Life in Christ is not an abstraction and the gospel is not simply a set of teachings or an ideology. It is clarion call to “Follow Me” from He who is the Lord of life and love. We are invited to participate in the mystery of Divine Life. Just as the fathers tell us that we are to “become prayer” and not simply engage in a discipline, likewise, we must become Christ. We must put on Him mind and our hearts must be animated by His Spirit of love. It is for this reason that Saint Isaac the Syrian pl...
May 08, 2025•1 hr 9 min•Season 8Ep. 10
The more that I read the fathers’ writings and about their spiritual struggles, the more I understand that what we need to see is the desire that is the foundation their life and driving force behind their behaviors. Our life is to be an urgent longing for God who has given everything to us and revealed his desire to draw us into his life. Our spiritual life cannot be an abstraction; something that exist in the mind alone. Nor can it be a kind of rigorous moralism where one is driven by fear or ...
May 06, 2025•1 hr 10 min•Season 6Ep. 188
The experience of reading Saint Isaac the Syrian is something like being caught up in a vortex; not a linear explanation of the spiritual life or spiritual practices, but rather being drawn by the Holy Spirit that blows wherever It wills. It is not as though Isaac’s thought lacks cohesiveness, but rather he presents the life of faith and life in Christ to us as an artist painting with broad strokes. This is especially true in the first six homilies that speak of the discipline of virtue. Isaac s...
May 01, 2025•1 hr 7 min•Season 8Ep. 9
What is the limit of our desire for God? What conditions do we set on our pursuit of virtue, constancy of prayer and the avoidance of sin? What emerges from the writings of the fathers is their willingness to sacrifice themselves and comfort in ways that are unimaginable to the modern mind. Beyond that their actions seem to be absurd and extreme to the point of falling to the criticism of masochism or self hatred. It is very difficult for many to grasp the nature of such thirst and desire for Go...
May 01, 2025•1 hr 12 min•Season 6Ep. 187
Gratitude is placing ourselves into the hands of God, trusting in His providence and allowing Him to guide us where He wills (without asking us for permission or our understanding His purpose). It is like having a bucket of cold water dumped over our heads. We are suddenly awakened and our whole being is set on edge. We realize in the words of Saint Isaac the Syrian that gratitude and faith are often not what we imagine or want them to be. To show gratitude to He who is crucified Love means that...
Apr 24, 2025•1 hr 5 min•Season 8Ep. 8
We see clearly within the struggles of the desert fathers how difficult it can be to avoid extremes in thought and action. We see in them those filled with desire for God and striving for purity of heart; maintaining watchfulness and fostering a hatred of sin. Yet, how is one form and develop a sensitive conscience and awareness of the power of our own appetites and desires as human beings, concern with demonic provocation, and yet to hold on to a true view of the beauty of creation and the dign...
Apr 24, 2025•58 min•Season 6Ep. 186
After having spoken to us about the importance of being filled with wonder at the love and mercy of God revealed to us in Christ and desiring him above all things, Saint Isaac immediately stresses that what is born from the heart must be real and concrete. It is one thing for us to use beautiful words to speak about Christ and the faith. It is another to embody the love and compassion of Christ so vitally that our actions and words transmit virtue to others. In other words, for our actions to be...
Apr 17, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Season 8Ep. 7
Tonight‘s group consisted mostly of a monologue (out of necessity) about how it is that we are to read the Fathers. We have learned over these few years that one must read in a discerning and discriminating fashion, as well as prayerfully. There is great wisdom to be found within the ascetical writings, however, we must understand that the spiritual life and the personal struggle of each of the desert monks was unique. Furthermore, the desert itself was a laboratory like no other. In the deep so...
Apr 15, 2025•1 hr 4 min•Season 6Ep. 185
Saint Isaac the Syrian begins his teaching with a gentle reminder that liberation from material things, that is, our attachment to the things of this world and placing them above God, is a slow process that involves great toil. Yet, this is the common order of things. In our journey, we often have to break loose of the mooring of those things that prevent us from loving. And so Isaac teaches us that righteous activity involves comprehending what God has revealed to us and then embodying it throu...
Apr 10, 2025•58 min•Season 8Ep. 6
In our ongoing discussions of the Desert Fathers’ writings, especially upon sexual desire and sensuality as a whole, one comes to the realization that we have to read in a discerning fashion. In other words, we cannot be lazy while sitting at the feet of the elders. Their wisdom grew out of experience. However, it was the experience of the desert and of monks. What they discovered and understood is unparalleled in its value for the life of the Church and our understanding of spirituality. Yet, a...
