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The Grammar of the Heart
How God Teaches the Soul the Language of Prayer “We have the mind of Christ.” — 1 Corinthians 2:16 There is a language that cannot be learned from books. Books may awaken us to it. The Scriptures give us its words. The Fathers teach us its grammar. The liturgy allows us to hear its cadences. The lives of the saints show us what it sounds like when spoken fluently. But eventually God Himself must teach it to the heart. This is perhaps one way of understanding phronema. We ofte
Father Charbel Abernethy
2 days ago6 min read
When We No Longer See
The terrible mercy of being led into exile “You have eyes to see, but see not; you have ears to hear, but hear not.” — Ezekiel 12:2 There is a blindness that comes not because there is no light, but because we have grown accustomed to not looking. There is a deafness that comes not because God has ceased speaking, but because we have learned how to hear everything except the word that would require us to change. This is the terrible warning in Ezekiel. The people have eyes. T
Father Charbel Abernethy
2 days ago4 min read
When There Is No Place to Stand
Fidelity in the Place of Uncertainty “I have already forgiven all, and pray for those who sinned against me.” — St. Nektarios of Aegina There are seasons when God seems to take away the ground beneath our feet. The familiar place disappears. What once gave shape to our life no longer seems able to hold it. The future remains hidden, and every attempt to secure it only increases the unrest of the heart. St. Nektarios knew such a place. He knew what it was to lose position, rep
Father Charbel Abernethy
3 days ago3 min read
Restore Us to Yourself
When every other way of being restored has been taken from our hands “Restore us to thyself, O LORD, that we may be restored.” — Lamentations 5:21 There are sorrows that still contain within them the hope of repair. We suffer, but somewhere in the heart we are already imagining how things might be put right. A door might open. Someone might understand. An explanation might finally be accepted. What has been confused might become clear. What has been lost might somehow be retu
Father Charbel Abernethy
Sep 124 min read
When the Outer Self Belongs to the Inner
The hidden work by which God gathers a divided life into the simplicity of Christ “Then the outer self will belong to the inner self at last, a peaceful and secure possession.” — St. Leo the Great There are sorrows that scatter the heart, and there are sorrows that gather it. We ordinarily know the first kind best. Something is taken from us. A door closes. Another person wounds us. The future becomes uncertain. What we had imagined our life would become begins to disappear.
Father Charbel Abernethy
Sep 57 min read
The Mercy of an Unfinished Life
When God does not give us a path forward, but only enough light to remain faithful where we are “Stay in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.” — Abba Moses There are seasons in life when God seems to make His will known by opening a door. There are others when He seems to make it known by closing every door through which we imagined ourselves passing. We prefer the first. A path appears. A decision becomes clear. Something that had been uncertain suddenly acqui
Father Charbel Abernethy
Sep 46 min read
When God Alone Is Enough
On the quiet passage from doing for God to remaining with Him “One thing is needful.” — Luke 10:42 There comes a time when a question begins to form in the heart that one could not have asked honestly before. It does not arise from contempt for the world, nor necessarily from disappointment with one’s work. It may come after many years of labor, after responsibilities faithfully carried, after words spoken and written, after friendships and communities, after building things
Father Charbel Abernethy
Sep 16 min read
The Place You Have Been Given
A Dialogue with Abba Arsenius on Formation, Silence, and Freedom The disciple came to the old man late in the afternoon. Arsenius was sitting outside his cell, mending a worn basket. The disciple bowed and waited. The old man did not look up. At last the disciple spoke. Disciple: Father, I have been waiting for my life to begin. Arsenius stopped working. Arsenius: Where have you been living? Disciple: That is not what I mean. I have sought God for many years. I thought by now
Father Charbel Abernethy
Aug 314 min read
Do Not Lose in the Day What You Received in the Night
Night Vigil, the Desire for the Beloved, and the Life That Guards His Presence “You suppose that these things were ordained simply to oblige you to labor, and not because of something else that is born of them.” — St. Isaac the Syrian, Homily 20 Synopsis of Tonight’s Group on The Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian Homily Twenty paragraphs 4-8 There is a sentence here from St. Isaac that overturns almost everything we are inclined to think about asceticism: You suppose
Father Charbel Abernethy
Aug 266 min read
The Broken Cisterns
How We Lose God While Still Believing We Are Seeking Him “My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.” — Jeremiah 2:13 There is something terrifying about the second chapter of Jeremiah because it is addressed not to those who never knew God, but to those who did. “I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed me in the
