The Mercy That Wounds to Heal

Synopsis of Tonight’s Group on The Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian Homily 5 paragraphs 19-23:

God has no need of anything, yet St. Isaac tells us that He rejoices whenever a man comforts His image and honors it for His sake. The divine joy is found not in what is given but in the mercy that reflects His own. When the poor come to us, it is not their need that is the test but our response to the image of God standing before us. To refuse them is to turn away grace itself, to pass by the honor of having been found worthy to console another. The poor will not be abandoned, God will provide for them, but the one who closes his heart has turned aside the gift of participating in God’s own generosity. When we give, we should bless God who has sent us the opportunity; when we have nothing to give, we should bless Him even more for allowing us to share in the poverty of Christ and the saints who walked this same path of want and trust.

Illness, too, is a visitation of mercy. God sends sickness for the healing of the soul, as a physician would apply bitter medicine to draw out hidden corruption. A monk who grows careless in his service, St. Isaac says, will be visited by temptation or affliction so that he may not sink deeper into idleness. God does not abandon those who love Him, but when He sees them drifting toward forgetfulness, He sends a trial to awaken them, to make them wise again. And though they may cry out to Him, He delays His response, waiting until they understand that their sufferings arise not from divine neglect but from their own sloth and negligence. His silence is not absence but instruction, a sign that He wishes the soul to seek Him with greater purity and perseverance.

Why, we might ask, does the merciful Lord not always answer those who pray with tears? St. Isaac, quoting the prophet, answers: “The Lord’s hand is not shortened that it cannot save, but our sins have separated us from Him.” It is not that God cannot hear, but that our hearts have become deafened by self-love. The remedy is remembrance: unceasing recollection of God in all things. When the heart remembers God, He remembers us in the hour of trouble, and what once seemed a wall of silence becomes the threshold of communion.

Temptations, St. Isaac says, are as near to us as our own eyelids. They arise not only from without but from within, springing up from the depths of our nature. Yet even this nearness is arranged by divine wisdom so that we might be compelled to knock at His door continually, that through fear and affliction the memory of God might be sown deep within us. The soul learns to pray, not to escape suffering, but to dwell in the presence of the One who alone delivers. Through long entreaty and endurance, we come to perceive that God Himself sustains and forms us, and that this world, with its griefs and trials, is a teacher preparing us for the world to come, our true home and inheritance.

God does not make us immune to what is grievous, for such immunity would lead to pride. If we were never wounded, we would imagine ourselves divine and fall into the same delusion as the adversary. It is the burden of the flesh, the uncertainty of our days, the constant approach of temptation, that keeps us humble and dependent upon mercy. Thus, for St. Isaac, every circumstance, whether abundance or lack, health or sickness, prayer answered or unanswered, is arranged by a wisdom beyond our knowing. The goal is always the same: that we might remember God, that our hearts might be softened, and that our lives might be drawn into the rhythm of His compassionate love.

The divine mercy, then, is not sentimental but purifying. It allows affliction so that grace may take deeper root. It permits delay so that desire for God might grow more ardent. To the one who endures with thanksgiving, every sorrow becomes a revelation: God, who fashioned and sustains us, is both our Chastiser and our Healer, our Teacher in this passing world and our Father who awaits us in the eternal one.