Apr 10, 2025•1 hr 15 min•Season 6Ep. 184
As one reads the thoughts of Saint Isaac the Syrian the experience is almost like that of the disciples on the road to Emmaus: “Did our hearts not burn within us?” Isaac speaks to something so deep within the human heart that it ignites the very thing that he sets out to inflame: desire, wonder, awe at the love of God and the mystery of the Divine Life into which God invites us. One of the great struggles that we have as Christians is that we approach the faith and the spiritual life in a common...
Apr 03, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Season 8Ep. 5
PLEASE NOTE THAT WE ENCOUNTERED TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES WITH THE AUDIO IN THE RECORDING OF THIS EPISODE. AS A RESULT, IT DOES SOUND GLITCHY. WE APOLOGIZE. What is unique and distinctive about the Christian identity, perception of reality, and our experience of what it is to be a human being? How do we experience human sexuality and understand how it is shaped by the grace of God or how it can be distorted by sin or demonic provocation? If we are honest, we would have to say that it is the popular...
Apr 03, 2025•1 hr 14 min•Season 6Ep. 184
Again, already in these first paragraphs of Homily One what comes forward most powerfully in Saint Isaac‘s writing is that the ascetic life is driven by love and desire for God. More accurately, one might say that it is the soul’s response to God‘s revelation of His love, mercy and compassion to us in His only begotten Son. Therefore, Isaac can speak of things such as shame not in the sense of diminishing an individual’s self-identity but rather as a veil protecting the mind and the heart for Ch...
Mar 28, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Season 8Ep. 4
“And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.“ As we read through the stories of the desert fathers and the trials and temptations they experienced in relation to their passions, we began to see with greater clarity how we must cling to God and rely on His grace. No matter how disciplined or virtuous an individual may be the wiles of the devil are always going to be relentless and fierce. If the Evil One can appear as an “angel of light”, then he most assuredly can present a though...
Mar 25, 2025•1 hr 7 min•Season 6Ep. 182
Holy inebriation! We are to become drunk with faith. For those inebriated with alcohol there is often a loss of the capacity to think about things or see things clearly. For those inebriated with faith, there is a loss of sight of the things of this world and attraction to them because one’s gaze is fixed upon the Beloved. Love alone draws the soul forward. Indeed, it is by the grace of God that we make that initial turn towards Him and so begin to see with a greater clarity the inconstancy that...
Mar 20, 2025•1 hr 15 min•Season 8Ep. 3
Fear and hope! These are the two realities that are put before us by the writings of the fathers on the struggle with lust and fornication. They are hard stories to listen to for in them we begin to see the poverty of man and what we are capable of doing not only in our lesser moments, but when we turn away from God in the slightest fashion. Whatever one’s religious identity might be or how vigorously one has embraced the ascetic life, what brings an individual to the depths of sin is hubris; tr...
Mar 20, 2025•57 min•Season 7Ep. 181
How we begin something often determines how it will develop in later stages and the fruit that it will bear. Thus, Saint Isaac tells us, that the beginning of the path of life is our immersion in the word of God and to live in poverty. This is strikingly unlike how other ascetic/mystical writers begin speaking about the discipline of virtue. Isaac immediately encourages us to take the focus off of ourselves, of our own judgment of the world as well as to remove our attachment to the things of th...
Mar 06, 2025•1 hr 4 min•Season 8Ep. 2
As we are drawn more deeply into the spiritual warfare of the Desert fathers and learn from their stories of how the demons will provoke a soul and lure it into sin, we begin to see how important it is to put on the mind of Christ; that is, to embrace fully the mindset of the person of faith and the life that we are meant to embody. One of the beautiful aspects of the Evergetinos is that it does not simply present us with teachings but also with the concrete struggle of the fathers and the natur...
Mar 04, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Season 6Ep. 180
It bears saying that we find ourselves upon a privileged path as we begin this new journey with Saint Isaac the Syrian. To have access to his writings and access to such a translation in the West is a recent phenomenon and one not to be taken lightly. Further it is often said that Isaac is the greatest of the Desert Fathers in that through his writings one can move from being a novice in the spiritual life to the heights of contemplation. Immediately, one discovers that Isaac is unique and disti...
Feb 28, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Season 8Ep. 1
Once again, we are blessed by the practical counsel of the fathers in regard to the struggle with the passion of lust and fornication. What becomes evident is that the struggle is primarily with the thoughts and how we address them in our lives. The origin of such thoughts may be from ourselves and our own memories, what we experience with our senses in the present moment or from demonic provocation. Whatever their origin, our asceticism must be such that we are willing to lay all such thoughts ...
