Isaac of Stella, Sermons

sowed the Word of God, when He illumined it not only within by the gift of the rational soul, which enlightens every man coming into this world, but also without by the precept of discipline, saying: Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat (Gen. 2). First, then, He sowed in heaven, secondly in paradise. Here, therefore, man received the word with joy and stood for an hour; but when the heat of temptation boiled up from the woman who had been seduced, he consented most wickedly to her who had been ill persuaded and had first persuaded him: and obeying the voice of the woman rather than God, as he had already withered within, at the root of humility, from the moisture of charity, so he quickly faded from the greenness of outward obedience. And thirdly God the Sower went on to sow through Moses in the desert; but as He sows, some fell among thorns. For the Jews, in the observance of the commandments and the rewards of observance, always attending only to temporal and earthly things, while they gape only after carnal things, choke all the fruit of spiritual understanding in the law. Yet because, as it is said, unrelenting labour conquers all (Virgil, Georgics book IV, line 145), still a fourth time, by Himself and afterwards through the apostles, this Sower, the Son of God made son of man, went on to sow His seed, Himself, in the world, where the remnant of Israel and the fullness of the gentiles, like good ground, received the word with the sword; and they bore fruit in the endurance of sun and cold. First, then, it was sown in heaven, secondly in paradise, thirdly in the desert, fourthly in the whole world: Go, He says, into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature (Mark 16). First in the angels, secondly in the first human beings, thirdly in the Jews, fourthly in the gentiles. First by the precept of nature, secondly by the precept of discipline, thirdly by the commandment of the letter, fourthly by the Gospel of grace. First the word in reason, secondly in voice, thirdly in written character, fourthly in flesh. The Word, he says, was made flesh, and dwelt among us (John 1). First wholly within to reason, secondly without to the ears, thirdly to the eyes as well, fourthly to the hands also. What we have heard, he says, and have seen, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life (1 John 1). Thus, then, through the whole time of the world this distinction of the field has been found, and this difference of hearers; thus indeed when the Word Himself, present in His own person, spoke Himself in the flesh. And today too, when we or others commonly scatter the seed of the same Word, there are found among the hearers some who spurn it, some who reject it, some who choke it, some who bear fruit in patience: which both the angel could do in constancy and the first man in obedience alone. The first, then, do not conceive; the second miscarry; the third smother the living offspring; the fourth nourish it with motherly devotion and care. May Christ our Lord grant us this by the inward sowing of Himself. Amen.

SERMON XXVII. ON QUINQUAGESIMA SUNDAY I.

Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of man shall be delivered up, etc. (Luke 18). Brethren, may the God of our salvation make our journey prosperous. For behold,

we too go up to Jerusalem. For this is why we have come down to this island, the last of all lands, beyond which, as the prophet says (Isa. 18), there is no other, small and hidden in the great sea: that we may go up to Jerusalem. Yet not to that which is earthly and is in bondage with her children, but to the heavenly one, which is above and free, the mother of us all, where no one serves, but all are kings. For that whole city, with her children who are kings and with her Bridegroom the King, the King's Son, reigns as Queen for ever. For as birds, to raise themselves into the air on their wings, press themselves more deeply with their whole body upon the ground where they rest; and the same is the art of nature, or nature of art, or rather natural art, of men and of beasts, that when they wish to leap on high they bend down lower to the earth, settling as it were with their whole body: so we too, aspiring to heaven, have turned aside from the common world: gaping after fullness, we have cast away riches; seeking honours, we have been cast out like the refuse of this world: we who seemed something in the world, and in the community of the brethren too were reckoned something, that we might truly be something, behold, we have been brought to nothing. For what esteem of us, not to say, but even what memory of us is there now in the world? For given over to the world's forgetfulness, as dead from its heart, would that we too might wholly forget it, and that it might die in our hearts, out of our hearts! so that, as in place, so in mind each may say: The world is dead to me, and I to the world. Would that, forsaking with our hands the things that are behind, so forgetting them with our hearts, we may stretch ourselves forward to the things before with all our thought and longing, and, drawn back after the manner of rams, may be borne more strongly towards the things that lie before! Truly, it is steep, where we strive to climb; narrow too, where we try to penetrate: therefore it will grant [the need] that we be unencumbered and slender. For it is hard for one laden to creep up on high, and for one puffed up to enter through narrow ways. That riches should not puff a man up, nor cares weigh him down, nor surfeiting burden him, can be the work of a divine miracle; to human weakness it is impossible, but with God all things are possible. Therefore, then, there follows:

