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Philokalia MinistriesAuthor: Father David Abernethy
Philokalia Ministries is the fruit of 30 years spent at the feet of the Fathers of the Church. Led by Father David Abernethy, Philokalia (Philo: Love of the Kalia: Beautiful) Ministries exists to re-form hearts and minds according to the mold of the Desert Fathers through the ascetic life, the example of the early Saints, the way of stillness, prayer, and purity of heart, the practice of the Jesus Prayer, and spiritual reading. Those who are involved in Philokalia Ministries - the podcasts, videos, social media posts, spiritual direction and online groups - are exposed to writings that make up the ancient, shared spiritual heritage of East and West: The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Saint Augustine, the Philokalia, the Conferences of Saint John Cassian, the Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian, and the Evergetinos. In addition to these, more recent authors and writings, which draw deeply from the well of the desert, are read and discussed: Lorenzo Scupoli, Saint Theophan the Recluse, anonymous writings from Mount Athos, the Cloud of Unknowing, Saint John of the Cross, Thomas a Kempis, and many more. Philokalia Ministries is offered to all, free of charge. However, there are real and immediate needs associated with it. You can support Philokalia Ministries with one-time, or recurring monthly donations, which are most appreciated. Your support truly makes this ministry possible. May Almighty God, who created you and fashioned you in His own Divine Image, restore you through His grace and make of you a true icon of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Language: en Genres: Christianity, Religion & Spirituality, Spirituality Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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The Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian - Homily XX, Part II
Episode 73
Friday, 28 August, 2026
There is a sentence here from St. Isaac that overturns almost everything we are inclined to think about asceticism: You suppose these things were ordained simply to oblige you to labor. We imagine the vigil primarily as something difficult. Sleep is surrendered. The body is constrained. Psalms are prayed while the world sleeps. Nature protests and the monk remains standing before God. Looked at from the outside, it appears to be an extraordinary act of discipline. But Isaac tells us that if this is all we see, we have not yet understood the vigil. The question is not how much a man can endure for God. The question is what begins to happen within the heart of a man who desires God enough to seek Him in the night. Something is born there. This is why Isaac speaks so fiercely about the following day. The tragedy would not simply be that we failed in some ascetical rule. The tragedy would be that we received something precious and then lived carelessly enough to lose it. Seeking the One Who Has Already Come to Us The night vigil is born from desire. The monk rises because Someone is there. This is what distinguishes Christian asceticism from mere religious exertion. We are not trying to force our way toward an absent God. We are responding to the God who has already drawn near, already called us, already awakened desire within us. The Beloved has come seeking us. And eventually the heart begins seeking Him. There comes a moment in the spiritual life when prayer is no longer adequately described as obligation. The language of duty becomes too small. A man discovers within himself a hunger for silence because silence allows him to hear more clearly. He desires solitude because solitude removes the thousand competing claims upon his attention. He rises in the night because there are hours when the world has become quiet enough for the heart to recognize what it has always desired. Isaac knows this experience. This is why he speaks of Scripture as well. Reading is not merely preparation for prayer or the acquisition of religious knowledge. Scripture “sows” something within the soul. It gathers the scattered mind. It irrigates prayer. It plants the remembrance of God. It makes the understanding subtle enough to perceive things that previously escaped it. Scripture, silence, prayer, vigil—all begin converging upon the one thing necessary. Christ Himself. And once the heart begins to taste this, the whole ordering of life must change. The Day Must Become the Guardian of the Night Here Isaac becomes extraordinarily demanding. What sense is there, he asks, in sowing throughout the night only to scatter the seed during the day? We stand before God in darkness, struggling to gather the mind. Perhaps after a long while the thoughts settle. Something softens. The Name descends more deeply. Scripture opens itself in a way that cannot easily be explained. A stillness appears that we could never manufacture. Then morning comes. And we throw ourselves back into dispersion. Conversation. Curiosity. News. Opinions. Tasks