power sows itself, so that from such seed there may spring up the light of knowledge and the fervour of love. By the first grace, then, the field, which did not yet exist, is created fit to receive and multiply the seed: that is, as we have said, the natural faculty of understanding and loving, of which free choice in the rational mind consists. And by the second grace the seed of the word is now scattered into the field of free choice itself: for thus first the lamp is made that can burn; afterwards the fire is applied by which it is kindled. And so the seed of the word is sown in this field according to the nature of the field, within and without: without, the whole exterior creation speaks to the rational mind of the Creator and makes a word of teaching; within, its own inmost rational nature: and above both, grace divinely inspired sometimes speaks more loftily. Yet always, as the eye of the flesh, though it has from nature the faculty of seeing, and the ear of hearing, never attains of itself by itself the effect of sight and hearing except by the benefit of external light and sound; so neither will the rational spirit, though by the first gift of creating grace it is fit to see the deifying light, in any way attain the effect of that vision unless illumined by the ray of the higher light. For as the eye does not see the sun except in the light of the sun, so the mind will be able to see the true and divine Sun and Light only in His light. In Thy light, says the Prophet, we shall see light (Ps. 35). Wherefore, as there goes forth from the sun that by which the sun itself can be seen, and without which it cannot, and yet what goes forth from it does not leave the sun, and shows it; so the Word, abiding in God, which goes forth from Him, irradiates the mind, so that first of all it may see the very flash of the light without which it would see nothing; and see Him too from Whom it flashes, neither leaving nor left. For as the eye of the flesh first sees the light that shines from the sun, and in it sees the rest, and following the ray upward sees the sun itself, whence it goes out, whence the ray gleams that illumines it, as by its own gift and natural benefit: so from that inaccessible Light goes forth a brightness which the mind sees first of all, without which it would see nothing; and it carries it upward, to show whence it goes forth, and to reveal the front of its own origin: which yet it would by no means do, did it not go forth from there.

For this reason, then, it goes forth from there, that it may illuminate; for this reason it illuminates,

because it goes forth; so that its natural benefit is one thing, its natural principle another; but both from the one fountain of light, whence it shines in order to illuminate, and whence it illuminates because it shines; and yet it is not first light, afterwards shining, and thirdly illuminating: but at once, because it is light, since it is light, by shining, as far as in it lies, it always illuminates; and yet something is not at once illuminated. For as an eye that could see, if it were created in the light of this sun, would at once be illumined by the ray of the present sun without any change in itself, and without any fault or alteration in the sun could at once be darkened by mischance, or wholly blinded, so that being created, illuminated and darkened would be almost indifferent as to time: so the created mind, which was not, is at once flooded from the light in the light, which was always everywhere, by its presence, and nothing new arises in it; and without any shadowing of it, it is at once darkened in the spirit that flees the light. Thus, no doubt, a face turned to the sun is lit up, and, the sun remaining unmoved, turned away it is darkened. Going forth, then, the Sower of light and of the Word, Himself Light and Word, sowed the first seed from the Father's bosom freely, that is, by the gift of the Holy Spirit, into the field of the angelic nature, when He shone into it within through natural reason and instructed it, as it were, by the precept of nature. But as He sows, in some the seed fell by the wayside. For the way by which the Creator's benefit comes to the creature is His charity and love alone, and it is gratuitous; and the way by which the rational creature's homage ascends to the Creator is likewise charity and love of Him alone, and it is owed. When, then, as has been said, He had first sown in the angels, some, turning from themselves to God with thanksgiving, sending the root of humility downward and bearing the fruit of obedience upward, as it is written: What shall be saved of Judah shall send down its root downward and bear fruit upward (Isa. 37), others, turned to themselves, became vain in their thoughts, and esteeming themselves wise, they became fools. For their foolish heart was darkened, as of those turned away from the light. For they did not glorify, as was fitting, Him by Whom they were illuminated, or by Whom they were sown as a field; but lifting themselves up, they begot from themselves proud, vain and lofty thoughts, robbers of light because of humility, trampling the minds that bore them, snatching the blessed seed from the heart, lest they should bear the fruit of charity from the root of humility in obedience. Such are those who stood in the truth not even for an hour: for whom, as we have said, being created, illuminated and blinded was almost indifferent as to time. For their own malice blinded those whom creating grace illuminated.

In these, then, the wise Sower is not unaware that the seed has perished; yet, eager for the harvest, He has not ceased from sowing still. But as He sows, some fell upon the rock (Luke 8). This rocky ground is human nature in Adam: which, having found itself out in David and now knowing itself, says to the Lord: My soul is to Thee as earth without water (Ps. 142). This by a second sowing