Saint Isaiah the Solitary: 27 Chapters on Guarding the Intellect
Of Saint Isaiah the Solitary
27 chapters on guarding the intellect
1 The intellect possesses a natural anger against the passions, and without this anger there will be no purity in a person, unless he is angry at all that the enemy sows in him. When Job acquired such anger, he reproached his enemies, saying: “[The dishonoured and disgraced,] I disdained to set them with the dogs of my flock” (Job 30:1). He who wishes to attain natural anger cuts off all his own desires until he arrives at the natural state of the intellect.
2 When you resist the enemy and see him grow weak within you and flee away, let not your heart rejoice. For the malice of the spirits follows behind them. They prepare a host fiercer than the first, leave it outside the city and command it to lie hidden. And when you resist, advancing against them, they will flee from you enfeebled; but if your heart is exalted because it has driven them off, and you go out from the city, then some will come from behind and others from in front, and the wretched soul will find itself among them with nowhere left to take refuge. The city is prayer; the assault upon the enemies is the denial of them in Christ Jesus; and the going out from the city is wrath.
3 Let us therefore stand, beloved, in the fear of God, preserving and fulfilling the active power of the virtues, not letting our conscience stumble, but watching over ourselves in the fear of God until it too is set free together with us, so that there may be unity between us and it. And let it be our guardian, showing us everything over which we stumble. But if we do not heed it, it will withdraw from us and abandon us, and then we shall fall into the hands of our enemies, who never withdraw from us. This is why our Master taught us, saying: “Make friends quickly with your adversary while you are still on the way with him, lest the adversary hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the officer, and you be thrown into prison” (Mt. 5:25). The adversary is the conscience, for it resists the person who wishes to do the will of his flesh; and when the person does not listen, it hands him over to the enemies.
4 When God sees that the intellect obeys Him with all its strength and has no other help but Him, He strengthens it, saying: “Fear not, Jacob, my little worm — feeble Israel” (Isa. 41:14). And again: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow you; when you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour” (Isa. 43:1–3).
5 When the intellect hears such encouragement, it stands against the enemies, saying: “Who is he that wars against me? Let him come out to meet me. And who contends with me? Let him draw near to me. Behold, the Lord is my helper; who shall harm me? Behold, all of you shall be scattered like a garment eaten by moths.”
6 When your heart hates sin with all its powers, and overcomes and turns away from that which gives birth to sin, and sets eternal torment before you, know that your Helper abides with you; and you, in no way angering Him but weeping before Him, say, listening to your own heart: “Thine is the mercy, O Lord, to deliver me. It is not in my strength to flee from the hands of the enemies without Thy help.” And He will preserve you from every evil.
7 The monk must shut all the doors of his soul, that is, the senses, so as not to fall through them. And when the intellect sees that nothing rules over it, it prepares itself for immortality, gathering its senses together and making them one body.
8 When your intellect is freed from every hope in visible worldly things, this is a sign that sin has died within you.
9 When the intellect is set free, the partition between it and God disappears.
10 When the intellect is freed from all its enemies and keeps festival and rests, then it will dwell in another, new age, thinking upon what is new and incorruptible. “For wherever the corpse is, there the eagles will gather” (Mt. 24:28).
11 The demons begin to act by stealth when a person ceases to guard his heart, supposing that it has come to rest; and suddenly they enter the wretched soul and seize it like a bird. And if they prove stronger than it, they cast it mercilessly into every transgression, worse than the former transgressions for which it prayed to be forgiven. Let us therefore stand in the fear of God and guard the heart, exercising our active power and preserving the virtues that halt the malice of the enemy.
12 Our Teacher Jesus Christ, knowing the great mercilessness of the enemy and having compassion on the human race, gave commandment concerning firmness of heart, saying: “Be ready at all times, for you do not know when the thief will come, lest coming he find you sleeping” (cf. Mt. 24:43). And again: “Take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with gluttony and drunkenness and the cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly” (Lk. 21:34). Stand therefore in your heart, watching over the senses; and when the remembrance of God is at peace with you, then you will catch the robbers who plunder it. He who watches over his thoughts recognises those that seek to enter and defile him. They trouble the intellect so that it may become boastful and idle. But those who recognise their malice are not troubled, for they pray to the Lord.
13 If a person does not hate all the works of this world, he cannot serve God. And what is the service of God, if not to have nothing extraneous in the intellect when we pray to Him: no desire for pleasure when we bless Him, no sin when we sing to Him, no hatred when we glorify Him, no cunning zeal that keeps us from praying to Him and remembering Him? For all these — sin, hatred and cunning zeal — are dark walls surrounding the wretched soul, and it cannot serve God blamelessly while it has them within itself. They hold it back in the air and do not let it behold God, nor secretly bless Him, nor pray to Him with delight of heart, that the soul may be enlightened by Him. Therefore the intellect is always darkened and cannot draw near to God, because it does not strive to cut them off in thought.