Feb 26, 2025•1 hr•Season 6Ep. 179
We come to the end of this journey with St John Climacus knowing that it is also only the beginning. What joy has come through sitting at the feet of St. John for these few years and to be led along the path that brings us to Christ and the freedom to give ourselves in love and receive love. In these final paragraphs about the qualities and the responsibilities of a spiritual elder, what shines forth most brightly is the absolute and complete love that the elder must have for those in his care. ...
Feb 20, 2025•1 hr 14 min•Season 7Ep. 132
Tonight we follow the thought of Saint Isaiah, the Solitary and St. John Cassian on the struggle with the passion of lust and fornication. One things stands out clearly: we must be fully engaged in the formation of the mind and the heart in virtue - for the devil is fully engaged in seeking to provoke us to sin. Therefore, we must guard all of the senses with great attentiveness. With this particular passion, we must engage in the battle both physically and spiritually. Thus, we must be attentiv...
Feb 18, 2025•1 hr 6 min•Season 6Ep. 178
St. John does not hesitate to speak to us about the beauty and the extraordinary responsibility of the spiritual elder. To find oneself with the care of souls one must take up the work without question. One cannot approach the care of the flock as a hireling. As we have received so we must give. If God has given us the particular gifts to guide others in the spiritual life, then gratitude must compel us to offer the same consolation to others. One cannot stress enough how great the responsibilit...
Feb 13, 2025•1 hr 8 min•Season 7Ep. 131
The spiritual life is not lived out in the abstract. Among the fathers, we find a distinct emphasis on praxis; that is, the practice of the faith. We come to know God and to love virtue not through reading but rather through experience. As a defense, often used to hold onto attachments, we make our faith into something that is purely intellectual or notional. Yet in this hypothesis, hearing tonight in particular from Saint Ephraim, the Syrian, we are presented with the experience of those tempte...
Feb 12, 2025•1 hr 8 min•Season 6Ep. 177
I was struck this evening not only with the wisdom of St. John’s counsel in regard to the care of souls, but also the beauty of the heart of the Shepherd that emerges as we read through the text. Only a heart that has been conformed to Christ and a life that in every way has become prophetic in the sense of bearing witness to the love, humility, and obedience of the kingdom can give itself over to the care of other souls. The role of an elder is not simply to instruct, reprove and guide but abov...
Feb 06, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Season 7Ep. 130
The struggle with impurity and fornication in our day is so fierce - as well as accepted and embraced by most of the secular culture - that those seeking purity of heart not only have to engage in the ascetic life deeply but also have to embrace a living martyrdom. The fathers understood how powerful our natural desires can be; in particular our sensuality. They also understood the devil‘s machinations and the relentless nature of temptations that also come to us from our own imagination and mem...
Feb 04, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Season 6Ep. 176
The counsel and the guidance that St. John offers in this letter is unparalleled. His understanding of the role of the spiritual elder and the nature and manner of engaging those in his responsibility is deep and astute, both psychologically and spiritually. Yet what stands out the most in this letter is the dynamic that must exist between the spiritual elder and those in his care. The Abbot or the elder could never be described as an administrator or a master platoon leader in the military. Sim...
Jan 30, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Season 7Ep. 129
We have continued our discussion of the farhers’ writing on fornication and the effects that it has upon the soul. Purity of heart is the foundation of the spiritual life and the immediate goal. We are called to remove every impediment that prevents us from not only receiving the grace of God but from offering him our hearts and our love fully. In fact, our hearts can be divided, and this is exactly what the demons seek to accomplish. They know they have a strong bodily appetite and desire that ...
Jan 28, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Season 6Ep. 175
The deeper that we go into this letter, the more we begin to see the necessary qualities of an elder. In our society, we often value what seems to be productive. Yet what St. John emphasizes is the heart of the elder. One cannot offer care to another soul unless they have struggled long and hard with their own passions and are able to look at those who come to them through the lens of compassion, humility, and the love of Christ. Repeatedly, we are shown the care that the elder must exhibit in h...
Jan 16, 2025•59 min•Season 7Ep. 128
Once again, my first thought at the end of this group is “Revolution“. When read in the context of all that we have considered from The Evergetinos to date and from St. John Climacus, our entire way of viewing reality is being challenged, overthrown, or illuminated. One begins to see that our capacity as Christians to read and hear the Gospel, let alone the writings of the fathers, has been compromised. We have been formed in and by an atheistic secular culture. That culture has permeated the Ch...
Jan 14, 2025•1 hr 12 min•Season 6Ep. 174