that did not need to be done. Encounters that did not need to occur. Words that did not need to be spoken. The endless grazing of the mind among things. Isaac’s question is devastatingly simple: Why would you do this? Why labor through the night to gather what you willingly scatter during the day? This reveals something essential about the monastic heart. Vigil cannot be isolated from the rest of life. There cannot be one life before God and another life afterward. Isaac says that we must place “no wall of separation” between the night and the day. That phrase is astonishing. The stillness of the night is meant to flow into the day. The remembrance of God cultivated in darkness must become the hidden atmosphere in which we move beneath the light of the sun. The silence of the cell must follow us. The Name must remain near. Our encounters, our speech, our work, even the manner in which we allow ourselves to think must begin to be governed by one question: Will this help me remain with the One whom I have found? This is not narrowness. It is love. Love Makes a Man Careful When something becomes precious to us, we become careful around it. This perhaps explains Isaac’s asceticism better than almost anything else. The Fathers guard the senses because something precious has been entrusted to the heart. They guard speech because words can disturb what silence has gathered. They flee unnecessary encounters because the mind can quickly become populated by images, arguments, memories, anxieties, and judgments. They restrain curiosity because the heart cannot gaze simultaneously in every direction and remain simple before God. From outside, such a life may appear severe. From within, it is tenderness. A man in love does not experience every renunciation as deprivation. Some things simply become less interesting because something infinitely more beautiful has appeared. This is why the ascetical life is so counterintuitive. We ordinarily construct our days around what must be accomplished and then attempt to fit prayer somewhere within them. Isaac reverses the order. Order the day around what must not be lost. What if the most important thing that happened today occurred while the world was sleeping? What if the deepest work was not something we accomplished but the quiet gathering of the heart before God? What if the purpose of tomorrow were, in part, simply not to lose it? Then discernment changes. We begin asking not merely whether something is sinful, permissible, useful, interesting, or productive. We begin asking whether it preserves the heart’s capacity for God. This is a much more demanding question. “You Would Have Embraced Jesus’ Bosom” And then Isaac says something almost unbearably beautiful. Had the monk allowed his daytime life to correspond to the meditation of the night, had he placed no division between them, Isaac says that “in a short time you would have embraced Jesus’ bosom.” Here the entire meaning of vigil is unveiled. Not achievement. Not spiritual heroism. Not mastery over sleep. The bosom of Jesus. Communion. Intimacy. Rest in the Beloved. Everything else exists for this. We constrain ourselves because we desire freedom from everything that prevents love. We become silent because we desire to hear. We remain awake because we desire to see. We read because we desire the mind of Christ. We guard ourselves because we have discovered something worth guarding. Even the night itself becomes sacramental in this sense. The darkness strips things of their urgency. The machinery of the world slows. The identities we carry during the day become less important. There is less to perform and less to defend. There is simply the creature before the Creator. The beloved before the Beloved. And the Name. Lord Jesus Christ. The New Life Begins in the Night Isaac finally speaks of those who desire “knowledge of the new life.” That is what vigil opens before us. A new life. Not merely a more disciplined version of the old one. Perhaps this is why the call to stillness can become stronger rather than weaker as the spiritual life deepens. The field of vision narrows. Things once regarded as indispensable reveal themselves as secondary. Activities that once seemed important begin to feel strangely weightless. Even good works must find their proper place. Not because love has diminished. Because desire has become concentrated. One thing is necessary. The night teaches this with a clarity the day rarely permits. And so perhaps Isaac’s teaching on vigil reaches far beyond the question of how many hours we sleep. He is teaching us how to construct an entire life around the remembrance of God. Receive the night as gift. Read until the mind is gathered. Call upon the Name. Stand before God when nothing seems to be happening. Remain. And when something begins to awaken within you—some tenderness, some compunction, some clarity, some quiet awareness of the One who has been waiting for you—do not rush away from it. Guard it. Carry it into the morning. Let your speech become quieter because of it. Let your choices become simpler. Let unnecessary things fall away. Let the day itself become an extension of the vigil. For the purpose of the vigil was never simply that we should remain awake. It was that we should awaken. And having awakened, that we should refuse to return to sleep. The Fathers went into the night because they had begun to glimpse the astonishing truth hidden beneath all asceticism: God is worth seeking. God is worth waiting for. God is worth arranging an entire life around. And once the heart has begun to discover Him in the silence, wisdom consists largely in learning not to lose during the day what Love has given us in the night. