The Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian - Homily XX, Part II

There is a sentence here from St. Isaac that overturns almost everything we are inclined to think about asceticism: You suppose these things were ordained simply to oblige you to labor.

We imagine the vigil primarily as something difficult. Sleep is surrendered. The body is constrained. Psalms are prayed while the world sleeps. Nature protests and the monk remains standing before God. Looked at from the outside, it appears to be an extraordinary act of discipline.

But Isaac tells us that if this is all we see, we have not yet understood the vigil.

The question is not how much a man can endure for God. The question is what begins to happen within the heart of a man who desires God enough to seek Him in the night.

Something is born there.

This is why Isaac speaks so fiercely about the following day. The tragedy would not simply be that we failed in some ascetical rule. The tragedy would be that we received something precious and then lived carelessly enough to lose it.

Seeking the One Who Has Already Come to Us

The night vigil is born from desire.

The monk rises because Someone is there.

This is what distinguishes Christian asceticism from mere religious exertion. We are not trying to force our way toward an absent God. We are responding to the God who has already drawn near, already called us, already awakened desire within us.

The Beloved has come seeking us.

And eventually the heart begins seeking Him.