Two Kingdoms, One Heart

Why St. Isaac Refuses All Half Measures in the Spiritual Life

Synopsis of Tonight’s Group on The Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian - Homily 6: 14-18

St. Isaac the Syrian does not allow us the comfortable fiction that we can want less than everything and still be safe. His words strip away a thousand modern compromises. To say I only wish to escape Gehenna but not to enter the Kingdom is for him a form of madness. There are not three places. There are two. To fall short of the Kingdom is already to enter the place of loss. Hell is not merely fire but exclusion. It is the outer darkness of having turned away from the Face that was offered. The tragedy is not that we were punished but that we did not desire enough.

This is why the spiritual life cannot be treated as damage control. We are not here merely to avoid catastrophe. We are here to be transfigured. Christ did not come so that we might barely survive eternity but so that we might shine as the sun in the Kingdom of the Father. Every half hearted approach to faith is therefore a refusal of glory. It is not humility. It is fear disguised as prudence. Isaac calls us to a hunger that dares to want everything God wants to give.

From this flows his severe counsel about silence and withdrawal. He is not condemning love of neighbor. He is defending the integrity of the heart. If a man seeks to heal others while losing his own clarity then his charity has become a form of self betrayal. A clouded mind cannot give light. A weakened conscience cannot give strength. To remain in constant exposure when one is not yet stable is not heroism. It is negligence. Isaac insists that the first obedience is to guard the sanctuary of the heart. When the heart is healthy it teaches without words. When it is sick even holy words become hollow.

Here he shows something deeply uncomfortable for our age. Being seen is not the same as being holy. Being useful is not the same as being whole. One can be busy for God while drifting away from Him. To be far from men in order to be with God is not selfishness when it preserves the soul. In time such a life benefits others more than any speech because it radiates truth rather than merely talking about it.

This leads to Isaac’s terrifying diagnosis of how corruption begins. The devil does not start with fornication. He starts with vainglory. He offers the sweetness of being admired for virtue. It seems harmless. It even feels spiritual. Yet the moment the mind steps out of its refuge to taste this praise the door is opened. What begins as spiritual self regard becomes sensual fantasy. What was once clear becomes confused. The fall is not sudden. It is incremental and therefore more deadly. One indulgence prepares the next. The first passion creates the conditions for the second.

The remedy is not endless argument with thoughts. Isaac is blunt. To wrestle with passions once they have filled the imagination is already to be weakened. Images and idols are stamped upon the mind. The heart loses its simplicity. The truer strategy is to outrun them by remembrance of virtue and God. When the soul turns immediately toward what is pure and beautiful the invading thoughts find no place to lodge. They depart without leaving a trace.

Everything in these pages converges on one demand. We must want God more than our safety more than our reputation more than our consolations and more than our sins. The Kingdom is not won by those who merely avoid falling but by those who run. To hold anything back is already to drift toward the outer darkness. To give everything is to begin even now to shine.