14 When the intellect rescues the senses of the soul from carnal desires and leads them towards dispassion, and tears the soul away from carnal desires, and calls unceasingly upon God, then God, seeing how the shameless passions assail the soul in order to hold its senses in sins, will send His help and destroy them all in an instant.
15 I entreat you: while you are still in the body, do not cease to guard your heart. For as the farmer cannot be certain that the fruits he has sown will ripen, since he does not know what will become of them until he gathers them into the storehouses, so a person cannot cease guarding the heart while there is breath in his nostrils. And since a person does not know what passion will meet him even to his final breath, he must not withdraw his attention from his heart while he breathes; rather, it befits him at all times to call upon God, asking His help and mercy.
16 He who finds no help in the time of battle cannot hope for it in the time of peace.
17 When a person departs from those “on the left” (Mt. 25:41) and comes to know well all the transgressions he has committed before God — for he does not see his own sins unless he separates himself from them by a bitter separation — then, when he reaches this measure, he acquires weeping and prayer, for he is ashamed before God, remembering his cunning friendship with the passions. Let us therefore struggle, brethren, with all our strength, and God will help us according to the multitude of His mercy; and if we do not guard our heart as our fathers guarded theirs, let us at least labour to keep our bodies sinless, as God requires, and let us believe that in the time of famine which comes upon us He will show mercy to us, as He did to His saints.
18 He who has given his heart to seek God in piety truly cannot think of anything other than how to please God. But if his conscience reproaches him with something contrary to nature, then he is far from freedom. For if there is one to reproach, there is also one to condemn; and if there is condemnation, there is no freedom. So then, when you pray and see that your conscience reproaches you with no evil, you are free and have entered into His holy rest, according to His will. When you see that the good fruit has been strengthened and the enemy’s tares do not choke it; that the warriors who, relying on cunning, waged battle against your senses have withdrawn; when the cloud has stood over the tabernacle and neither the sun shall burn you by day nor the moon by night; when all within you is ready to set up the tabernacle and to guard it according to God’s will — then you have conquered with God’s help. Then God Himself will overshadow the tabernacle, for it is His. But as long as the battle continues, a person remains in fear and trembling as to whether he will conquer today or be conquered, whether he will be conquered tomorrow or himself conquer. The struggle burdens the heart, but dispassion suffers no assaults. It receives honours and is not troubled by the three divided powers, for before God they have been reconciled and joined to one another. These three are the soul, the body and the spirit. When, therefore, the three become one by the action of the Holy Spirit, they can no longer be divided. Do not, then, think of yourself as already dead to sin while your enemies still assail you, whether you are awake or asleep. For as long as the wretched person is at war, he has no boldness.
19 When the intellect is strengthened and prepares to follow after love, which extinguishes all bodily passions and does not permit anything contrary to nature to reign in the heart, then it resists the power that is contrary to nature until it separates it from nature.
20 Examine yourself, brother, every day, discerning what in your heart is passionate before God, and cast it out of your heart, lest you hear the fearful sentence.
21 Listen to your heart, brother, and be vigilant before your enemies. They are cunning in their malice. And let your heart learn from this word that it is impossible for a person to do good while he does evil. This is why the Saviour taught us to watch, saying: “Narrow is the gate and hard is the way that leads to life, and few are those who find it” (Mt. 7:14).
22 Be attentive to yourself, that nothing destructive may separate you from the love of God; and restrain your heart and do not despair, saying: “How shall I guard it, since I am a sinner?” For when a person departs from his sins and turns to God, his repentance will regenerate him and make him wholly new.
23 All Divine Scripture, both the Old and the New Testament, speaks of the guarding of the heart. First, the psalmist David says: “O sons of men, how long will you be hard of heart?” (Ps. 4:3); and again: “their heart is worthless” (Ps. 5:10). And of those who think on vain things he says: “For he said in his heart, I shall not be shaken…” (Ps. 9:27); and again: “For he said in his heart, God has forgotten…” (Ps. 9:32), and much else of the same kind. The monk must understand to whom and about what the Scripture speaks, and must guard his ascetic labour unceasingly, and watch for the enemy’s snares; and, like a helmsman steered by grace, sail across the waves without straying from the way, watching over himself alone, conversing with God in stillness with attentive thought and an undistracted intellect.
