Meditation: The Freedom of the Heart in Exile

There are times when the soul, like a paralytic by the pool of Bethesda, can do little more than wait for the stirring of the waters. In these moments, when isolation deepens into what feels like abandonment, even prayer can seem to dissolve into silence. One stands motionless before God, without energy, without bearings, without light. And yet, precisely here the psalmist’s cry from the depths becomes our own:

“My soul lies in the dust; by your word revive me.”

“I declared my ways and you answered: teach me your statutes.”

The words are not an escape from desolation but a surrender to it. They reveal the humility of a heart that no longer pretends to understand its path. St. John Chrysostom, in his letters to Olympia, wrote from the pain of exile and sickness, comforted only by the mystery that Providence had not abandoned him but had drawn him into a hidden obedience. He wrote, “Do not be downcast; this storm is not forever. The Lord allows the sea to rage that He may show His power to still it.” His consolation was not the removal of suffering, but the discovery that even in isolation, he remained in communion with the will of God.

Like Chrysostom, the psalmist does not ask for escape but for clarity: “Make me grasp the way of your precepts.” This request is not intellectual but existential. When one can no longer act outwardly, the soul is invited to act inwardly: to “muse on His wonders,” to remember, to yield. The paralysis of body or will becomes the stillness in which God works secretly. What once seemed like abandonment becomes the furnace in which all self-conceived paths are burned away until only one word remains: “Wait.”

Waiting, in the spiritual sense, is not passive. It is the still gaze of love held upon the unseen God. Chrysostom’s letters breathe this kind of faith. In one of his darkest hours he told Olympia, “Even if the whole world be in arms against me, I will not cease to bless God.” He recognized that divine delay is not absence but purification. To wait is to allow one’s own will to be quieted until the heart begins to move again in rhythm with the divine.

When the psalm concludes, it is no longer the cry of a broken soul but the vow of one who has found freedom within obedience:

“I bind myself to do your will, Lord, do not disappoint me.

I will run the way of your commands; you give freedom to my heart.”

This is the paradox of the spiritual life. Outwardly, exile, illness, and stillness appear as loss. Inwardly, they become the narrow door through which the heart is enlarged. The soul that waits in the dust is not forsaken but prepared; not abandoned but being fashioned into a vessel of love.

In the end, when all human strategies and calculations fall silent, God speaks the same word to every faithful heart; “Wait, and I will revive you by My Word.” In that stillness, even in exile, we learn again what Chrysostom knew so deeply: that the freedom of the heart is found not in movement, but in surrender to the will of God who dwells even in our desolation.

“Give Your Blood and Receive the Spirit”

A prayerful meditation on surrender and the ache for freedom

Lord, You have led me into the silence,

into this narrow and blessed space where the only light

is the flicker of Your presence in my heart.

And yet even here, even now,

I feel the old gravity,

the self that will not die, the anxious clutching

at what is passing away.

You whisper hesychia, stillness,

and I tremble before what that really means.

To keep the body in the cell,

to hold the mind in the heart,

to be crucified to the world

and the world to me:

these are not gentle words.

They cut.

They demand blood.

I have given so little.

I still keep pieces of myself hidden away;

small comforts, imagined securities,

the fragile scaffolding of control

that I call prudence but You name fear.

Even as I pray, I clutch at the future

like a beggar hoarding crumbs,

as though You, the Giver of all,

might forget me.

But You call me to poverty;

not the poverty of lack,

but the poverty of heart that owns nothing,

not even its own peace.

You became poor, Lord of heaven,

that I might learn to empty myself

and find You dwelling in the emptiness.

Teach me this surrender that costs everything;

not the soft kind, the easy nod of consent,

but the raw obedience of blood and Spirit.

Tear from me the subtle idols:

the need to be certain,

the hunger to be seen,

the illusion of mastery over life and time.

Let my hesychia not be comfort,

but crucifixion;

the quiet dying where all thought ceases

and only Your Name breathes within.

Strip me until I stand naked in grace,

where the heart no longer bargains,

no longer remembers itself,

only beats with Your hidden life.

Grant me this freedom, O Lord,

to be nothing,

to possess nothing,

to love only You.

Then shall the silence become fire,

the stillness a torrent,

and the poverty of my soul

a boundless wealth in Your Presence.

May I give my blood,

and by Your mercy, receive the Spirit.

Amen.