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:21:49 Ambrose Little: It’s supposed to make your head hurt. 😄 00:23:34 Ryan Ngeve: Father could reading itself become a distraction from prayer 00:25:11 Maureen Cunningham: The :ight to mind 00:28:16 Bob Čihák, AZ: P 223, # 5, middle paragraph on page 00:37:28 Ben: Anna: My eldest daughter and I were chatting this morning and she remarked that some babies take longer to talk or walk if their parents are living in a constant state of stress, and it brought me to wondering how much a life of contemplative prayer would help parents to keep their peace in the midst of the trials that inevitably come. 00:41:46 Nypaver Clan: St. Charbel’s mother sang to him as a baby, “May he love fasting, may he love prayer….” 00:44:09 Nancy Pagan: Back then, raising my kids and doing my wifely chores of everyday life, while calling on the Lord constantly all day. at night by the time I sat alone to Practice, I didn’t have to search too much He was already there. However didn’t happen always. I apologize if this is confusing. 00:54:46 Julie: Father a retreat on night vigil would be great 00:57:39 jonathan: I always fell asleep during adoration, for some reason, the church has always been the most peaceful place on earth to nod off. Its like falling asleep on your parents lap. 00:59:59 jonathan: I am also guilty of falling asleep during these lessons, but no better way to fall asleep than listening to the words of the fathers. 01:01:57 Ben: Anna: Father Matteo Crawley-Boevey was promoting night adoration in the home for those not able to make it somewhere in a church. (My other question was answered by your answer to Julie) 01:07:33 Julie: So if Vigils are so pleasing to God we should be preparing our day around them for the graces receive during the day for our life and family how much more planting the seeds for the day 01:08:32 Erick Chastain: How do we deal with the effect of sleep deprivation from vigils on the increase in temptations? 01:10:06 Nypaver Clan: Reacted to "How do we deal with the effect of sleep deprivation from vigils on the increase in temptations?" with 👍 01:10:32 David Swiderski: I used to get up every night to feed both of my son's. My oldest was a baby during the first Iraq war. It was amazing I didn't think about the news, or anything the house was quite and often felt it was the "between" time. The past day ended the next had not begun. They were some of my favorite moments and when I do vigil I feel the same as when I used to hold them close to God and Love. 01:11:09 Julie: Reacted to "I used to get up every night to feed both of my son's. My oldest was a baby during the first Iraq war. It was amazing I didn't think about the news, or anything the house was quite and often felt it was the "between" time. The past day ended the next had not begun. They were some of my favorite moments and when I do vigil I feel the same as when I used to hold them close to God and Love." with ❤️ 01:11:12 Eleana Urrego: Reacted to "I used to get up every night to feed both of my son's. My oldest was a baby during the first Iraq war. It was amazing I didn't think about the news, or anything the house was quite and often felt it was the "between" time. The past day ended the next had not begun. They were some of my favorite moments and when I do vigil I feel the same as when I used to hold them close to God and Love." with ❤️ 01:11:40 Nypaver Clan: Reacted to "I used to get up every night to feed both of my son's. My oldest was a baby during the first Iraq war. It was amazing I didn't think about the news, or anything the house was quite and often felt it was the "between" time. The past day ended the next had not begun. They were some of my favorite moments and when I do vigil I feel the same as when I used to hold them close to God and Love." with ❤️ 01:13:58 Ben: Anna: When is a vigil a vigil? After 10pm? before 4am? Is getting up an hour early a vigil? 01:14:42 Jesssica Imanaka: Replying to "Anna: When is a vigi..." Great questions. Thanks! 01:18:19 David Swiderski: Thank you Father may God bless you, your mother, Ren and her Husband and everyone in this group. 01:18:29 jonathan: God bless father! 01:18:29 Jesssica Imanaka: Reacted to "Thank you Father may..." with ❤️ 01:18:29 Nancy Pagan: Thank U 01:18:30 Maureen Cunningham: Thank you 01:18:37 Nancy Pagan: Hehe
