Forsake not Isaac. Every day one page of Abba Isaac. Not more. Isaac is the mirror. There you will behold yourself. The mirror is so that we may see if we have any shortcomings, any smudge on our face, in order to remove it, to cleanse ourselves. If there is a smudge on your face or on your eyes, in the mirror you will detect it and will remove it. In Abba Isaac you will behold your thoughts, what they are thinking. Your feet, where they are going. Your eyes, if they have light and see. There you will find many sure and unerring ways, in order to be helped. One page of Isaac a day. In the morning or at night, whatever. Suffice it that you read a page.
Elder Ieronymos, quoted in The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian, translated by the Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Boston, 1984. ix.
I’m late mentioning this, but those interested in the Syrian Fathers may be pleased to know that Kevin Edgecomb of Biblicalia has a very helpful post outlining the various edition of Saint Isaac’s works.
For myself, I have picked up up the Ascetical Homilies again in the last couple of months. Although I may post extracts occasionally, don’t expect any particularly scholarly commentary. I am more or less following Elder Ieronymos’ advice above. I may put them aside again to read other things and then return to them again, alternating them with the Sayings of the Fathers or other early texts. For even if when I find myself arguing with Abba Isaac, his words do have a particular power.
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For anyone interested in an introduction to Saint Isaac, this is a useful site.
A vow of conversation 
October 1, 2008 at 2:20 pm
[…] On St. Isaac the Syrian. […]
October 1, 2008 at 7:04 pm
St Isaac certainly can be a difficult read. We always have to remember that his primary target audience is the solitary hesychast, one who is a hermit like St Isaac himself. This makes it difficult to apply much of what he says to living a Christian life in the world or in a monastery, both of which require more interaction with others. I don’t recall whether Bishop Hilarion’s book The Spiritual World of Isaac the Syrian deals with that issue in depth, as I read it so long ago, but I think he at least touches on the issue. I know that’s come up in a similar way regarding laypeople reading St John’s Ladder of Divine Ascent, as well; advice designed particularly for monastics isn’t always appropriate for Christians in the world. This would be an interesting (and helpful) subject to investigate further.
October 1, 2008 at 8:18 pm
Kevin, while it’s true that St Isaac was writing in a context that priveleged an eremitical lifestyle (which sometimes makes me want to argue with him!), I think that his primary “difficulty” (at least for me) is not that he is difficult to understand, but rather that he is abundantly clear. It is not a conceptual difficulty, but rather an existential one in that he calls me to conversion. And that is why I find Elder Ieronymos’ advice worthwhile (apart from the fact that I don’t have time for a more scholarly reading at the moment) for it challenges me to read him in a way that really confronts my own blindness.
October 2, 2008 at 8:41 pm
Oh, yes, I didn’t intend to imply that he’s conceptually difficult. I find the difficulty in (as usual) applying what I read to my own life. In this case, it does take adjustment in application, as I’m not a hermit, his original target audience. Then again, even as I type this, I think, “Well, nothing he says is inapplicable, really.” Yes, we can avoid crowds, and television and all these peculiar distractions, and cut ourselves further and further off from the world. This is possible even for laity like myself. But even so, there are limits. One must still work, shop for food, and such things. And there is this very internet thing, which is both a blessing (when used properly) and a curse (as it is usually used). So, I don’t know. Yes, St Isaac calls us to further conversion, which is both turning to God and simultaneously turning away from the world. But no, we are not all called to be exactly everything that he declares as the ideal: the hesychastic hermit. I learned that long ago from a monastic friend, which perhaps has made me a bit slower in investigating that life as a possibility for myself. If I feel called to this or that, am I really or am I just experiencing some kind of delusion, as I have asked myself for years. Well, St Isaac, it seems, is very good at shaking us up.
October 3, 2008 at 8:37 pm
I see what you mean. When I referred to his being existentially difficult I was really referring, I think, to his teaching on self-knowledge, humility, not judging and compassion – all the stuff that one finds in the Desert Fathers as well, and which makes them so challenging!
I think that it is important to distinguish between core teaching, central themes and the end to which this points, and the means (observances in western monastic parlance) which lead us to them. These latter can and must differ according to our various different situations. For example, there is a helpful discussion of the cell here which suggests ways in which non-hermits can appropriate the teaching traditional teaching on the cell.