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Even Now, Return
The Holy Prophet Joel and the Mercy Hidden Within Repentance “Even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart… Rend your hearts and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful.” — Joel 2:12–13 There are two words in the prophecy of Joel that contain almost the whole mystery of repentance. Even now. We usually imagine repentance beginning somewhere else. Earlier. Before the damage was done. Before the years were lost. Before the ha
Father Charbel Abernethy
5 days ago5 min read
The Grammar of the Heart — Reflection VII
Phronema: More Than Having the Right Ideas “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” — Philippians 2:5 There is a word in the Christian East that is difficult to translate. Phronema. We can call it mind. Mindset. Disposition. Consciousness. Way of thinking. Spiritual perception. None of these is wrong. None is enough. Perhaps the difficulty itself tells us something important. Phronema does not describe merely what we think. It describes the place within us fr
Father Charbel Abernethy
6 days ago7 min read
There Is No Other
When the Heart Ceases to Live as Though Anything Existed Apart from God “Let all men know from the rising to the setting of the sun that, apart from me, all is nothing. I am the Lord: there is no other.” — Isaiah 45:6 There are words in Scripture that console us, words that instruct us, and words that seem to leave nothing standing. This is one of them. “I am the Lord: there is no other.” We can hear such words as a declaration about the uniqueness of God. And certainly they
Father Charbel Abernethy
6 days ago6 min read
The Grammar of the Heart — Reflection VI
When Prayer Becomes a Way of Seeing “The remembrance of Jesus, combined with heartfelt fervor, will destroy all the enchantments of our thoughts.” — St. Hesychios the Priest We usually begin prayer by thinking that prayer is something we do. We set aside time. We say words. We keep a rule. We read the Psalms. We stand before an icon. We invoke the name of Jesus. We become distracted and begin again. All of this is necessary. But after many years another possibility begins to
Father Charbel Abernethy
Oct 177 min read
The Grammar of the Heart — Reflection V
What the Heart Knows by Suffering “The knowledge of the Cross is concealed in the sufferings of the Cross.” — St. Isaac the Syrian There are things we know only after they have happened to us. Before suffering, we may possess the words. After suffering, we begin to know what they mean. This distinction has become increasingly important to me. For much of our lives we assume that understanding precedes experience. We learn something, comprehend it, and then perhaps apply it. T
Father Charbel Abernethy
Oct 176 min read
The Grammar of the Heart — Reflection IV
When Repentance Ceases to Be Fear “Repentance is the trembling of the soul before the gate of Paradise.” — St. Isaac the Syrian There is a kind of repentance that leaves us staring at ourselves. We examine our failures. We measure our guilt. We rehearse what we have done. We wonder whether God has forgiven us, whether we have repented sufficiently, whether some hidden severity remains behind the mercy we have been promised. God may be present in such repentance, but often at
Father Charbel Abernethy
Oct 166 min read
The Grammar of the Heart — Reflection III
Sitting at the Feet of the Ascetics The heart does not learn the language of God by mastering ideas, but by dwelling among those who have learned to speak it with their lives. There comes a point when reading the Fathers changes. At first we read them because we want to know what they thought. We underline sentences. We compare translations. We follow arguments. We collect sayings from the desert and passages from the Philokalia. We learn the vocabulary of nous, nepsis, apath
Father Charbel Abernethy
Oct 156 min read
The Grammar of the Heart - Reflection II
Before Theology Becomes Words How the Christian Life Teaches Us to See “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” — Psalm 33:9 LXX There is a knowledge of God that comes before explanation. Not before revelation. Not before truth. Not before the Church gives us the words by which we confess what has been revealed. But before those words become our own—before theology passes from the lips into the heart—there is often something quieter taking place. We are learning God by living b
Father Charbel Abernethy
Oct 158 min read
When Christ Becomes the Light by Which We See
The Christian life is not merely learning what is true, but becoming transparent to the Light who is Christ “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” — Psalm 118:105 LXX Saint Maximus tells us something far greater than that Christ gives us light. Christ is the Light. He is the lamp set upon the lampstand, the eternal Word of the Father who has entered our darkness by assuming our humanity. He does not merely explain the path. He becomes the path beneath our fe
Father Charbel Abernethy
Oct 145 min read
Sitting at the Feet of Mercy