Reflection based upon the writings of

Archimandrite Zacharias Zacharou 

Perfect Surrendering to the Spirit of Salvation pp. 10-13

St. Isaac the Syrian - Slipping Beyond the Bounds to Attain the Unattainable

Archimandrite Vasileios opens our view to the horizon in this reflection in order that we might catch sight not only the journey ahead but that we might be filled with fervor and wonder for what is held in store for us.  We are on a ceaseless journey and everything in this world is transcended as we enter into the eternal silence and repose of God.  The movement is beyond virtue and ethics and all worldly hope and freedom.  The struggle is great, but the glory that is beyond prayer and freedom and that is filled with the joy of the divine, makes all other things seem as nothing.  There is a time for everything and one cannot elude the necessity of bodily toil and asceticism.  We suffer the shame of the cross in order to share in its glory and the reception of the Comforter.  The path ahead holds violence born of fervor beyond measure.  One transcends oneself and moves from glory to glory; all requiring the death to the false self, a willingness to experience the painful separation from the illusions we create for ourselves in order to be drawn into a vision of God.  In the eyes of the world it is a state of derangement where one is no longer directed or set upon the order of things here, but upon an ineffable sweetness that descends and floods man's being.

It is a ceaseless journey, an ascent, an ascension.

All things reach the point of transcendence.  They are surpassed.  They are done away with. They cease.

We enter into absolute silence and repose.

A person freed from passions, from ignorance, from vice.  He is not bound by "the other means which dishonor a man."  The present life is not big enough for him.  He does not bind himself to the present life.

He is not confined to worldly ethics and hope.  "For the hope of this present life enfeebles the thinking."  Despair shatters the hard, confining shell of worldly hope, the prison of sterility - "no weapon is stronger than despair" - pouring forth torrents of light in darkness.

He does not make good works, virtue, his aim in life.  He attains these, and by the grace of God moves beyond them: "Faith's way of life is more exalted than virtue, and its labor is not works, but perfect rest and consolation."

Calmly he moves on beyond the bounds of motion, speech, sensation, knowledge, activity of any kind.  "He becomes a free man and a ruler of himself, and as a son of God with authority he freely wields all things."

In the end he casts off even his own freedom. "Then a man's nature is deprived of its free will . . . it is led whither it knows not by some other power . . . at that moment it is held fast in captivity."  He finds himself then in the "ignorance" which is above all knowledge and the "captivity" which is above all freedom.

He has broken every barrier.  He has attained the Unattainable.  "His intellect is confounded and swallowed up in awestruck wonder, and forgets the very desire of its own entreaty."

From now on "the mind no longer possesses prayer, or movement, or weeping, or dominion, or free will or supplication, or desire, or fervent longing for things hoped for in this life or in the age to come."

But getting there takes a real struggle.  And Abba Isaac does not merely speak to you about this.  You see him in his book actually going beyond the bounds of corruption.  You can make out the divine changes in his person and the fact that he is wholly in that realm which is beyond the world, where everything has been done away with and transcended.

Now, "making his abode in the glory which brings joy," he reveals through his being how the spiritual laws work and how one progresses towards transcendence in all areas, subjects and levels.

Each thing has its own rhythm and its own time.  You have to wait and let it move along on its own.

An illness has to go run its course before it leaves the patient.  A fruit has to go through all the stages, in appropriate climatic conditions, in order to ripen.

We cannot ask for things that have their proper time when it is not their proper time.  

"When it is not the proper time, let us not yearn after the lofty things, let us not yearn after the lofty things of the noetic discipline, lest we be made a laughing stock by our cunning adversary."

"Every man that before the time begins things that are beyond his measure makes his harm twofold."

We should not ask for things that prosper in one particular place where it is not the place for them.  "Let every work be honored  in its own place, lest we become confused in our discipline."

So then all this is necessary - a place, a time, a special procedure - in order for something genuine and true to come out of what we do.  ("There is an order for every work, and for every discipline there is a fixed time."  Afterwards, this outcome speaks, stands and comforts man in every time and place.

Physical toil precedes spiritual rest. "And just as in the beginning, the fashioning of the body preceded the inbreathing of the soul, so the works of the body precede the labor of the soul."  "Regard every virtue performed without bodily toil as premature, stillborn fruit of the womb."

First comes force and toil, and later we reach the point where things are unforced and effortless.  First comes the struggle, and later we attain to rest, enjoyment and plentitude.

"Ascetical endeavor is the mother of sanctification . . . Let know man deceive himself, and imagine divinations; for a polluted soul does not ascend to the pure kingdom, nor is such a soul joined to the spirits of the holy."