And the Son of man shall be delivered to the gentiles to be mocked and crucified. Now our old man, the son of the old man, was once crucified with the new Son of man, as the blessed Apostle says: Our old man is crucified together with Him (Rom. 6). Hence, beloved, it must still be crucified in each of us, while the sixth day of the week is still being kept. For though in body and soul I am personally one man, yet in me I find two, and sons of two: the old and the new, the earthly and the heavenly, a son of man and a son of God; a man, son of man, by carnal generation, where what is born of the flesh is flesh; and a god, son of God, by spiritual generation, where what is born of the spirit is spirit, or god from God, according as He gave men power to become sons of God. For reborn of the Holy Spirit and of a virgin mother, which is the Church, how are we born but in a wonderful, new and divine way,

wonderfully made new out of old, just out of sinners, spiritual out of carnal, gods out of men, such as are born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God? For just as the eternal God, made a new man, not out of nothing nor out of something alien, but from the old man, yet not by a man, but of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, appeared without any sin as the son of man, so the old son of the old man, he too not out of nothing nor out of something alien, but from the old man that is himself, not by a man, but of the same Spirit and of the virgin mother the Church, is reborn a son of God unto the remission of all sins. But this one lies hidden within us, as He lay hidden in Himself; outwardly, however, there shows in us the earthly image of the earthly, the old of the old, in the reality of sinful flesh, just as it showed also in Him, but in the likeness of sinful flesh. For the conception and birth which He received for us, from us and in us, He conferred also on us, so that, conceived and born in like manner, we may in like manner live, die and rise again. For he who says that he abides in Him ought himself to walk as He walked. He went up, therefore, to Jerusalem, that the son of man who appeared outwardly might be handed over, scourged and crucified, and on the third day be raised by the Son of God who lay hidden within; the man who is son of man and the God who is Son of God being nevertheless personally one: this, however, by nature, that by grace; this first, that afterwards.

And so, since I too, as has been said, am personally one man, and by nature a son of man, whose image appears outwardly, but by the grace of God a son of God, a god in the inner image and likeness, not without reason did I say above that I am one and twin, and that in me, one man, two sons of two fathers are contained. So Abraham had two sons in one house, one from the bondwoman and one from the free woman (Gal. 4): the former earlier, the latter later. For what is animal always comes first, then what is spiritual. And just as there, according to the Apostle (ibid.), the elder persecuted the younger (Sarah, however, saw the son of the bondwoman playing with her son, not persecuting him [Gen. 21]), so too in me today. The elder persecutes the younger, that is, the earlier the later, the outer the inner, the animal the spiritual, Ishmael Isaac, the son of the bondwoman the son of the free woman, the son of man the Son of God; but by playing, by flattering, by caressing, by enticing to uses that are shameful and unlawful, not due to him, and unseemly. For thus does the flesh fight and lust against the spirit, not by driving it away from itself but by drawing it to itself; not by casting it off but by enticing it: Each one, says the Apostle James, is tempted by his own concupiscence, drawn away and enticed (Jas. 1). These are those deceitful kisses of an enemy, far worse than the quarrels or the blows of a friend. The son of man in me, therefore, hates the Son of God and persecutes him, that is, the flesh the spirit, with deadly blandishments and soothings, according to that saying: A man's enemies are those of his own household (Matt. 10). But the son of God, who am I, new in me within the old, loves him with whom he quarrels, namely the son of man,

whom he beats, that he may amend him; scourges, that he may chastise him; hands over, that he may set him free: for if the Son of God sets him free, the son of man will be free indeed; and if he scourges, he receives; if he rebukes, he loves; at last he hands him over to passion and death, but so as to raise him on the third day from passibility and mortality. In all things he pursues him without mercy even to death, with scourges and nails, lance and thorns, blows and spittle, reproaches and insults, all of them, however, not deadly but saving; not out of hatred but out of love, out of tenderness, out of counsel, until he slays him utterly, and there comes to pass what Sarah says: Cast out the bondwoman and her son (Gen. 21; Gal. 4): so that the son of the free woman of the promise alone, and of grace, may reign as son of God in the father's house, and God may be all in all, full of peace. To the vision of this peace in us, then (for this is what Jerusalem signifies), as we go up, beloved, the Son of man must be handed over, namely our outer man by the inner, and not without some leading astray, to foreign nations, that is, to the disciplines and strictnesses of the rule, to abstinence and vigils, to ashes and haircloth, to labours and silence, to poverty, to lowliness, and to the rule of another altogether, that by these he may be scourged and crucified, until he is slain at the root from his own sense and will and from the habit of his old life; so that, dead to sin, he may live to justice in us with the Son of God, that is, that we ourselves, utterly dead to sin through penance and raised to new life, may live to justice.

