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The Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian - Homily XX

Philokalia Ministries

There are passages in St. Isaac that can sound almost impossible to modern ears. His words on vigil are among them. “Do not imagine,” he tells us, “that among all the works of monastics there is any practice greater than night vigil.” We hear such words and immediately think of sleep deprivation, bodily exhaustion, long hours of psalmody, standing in darkness while the rest of the world sleeps. We wonder whether such a practice belongs to another age, another kind of human being, perhaps even another understanding of the spiritual life. But this is precisely where we can misunderstand Isaac. Vigil becomes incomprehensible when it is separated from desire. If we begin with asceticism, vigil appears severe. If we begin with love, it begins to make sense. The lover understands the night. There are moments when we do not want an evening to end because we are with someone we love. There are conversations in which we cease looking at the clock. A mother remains awake beside a sick child without calculating the sacrifice. Someone awaiting the return of the beloved listens for every sound in the night. Love changes our experience of time. And so it is with the saints. They did not remain awake because they despised sleep. They remained awake because they had discovered Someone for whom it was worth losing sleep. This is the secret of vigil. “That I May Be With You” The Fathers understood the spiritual life far less as the fulfillment of religious obligations than as the awakening of desire. Beneath fasting, silence, solitude, tears, prostrations, psalmody, and vigil lies a single movement of the heart: I want God. Not merely His gifts. Not consolation. Not religious experiences. Not even virtue considered as a possession. God Himself. This is why St. Isaac describes the mind of the one who keeps vigil as becoming light and buoyant, taking flight “as it were on wings.” The ascetic is not merely staying awake. Something within him is being released. During the day the mind is scattered among a thousand things. We speak. We answer. We plan. We remember. We anticipate. We defend ourselves. We attend to necessities. Even when these things are good, the heart becomes divided among them. Then comes the night. The voices diminish. The demands cease. The world grows quiet. And the soul discovers again the One whom it has been seeking beneath everything else. This is why vigil was so precious to the Desert Fathers and remains so in the teaching of the great modern elders. It creates a space in which the heart can become undivided. The night says: There is nowhere else I need to go. There is nothing I need to accomplish. There is no one before whom I need to justify myself. There is only God. And I am here. The Recovery of Wonder Yet there is something even deeper in Isaac’s teaching. Vigil is not merely about attention. It is about wonder. Isaac tells us that the one who perseveres in vigil begins to “gaze upon” heavenly realities. His language is deliberately extravagant: the soul comes to possess “the eyes of Cherubim.” What does this mean? It means that purification changes how we see. The tragedy of fallen existence is not simply that we commit sins. It is that we gradually cease to be astonished by God. We become accustomed to everything. Accustomed to the Gospel. Accustomed to the Eucharist. Accustomed to the name of Jesus. Accustomed to the Cross. Accustomed even to the astonishing claim that the Creator of heaven and earth desires communion with us. And when wonder disappears, desire soon weakens with it. The Fathers knew that the heart must be awakened again. This is one reason vigil has such power. In the silence of the night, familiar words can suddenly become new. “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God…” We may have spoken those words ten thousand times. Yet in the stillness something can happen. Jesus. The Name becomes luminous. God is here. God sees me. God desires me. God has called me into existence that I might share His li