Father Charbel Abernethy
Aug 267 min read
When the Horizon Narrows
Stillness, Holy Renunciation, and the Recovery of the One Thing Necessary “But one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her.” — Luke 10:42 There are seasons in the spiritual life when God seems to enlarge the horizon. Doors open. Relationships multiply. Work becomes fruitful. One discovers gifts that must be exercised for others, and the heart seems drawn outward in service. There are other seasons when God appears to do pre
Father Charbel Abernethy
Aug 267 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
When the Door Opens
A Visitor Speaks with Abba Arsenius as His Life Draws to Its End “Why are you weeping, Father? Are you also afraid?” “Indeed, the fear which is mine at this hour has been with me ever since I became a monk.” — Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Abba Arsenius A brother came to see Abba Arsenius when the old man was nearing the end of his life. Word had passed quietly among the brothers that Arsenius had become very weak. The man who had once stood in the palace of the emperor now
Father Charbel Abernethy
Aug 247 min read
Fall Retreat: To Become All Flame
Desire, Freedom, and the Transformation of the Heart A Four-Week Retreat with the Desert Fathers and St. Isaac the Syrian UPDATED SCHEDULE Sept 12, 19, 26 and Oct. 3 7:00–9:00 PM EDT Register online at PhilokaliaMinistries.org “Abba Joseph stretched his hands toward heaven, and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire, and he said to Abba Lot: ‘If you will, you can become all flame.’” — The Sayings of the Desert Fathers There is something startling about this ancient story.
Father Charbel Abernethy
Aug 185 min read
The First Test of Abiding
The struggle to remain with the Lord is often fiercest precisely when we have resolved to seek nothing but Him. “Abide in me, and I in you.” — John 15:4 There are moments when the spiritual life seems suddenly to become very simple. Not easy, but simple. After years of trying to understand circumstances, discern paths, resolve questions, and discover where everything is leading, the heart hears again the one word that was there from the beginning: Remain. Abide in Me. There c
Father Charbel Abernethy
Aug 165 min read
When the Heart Has Tasted God
Taking Hold of Grace and the Stronger Attraction of Divine Love “My soul thirsted for Thee, the mighty, the living God! When shall I come and appear before Thy face, O Lord?” — St. Isaac the Syrian, Homily 19 Synopsis of Tonight’s Group on The Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian Homily 19 paragraphs 2-7 There is a danger in reading passages such as this one from St. Isaac and hearing primarily a warning: Do not become negligent. Do not allow yourself to grow lax. Guard
Father Charbel Abernethy
Aug 126 min read
Keep Watch Inside Your Cell, and Keep Watch Outside It
The Desert Fathers and the Humility of Spiritual Vigilance “Do not be self-confident, brother, until you depart from the body; for you may say that you are dead, but Satan is not dead.” — The Evergetinos Synopsis of Tonight’s Group on The Evergetinos Volume III Hypothesis IX Section B3-8part1 There is a great mercy hidden within these unsettling sayings from the Evergetinos. The Desert Fathers do not speak to us about spiritual warfare in order to make us preoccupied with the
Father Charbel Abernethy
Aug 107 min read
To Pray Is to Shed Blood
When Love Becomes Participation in the Wounded Heart of Christ “To pray for people is to shed blood!” — St. Silouan the Athonite, quoted by Archimandrite Zacharias Zacharou, The Dawn of the Eternal There are words that we understand when we first read them, and there are words that wait for us. They remain somewhere within the heart, perhaps for years, until life itself becomes their interpreter. “To pray for people is to shed blood.” I have known these words of Saint Silouan
Father Charbel Abernethy
Aug 97 min read
The World Was Created for Life
Desire, Wonder, and the Healing Vision of Christ “God did not make death, and he does not delight in the death of the living.” — Wisdom 1:13 There are passages in Sacred Scripture that seem less like arguments than like windows. They do not seek to convince us so much as to allow us to see. This brief passage from the Book of Wisdom is one of them. In only a few lines it unveils the deepest truth about creation and, in doing so, exposes one of humanity’s oldest lies. “God did
Father Charbel Abernethy
Aug 84 min read
Looking Back, Looking Home
Why I Wish I Had Begun Here “One thing is necessary.” Luke 10:42 I recently reread The Monastic Heart. It is a curious experience to revisit something written over many years. One notices sentences that could have been improved or thoughts that might have been expressed more clearly. Every author does. Yet what remained with me was something altogether different. As I turned the pages, I found myself thinking, I wish this had been the foundation of my own formation over for
Father Charbel Abernethy
Aug 72 min read
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