24 Winds, waves and storms in the air demand skill of the helmsman; and our life demands prayer of us. For we are able to receive the assaults of thoughts, both of virtue and of sin. A pious and God-loving thought is called the master of the passions. It befits us who keep stillness to distinguish wisely and soberly between vices and virtues, and to determine which virtues are to be practised among the brethren and the fathers, and which in solitude; and which is the first virtue, which the second, and which the third; and which passion is of the soul and which of the body; and through which virtue pride comes and strikes the intellect; through which virtue wrath draws near; and through which gluttony comes. “We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God” (2 Cor. 10:4–5).
25 The first virtue is freedom from cares, that is, the mortification of the outer man and of his works. It gives birth to a longing for God, and this gives birth to natural anger, which rejects everything the enemy sows. Then the fear of God finds a dwelling in the person, and through fear comes love.
26 It befits us to turn away from the heart the assault of thought by a pious refusal, so that it may not turn out that during prayer we converse with God with our lips while in our heart we ponder unseemly things. God does not accept from one who keeps stillness a careless and inattentive prayer. Scripture testifies that it befits us to guard the senses of the soul. When the monk’s will obeys the law of God, and according to His law the intellect governs the movements of the soul subject to it — especially wrath and desire, for these too are subject to it — he will accomplish virtue and fulfil righteousness; that is, desire will be turned towards God and His righteousness, and anger against the devil and sin. What more is needed? Hidden instruction.
27 When you are sitting in your cell and shameful thoughts are sown in your heart, resist sin, so that it may not rule over you. Hasten to remember God, for He watches over you, and before Him whatever you ponder in your heart will be revealed. So say to your soul: “If you fear sinners like yourself, that they may not see your sins, how much more should you fear God, who notices everything.” And from such counsel the fear of God will be revealed in your soul, and when you are with others you will remain unmoved by passion, as it is written: “Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion; those who dwell in Jerusalem shall not be moved” (Ps. 124:1). And in everything you do, remember God, who sees your every thought, and you will never sin. And to Him be the glory unto the ages. Amen.
Peter of Damascus
He was bishop of Damascus during the reign of Constantine Copronymus. At first he lived alone as a hermit, in such poverty that, as he says of himself, he did not even possess his own books. But borrowing books of the Old and New Testaments from others, and the works of the great teachers of the Church and of other prudent and God-bearing fathers, he was so diligent that he studied the law of the Lord day and night and drank from the streams that give life. Therefore he became like a tree reaching to the heavens, which, according to the psalmist, is “planted beside the springs of water” which the Holy Spirit sends forth. Yet that tree bears its fruit in due season, whereas this one is not so: it blossoms continually, and nothing will harm it, and it bears spiritual fruits beautiful in appearance, sweet in taste and fragrant. They nourish all the senses of soul and body with the immortal and fragrant sweetness that flows from them.
He brought forth numerous and great fruits by his ascetic labours, and the greatest and most numerous in his death, for he received the crown of martyrdom. When he refuted the Arab and Manichaean heresy, Walid, son of the Arab chief Hisham, cut out his tongue and sent him to blessed Arabia. There the venerable one preached, performed holy deeds and departed thence.
He brings us fruits even greater and more numerous after his death, leaving behind him an inheritance inseparable from the other patristic writings — this truly excellent and honourable book, which he wrote with diligence and, I cannot even say, with what grace. You will find in it a general and soul-saving praise of all the virtues with love, a treasury of contemplation, a collection of spiritual gifts, the height of divine blessedness, the altar of bodily action, the most subtle examination of the passions, the height of the ascetic life, the storehouse of knowledge and divine wisdom — in a word, the very essence of sacred sobriety.
Knowing that it has much in common with the Philokalia — and this serves our purpose — we resolved to join these two books together. Perhaps someone will put it better and say that it is the joining of circle with circle, of Philokalia with Philokalia, of the great with the greater. It seemed to us unfitting to divide the cluster of spiritual fruits, the writings of the divine company of the holy priests. (And this book would accuse us of folly, for it did not wish to be parted from the wise fathers who loved it.) Let us reduce our own profit, since necessity requires this addition, and let us not deprive our brothers of so great a benefit; for the multiplication of good always brings greater beneficence. If anyone wishes to receive the two wings of the spiritual dove, which he always sought but which David did not find, let him read it diligently. And he will find in it the wondrous wing of action, all covered with silver, and the second, of contemplation, all covered with gold; and upon both of them he will rise above all that is earthly, and soar to the heavenly height, and, building his nest in a high place like a good dove, will find rest in heavenly blessedness.