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The World After You Have Died to It
Phronema and the Recovery of Wonder “What is a merciful heart? It is a heart on fire for the whole of creation.” — St. Isaac the Syrian There is a way of leaving the world that is really an attempt to escape it. And there is another way of leaving the world that finally allows us to see it. The Fathers went into the desert not because they despised creation. They went because they understood how difficult it is to see anything clearly while we are trying to possess it. The pa
Father Charbel Abernethy
Sep 215 min read
When Desire Becomes Prayer
The Heart’s Long Return to Wonder “Love is sweeter than life.” — St. Isaac the Syrian There are desires that disappear when they are satisfied. And there are desires that become deeper. We spend much of our lives learning the difference. At first we imagine that desire is a kind of emptiness. Something is absent, and so the heart reaches toward it. We desire recognition, security, belonging, understanding. We desire a place in the world where our life will finally make sense.
Father Charbel Abernethy
Sep 104 min read
A Second Book from City a Desert Press
The Name Above Every Name: The Revelation of Christ in the Heart The Jesus Prayer and the Life of Communion I am grateful to share that The Name Above Every Name: The Jesus Prayer and the Life of Communion is now available, the second volume in a series exploring the wisdom of the Christian desert and the recovery of the inner life. The first book, The Monastic Heart and the Future of the Church: Recovering the Inner Kingdom in an Age of Fragmentation, began with a conviction
Father Charbel Abernethy
Aug 243 min read
Where Silence Learns to Speak
A Charter for City a Desert Press “Acquire the Spirit of peace, and thousands around you will be saved.” — St. Seraphim of Sarov There are deserts that lie beyond the edges of cities, and there are deserts that are discovered only after entering the depths of the human heart. The fathers sought both. They fled into solitude not because they despised the world, but because they loved it enough to seek its healing at the source. They understood that the deepest poverty is not m
Father Charbel Abernethy
Jul 223 min read
The Heart That Remembers God
St. Isaac the Syrian on Purity, Silence, and Becoming a Living Heaven “Lo, Heaven is within you (if indeed you are pure), and within it you will see both the angels in their light and their Master with them and in them.” — St. Isaac the Syrian, Homily 15 Synopsis of Tonight’s Group on St. Isaac the Syrian Homily 15 paragraphs 1-3 There are moments in the writings of St. Isaac the Syrian where one realizes that what he is speaking about is not “religion” as we commonly underst
Father Charbel Abernethy
May 274 min read
More Glorious than the Seraphim
I. The Silence of Nazareth “But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.” — Luke 2:19 Most of us want God to arrive with clarity. With explanations. With unmistakable direction. But the Mother of God received Him first in silence. Not in understanding. Not in mastery. Not in certainty. In silence. Nazareth was hidden from the world. Nothing appeared to happen there. No crowds gathered. No miracles shook the streets. No one knew that within the small house o
Father Charbel Abernethy
May 272 min read
The Country Within
On the Hidden Homeland of the Heart “The true servant of God acknowledges no other country but heaven.” — St. Philip Neri There is a terrible loneliness that comes when a person begins to realize that he no longer fully belongs anywhere in this world. Not politically. Not culturally. Not ideologically. Not even psychologically. Something within him has begun turning toward another country. The fathers speak of this with great sobriety because they know that most human beings
Father Charbel Abernethy
May 274 min read
The Labor of the Heart
A Dialogue Between St. Arsenius and a Disciple on Keeping the Heart for Christ Alone “Flee, be silent, pray always, for these are the sources of sinlessness.” — St. Arsenius the Great ⸻ A brother came to St. Arsenius the Great and found him weaving palm branches in silence. For a long while the old man did not speak. The brother waited. At last Arsenius lifted his eyes and said: Arsenius: Why have you come? Disciple: Father, I desire to belong to Christ alone. Arsenius: Then
Father Charbel Abernethy
May 255 min read
The Device That Keeps the Heart Turned Outward
On phones, fragmented attention, and the loss of remembrance of God “Your mind will either be with God or with something else. It cannot remain nowhere.” — Elder Aimilianos of Simonopetra There is a reason silence has become so difficult for us. Not simply because the world is noisy. The world has always been noisy. Cities were noisy in the time of the Desert Fathers. Markets were noisy. Families were noisy. Human beings have always carried turmoil within themselves. But we h
Father Charbel Abernethy
May 184 min read
The One Who Remained
The Beloved Disciple and the Hidden Vocation of Staying “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me.” — John 21:22 There is something almost painful in this scene by the sea. Peter has just heard about the shape of his martyrdom. The Lord has told him that one day his hands will be stretched out and he will be led where he does not wish to go. And almost immediately Peter turns away from the word spoken to him and asks about another. “Lord, w
Father Charbel Abernethy
May 164 min read
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