The Soil That Must Be Broken

Asceticism as Truth, Remembrance, and the Cost of Seeing God

Synopsis of Tonight’s Group on The Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian Homily 6 paragraphs 5-6:

What St Isaac exposes here is not a technique but a diagnosis. He is ruthless because the sickness is deep. The soul is meant to be good soil but soil is not neutral ground. It either receives the seed with vigilance or it becomes choked. Remembrance of God is not a poetic feeling but a sustained pressure on the heart a vigilance that does not sleep. When this remembrance is alive the soul becomes a place where God Himself shades and illumines. There is no romance here. Light appears inside darkness not because the darkness is denied but because the soul has chosen to stand watch within it.

St Isaac refuses to let us spiritualize our way around the body. The belly is not incidental. What enters the mouth reaches the heart. He speaks bluntly because self deception thrives in vagueness. Excess dulls perception. Pleasure thickens the air of the soul. Wisdom is not stolen from us by demons alone but smothered by our own indulgence. A full belly does not merely weaken resolve it fuels lust because the body has been trained to demand satisfaction. This is not moralism. It is anthropology. The knowledge of God does not coexist with a body that has been enthroned.

Here asceticism is revealed as truth telling. It strips away the lie that discipline is punishment. Labor is not opposed to grace. Labor is the ground where grace becomes intelligible. St Isaac compares it to labor pains because knowledge of God is not an idea grasped but a life brought forth. Without toil there is no birth only fantasy. Sloth does not simply delay holiness it gives birth to shame because the soul knows it has avoided the cost of truth.

This is where the inner disposition becomes decisive. Asceticism without remembrance hardens into pride. Asceticism without humility becomes violence against the self. But remembrance without discipline dissolves into sentimentality. St Isaac holds them together because life demands it. The question is not how much one fasts or how little one sleeps but whether the heart is consenting to be trained. Discipline embraced with resentment breeds bitterness. Discipline embraced with attention becomes wisdom.

In an age starved of living elders this teaching cuts even deeper. We are tempted either to abandon asceticism entirely or to turn it into a private project shaped by personality and preference. St Isaac offers neither comfort. He places responsibility back into the hands of the one who desires God. The absence of elders does not absolve us. It makes inner honesty more urgent. The body becomes the first elder. Hunger teaches restraint. Fatigue teaches humility. Failure teaches mercy. If these are ignored no amount of reading will save us.

Christ’s closeness to the mouth of the one who endures hardship is not sentimental reassurance. It is promise and warning. He draws near to the body that has consented to the Cross. Not to the body pampered under the language of balance or self care. The care Christ offers is not the removal of hardship but His presence within it. Asceticism then is not heroic excess but fidelity to reality. It is the refusal to live divided. Priceless indeed is labor wrought with wisdom because it produces not control but clarity. The soul begins to see. And once it sees it can no longer pretend.