Rereading St. Isaac and discovering how quietly a vision of God can become the language of the heart “As a grain of sand cannot counterbalance a great quantity of gold, so in comparison God’s use of justice cannot counterbalance His mercy.” — St. Isaac the Syrian I have been rereading Desire and Wonder, and something has surprised me. It is not primarily the arguments that remain with me, nor even the passages I remember laboring over. What I notice now is the tenderness. The
Father Charbel Abernethy
Oct 125 min read
She Saw Only Jesus
The Freedom of a Heart That Has Forgotten the Room “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” — Luke 7:50 Everyone in the room is looking at the woman. The woman is looking only at Jesus. Perhaps this is the most beautiful thing about her. She enters the house already known. Her reputation has arrived before her. Simon does not need to ask who she is. He knows—or thinks he knows. A sinner. The others surely know as well. But she seems almost unaware of them. She does not explai
Father Charbel Abernethy
Oct 125 min read
When Christians Become the Scandal
The Cross should offend the world by the extremity of its love—not Christians by the poverty of theirs “Always consider the other person to be better than yourself.” — Philippians 2:3 There is a scandal that belongs to Christianity. God becomes man. The Creator kneels before the creature. The Sinless One sits among sinners. The Judge refuses to condemn the woman thrown at His feet. The Lord washes the feet of those who will abandon Him. And when nails are driven through His h
Father Charbel Abernethy
Sep 277 min read
Open the Roof
To share in the life of Christ is to learn to carry the weakness of another toward Him “They opened the roof and lowered him down to the feet of Christ.” — St. Augustine, On Pastors There is a severity in Augustine’s words because there is a severity in love. “You have failed to strengthen the weak.” The accusation is directed toward shepherds, and rightly so. Those entrusted with the care of souls cannot feed upon the flock while remaining indifferent to its wounds. The shep
Father Charbel Abernethy
Sep 205 min read
The Mercy That Passes Through Us
God consoles the wounded heart so that it may become a place of consolation for others “Who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction.” — 2 Corinthians 1:4 There are wounds we would never have chosen. There are sorrows we would gladly have been spared, losses whose meaning we cannot discover, seasons when prayer itself seems reduced to remaining before God because nothing else is possible. And yet Saint Paul speaks of
Father Charbel Abernethy
Sep 165 min read
Desire and Wonder: A New Three-Volume Series Is Published
St. Isaac the Syrian, the Longing for God, and a Path Forty Years in the Making “What unfolds across these pages is one movement of desire—the heart awakening to wonder, being drawn beyond itself, and discovering that its deepest longing has always been for God.” There are books we write, and there are books that seem to have been writing themselves within us for years before we finally recognize them. Desire and Wonder belongs to the latter. I am very grateful to announce th
Father Charbel Abernethy
Sep 157 min read
Sons of Light
The Cross and the Becoming of the Heart “While you still have the light, believe in the light, and you will become sons of light.” — John 12:36 There is a difference between seeing the light and becoming light. We can spend much of our lives standing near holy things without allowing them to change us. We can speak of Christ, defend Christ, teach Christ, even suffer in the name of Christ, while still guarding some hidden territory of the heart from Him. But the Gospel speaks
Father Charbel Abernethy
Sep 145 min read
When Sorrow Turns the Heart
“We looked for peace, but no good came; for a time of healing, but behold, terror.” — Jeremiah 14:19 There is a sorrow that can consume the heart, and there is a sorrow that can return it to God. Jeremiah does not hide the devastation before him. He does not soften it with easy words. The wound is grievous. Tears fall night and day. Peace had been hoped for, but peace did not come. Healing was expected, and instead there was terror. Yet somewhere within the lament, something
Father Charbel Abernethy
Sep 113 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
When the Heart Can No Longer Contain Its Joy
Vigil, perseverance, and the hidden formation of a heart capable of wonder “He cried out, being overcome with joy and not able to endure the heat of the flame, for he could not contain himself.” — St. Isaac the Syrian, Homily 21 Synopsis of Tonight’s Group on The Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian Homily 20 paragraphs 9-12 and Homily 21 paragraphs 1-6 There is something extraordinarily beautiful in St. Isaac’s teaching on vigil because he never allows the ascetical li
Father Charbel Abernethy
Sep 27 min read
Guard the Treasure
The Small Neglects by Which the Heart Grows Cold “Turn away from evil, and do good… remain thereafter in wakefulness, so that you might preserve them.” — St. Maximos the Confessor Synopsis of Tonight’s Group on The Evergetinos Volume III Hypothesis IX Section C-D2 There is something almost frightening about the stories preserved for us in the Evergetinos. They are frightening not because they portray extraordinary wickedness, but because they reveal how quietly the heart can
Father Charbel Abernethy
Aug 245 min read
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