And so, beloved, let us be cruel and hard to ourselves, but to our outer selves, lest we offend a judge cruel and hard to inner and outer alike. If, he says, we accuse ourselves (1 Cor. 11) truthfully, judge strictly, condemn harshly, we shall not fear another accuser: nor shall we offend another judge, nor endure another torturer. Why do we seek delights or rest? We are on the cross; we were in the world. We are in hell, but a hell of mercy, not of wrath; we shall be in heaven. In the world we sinned, here we are punished, there we shall rest: there in delights, here in pains; there in glory, here in squalor; here in purgation, there in repose. What do we seek? A pleasant hell? Why then did we leave a pleasant and delightful world? Let our abbot be a father of souls, a torturer of bodies. Let him be father to the Son of God in us and his nourisher, tutor and guardian, so long as he is a little child who is to be heir and who is to abide in the house for ever; but to the son of man let him be scourger, betrayer, seducer, despoiler, and at last crucifier and burier. But if he himself is negligent of us, we are abbots to ourselves, slayers of the son of man but nourishers of the Son of God, that he may grow and become very great, as is read of Isaac, and as the Apostle says: Until Christ be formed in us, and we meet unto the perfect man, unto the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ (Gal. 4): Who lives, etc.

SERMON XXVIII. ON THE SAME FEAST, II.

When the Lord Jesus foretold His passion and resurrection to His disciples privately, as follows,

they themselves did not understand the word. And perhaps He spoke to them in secret under this mystery, because what He says is hidden from them. The word, it says, was hidden from them, and they understood none of these things (Luke 18). I too certainly understand nothing of the things I said at such length yesterday about the crucifixion of the son of man in me; what all my exercise and continual labour mean, I do not know; what end they will have, I do not know; what they portend, by what name they are called before Him who has no need of our goods, I do not understand. For often what is lofty among men is abominable before God. That our merits are signs of rewards we do not doubt, nor that all we do are, as it were, prophetic voices, foretelling what is to come upon us, rewards or punishments. For it will be rendered to each according to his works (Rev. 22). And: We must all be presented before the judgement seat of Christ, that each may receive according as he has done in the body (2 Cor. 5). Yet seeing publicans and harlots enter the kingdom of God, and prophets and virgins and workers of wonderful signs shut out, and those also who bore the burden of the day and the heat receiving nothing more than those who worked one hour, and that later, I confess that I do not understand, in all that I do, what I am doing, and that, though I have done all good things and endured evils, I do not know whether I am worthy of love or of hatred (Eccl. 9). O word exceedingly secret, too deeply hidden! which can neither be kept silent nor known. Works are words; all things cry out, and nothing is without a voice: but what the end of the sentence is, we have not yet heard. Therefore we do not understand what all things mean, what they portend. The meaning hangs on the end of the sentence; every utterance is held in suspense right to the end; it is to the end that men acclaim, to the end that they reply, by the end that they judge; before the end all things are hanging and are placed nowhere. Before the end, things wrongly said can be corrected, things omitted supplied, things superfluous cut away, things well said corrupted. The end concludes all things, places all things, perfects all things, so that before the end what anything is cannot be defined except rashly. So all uncertain things are kept for what comes after: but wherever the tree falls, whether to the right or to the left, there it will be; whether to the south or to the north (Eccl. 11), there is its place before the Lord, to Whom nothing is past, nothing future. All that we live is a point, or a moment; all that we do, so diversely, so changeably, is one work, whose end the Lord awaits and judges. The Lord, it says, will judge the ends of the earth (1 Sam. 2). Beginnings and middles are movable, wandering in place, and therefore free from judgement; the end places all things, the end in which all things are placed. He who perseveres to the end will be saved. For the justice of many, long and much laboured at, will pass into oblivion because of an unlike end. Such men, because they did not carry it through, did nothing; or rather, what they carried through and did not finish, that alone they did; but the rest, begun and not done, because they left it, they deserved to be left. So

everything that is born of God does not sin (1 John 3), because it does not sin to the end. So the spirit of the Lord, from the day of David's anointing and onward, did not depart from him (1 Sam. 16), because it returned, because it held to the end. The Lord too prayed for Peter, that his faith might not fail, and speaking to him in this sense, says: And you, once converted, strengthen your brethren (Luke 22). You see that the faith of the apostle, which failed so far that at a maidservant's voice he three times denied knowing Him Whom he had followed for three years, is said not to have failed at all, because, once turned back to Him, he did not fail away from it to the end. Because of all these things and the like, I said that I do not understand that very thing which I do concerning myself, or suffer in myself, but that all that is mine is altogether hidden from me. You must therefore be asked, good Jesus, to work before us some sure and undoubted sign, by which You may make us sure about things in doubt, as before Your disciples, still blind in mind, You gave light to one blind in body, so that through the wonder they saw in the present they might believe without doubt, concerning doubtful things, the future that they heard of.

