Episode Details

Orthodoxy and Orthopraxis (right belief and right practice) are intimately tied together. All of the fathers and, in particular, Saint Isaac the Syrian want us to understand that our perception of revelation, who God is to us and what we have become in his Son through the Paschal mystery, and how we live our life are inseparable. God has revealed himself to us in a unique and distinctive fashion, and has made known to us our dignity and destiny in Christ. Therefore, having a clear understanding of our human nature, the sickness of sin and the passions that follow and the healing that takes place through Grace is imperative.

Isaac pushes us to understand that virtue is the natural health of the soul and the passions are an illness of the soul that follow and invade our nature and despoil its proper health. One can see how essential this is when looking at our life in this world and the struggles of the spiritual life. We can attribute sin and the hold that passions have upon us simply to human nature. However, when we do this, we lose sight of the fact that we have been created in the image and likeness of God and that sin is antecedent to that reality. We have been created for love and to manifest this love through virtue.

A faulty or incomplete understanding of human anthropology and psychology, has often been the pretext that the Evil One uses to distort our vision to the point that we willingly embrace that which enslaves us.  To understand that we have been created good, conversely, establishes a firm desire within the human heart for that which is of God. It also establishes confidence and hope in the grace of God who tells us precisely that he has come not to judge the world but to save it! 

One of the beautiful things that the desert fathers would have us understand is that Christ is the divine physician who has come to heal us. He is the Good Samaritan from the gospel who takes our burden upon himself in order that we might be nursed to the fullness of health.  Again, if Isaac makes us work to understand this, we must see it as a labor of love. To grasp these truths allows us to give free expression to our desire for God and to run towards Him with the freedom of those aided by His Grace.

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Text of chat during the group:

00:01:52 Fr. Charbel Abernethy: Page 128 paragraph 6

00:10:40 Anthony: I just read that there is a "Holy Transfiguration East" in Burnsville, NC.

00:11:43 Anthony: Gotcha thanks

00:26:20 Joshua Sander: I've missed the last couple of weeks, and so you may have already explained this, but when Isaac uses the term "passions," what exactly does he mean? I've heard the term used roughly in the sense of "emotions" (i.e. anger, sadness, etc.), but does Isaac mean it more in the sense of "temptations"? I think you may have just explained this now, but in that case, could you briefly restate this?

00:30:04 Suzanne Romano: Does Isaac distinguish between original nature and fallen nature?

00:33:15 David: I found this helpful from Fr. Maximos- So, we have five stages in the evolution of a logismos,” he concluded, spreading out the five fingers of his right hand. “Assault, interaction, consent, captivity/defeat, and passion/obsession. These are more or less all the stages. While they use the same word in translation it helped me to realize the different stages in context.

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00:37:39 Julie: Reacted to "I found this helpful…" with 👍

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