When, it says, Jesus drew near to Jericho, a certain blind man sat by the wayside, etc. Jericho, as they say, is interpreted "moon". When, then, the seeing one had drawn near to the moon, the blind man drew near to the sun: the one to darkness, for the moon too has some darkness; the other to the sun, which is wholly light, and in it there is no darkness at all; the one to waning, the other to increase; the one to mutability, the other to stability; and, if it may be so said, the one to folly, the other to wisdom. For the fool changes like the moon, but the wise man abides like the sun (Sir. 27). And to settle it in a few words: as far as God the Son of God was emptied in the Lord Jesus, that He might become man, so far was man the son of man exalted, that he might become God. For when the time fixed before all times for this holy and saving Incarnation had drawn near, the Godhead, standing and seeing humanity blind and sitting in darkness, commanded it to be brought to Him by the holy angels, and gave it light from Himself, lest, blind and sluggish in mind, it should beg out of want outside the way: rather that, full of light and strong, on the very way, from the fullness of the light that enlightens, exulting in it even bodily, it might praise and glorify God, brought back at last to that for which it was once made. But since we believe that the works of the Saviour, as they were done for us for redemption, so were written for us for instruction (done for healing, written for teaching: For whatever things were written were written for our teaching, Rom. 15), following the course of the exposition above, it may be found that each one of us is at once seeing and blind, walking and lying, according as the preceding sermon showed us to be paired and twin. For our mother the Hittite, when she went away into the counsel of the ungodly, that is, of her own concupiscence, and of the serpent's hiss, cast our father the Amorite outside the way. For when he obeyed the voice of the woman rather than that of God, he lost the way indeed, that is, obedience itself, by which alone one truly goes to life.

We therefore, a portion of the substance of both, have ever since lived badly with our mother, and with our father lain worse;

lain; seeing and going badly on the way, lying and begging worse outside the way. Yet when the seeing one draws near to Jericho, the blind man breathes again towards the light. In short: when our inner man, through disobedience to God above him and obedience to the woman below him, was blinded for understanding, the outer was given light for concupiscence; but when the outer is weakened in concupiscence and draws near to its waning, the inner grows strong for understanding and is led to its increase. The inner, indeed, is in a manner the man, and the image of God; the outer, the woman and the image of the man. Before sin, indeed, the eyes of both are not said to have been opened (Gen. 3), but the man alone saw what he should call all things, as the spiritual man who judges all things. But the outer is animal, even before sin, and has neither the vision of the Creator nor discernment of the creature, as the inner has, who contemplates the Creator with the eye of understanding and examines the creature with the eye of reason: and with the one of these put out by the beam of disobedience, the other troubled by the mote of obedience, raging and blind, lying outside the way and begging, he laments thus: My iniquities have taken hold of me, and I was not able to see (Ps. 39). And elsewhere: My eye is troubled with fury (Ps. 6). And as if you were asking why he lay there and did not at least walk on blind, he says: My heart is troubled, my strength has left me, and the light of my eyes, it too is not with me (Ps. 37). And as for the eyes of both being said to be opened after sin, what is it, except that with the outer, through ambition and curiosity and delight, the inner is drawn out, made carnal with the flesh, animal with the animal, blind towards God, keen-sighted towards the world, dull towards knowledge, sharp towards concupiscence? The man who has lost his own eyes uses only the woman's eyes along with her. For shame! The woman has become the head of the man, the wife the leader of the husband. So the wise man's eyes are in his head (Eccl. 2): so the eyes of the foolish man are in the head of his woman (Prov. 17), and through her in the ends of the earth. For our outer man, son of man only, is of the earth and speaks of the earth; earthly, he handles and ponders earthly things, takes delight in earthly things; he sees these, savours these, in which and from which he has sprung. But the inner, what he once could discern of the Creator with his own eyes, approach with his feet, grasp with his hand, now, blind and weak, he sits and begs, namely the knowledge of truth from the creature, while through the things that are made he searches for their Maker, by the outcry, as it were, of his own study and by a teacher, while outside he seeks from a master what he bears within, written by God; nor will he be able to come to the light of truth unless he has withdrawn from the darkness of vanity; nor to arrive at the increase of the one unless he has drawn near to the waning of the other. For the moon, which is what Jericho is interpreted, is not unfittingly put for the waning of the concupiscence of the inner man. When, then, and as far as the outer man wanes from his concupiscence, by which he lusts against the spirit, then and so far does the inner make progress in his own desire against the flesh; and when the flesh draws near to the darkness of its light,