We shall start, then, with the works of the body.  Matter, force, struggle will form the initial steps that enable us to climb.  Without these, we cannot make any headway: "When you desire to draw nigh to God with your heart, first show Him your yearning by bodily labors."

Without passing through the dishonor of the cross of practice virtue, it is not possible to reach the second part of the crucifixion, the glory of the cross, when man is released from passions and conceptual images.

"Until a man has received the Comforter, he requires the divine scriptures."  This is why he advises: "Fetter your intellect by reading the Scriptures."  "Occupy yourself with reading books, which will make plain to you the subtle pathways of divine vision."  "Without assiduous reading, a man will know no refinement of thoughts."  "Continual reflection on Scriptures is a light to the soul."

But "when the power of the Spirit has penetrated the power of the soul . . . then he is secretly taught by the Spirit and needs no help from sensory matter."  And "his mind will be exalted above the images of things."

He starts with teaching, and speech which "is an instrument of this world," and attains to the "silence which is a mystery of the age to come."  He is "silenced by his ignorance of all that is found there.  This is the unknowing which is more sublime than knowledge."

"Knowledge is a step whereby one can climb up to the lofty height of faith; and when one has reached faith, one no longer has need of knowledge."  One transcends the whole of the sensible world, and "perception is received by the spirit and not by the senses."

In this state, "knowledge is abolished, works come to an end and the employment of the sense become superfluous."

"Mourning is the work of the monk."  "And when the soul is given fervor, the contrition of mourning is taken away."

Tears are a bodily sign that your intellect has come out of the prison of this world.  "If you observe that your eyes are filled with tears . . . then know that a breach in the opposing camp has begun to appear for you."

"But when the mind is exalted above created things, the body also takes leave of tears and of every movement and sensation."

From just judgment it passes on to mercy.  This is the fulfillment and transcendence of just judgment. "Mercy is opposed to just judgment."

After a long life in stillness, "you find a joy which is without cause . . . and then your eyes are opened to see God's creative power and the beauty of created things."  But even there you do not stay long.  "Since all the beauty of things to exist in the newness to come is inferior to God's beauty, how can the intellect depart, through contemplation of it, from the beauty of God?"

"From activity that demands violence there is born fervor beyond measure."  And it attains to the prayer which comes about "without effort or wandering of thoughts."

In the beginning, arduous toil and pain are needed in prayer: "Reckon every prayer wherein the body does not toil and the heart is not afflicted to be a miscarriage."  Later on, "a man does not pray with labor and weariness . . . but because his heart is full of joy and wonder it continually wells up motions of gratitude."

Ultimately, even prayer itself is done away with.  "For what pertains to prayer has ceased, while a certain divine vision remains, and the mind does not pray a prayer."  "The intellect comes to be above prayer, and by the discovery of something better, prayer is abandoned."

There is a divine visitation and heavenly joy which fills the whole body.  Earthly things are abandoned.  A person forgets the things that are in the world, because an ineffable sweetness descends and floods his being.  "A fountain springs up in his heart, gushing forth sweetness: his members grow feeble . . . so that because of the joy which surges through his entire body, he cannot make prostrations."

In that state there is no distinction between body and soul.  "Whenever that delight which surges through his whole body sojourns within a man, at that hour he things that nothing else is the Kingdom of the heavens save this."

He experiences the grace of the incarnation and the blessing of the union, without confusion or division, of the two natures of Christ.  He is anti-Nestorian in both his teaching and his life.  The grace of interpenetration sets its seal on his whole being and character and gives it life.  Then night and day are one; sufferings and joys are one.  And he finds trials and tribulations sweeter than honey.

In this state, the passions are confronted in a way that is dynamic. They are overcome by other, greater things.

"The joy that is in God is stronger than the present life."  There is a divine drunkeness which makes the body insensible to all tribulations.  "When the soul is drunken with the joy of hope and with the gladness which is in God, the body becomes insensible to tribulations, even if it be feeble."

Thus, "entrance to the heart is denied to the passions not as a result of struggle, but because of the repletion of our conscious mind."  "This is not because the assaults of the passions have ceased to exist, but because the heart which receives them is now dead to them and lives in something else."  "For the conscience is satiated in the enjoyment of something else."  And "in the place of the assaults another desire, stronger than them, has gained the mastery."

Fear and shame come first.  "The fear of God is the beginning of virtue."  "The intellect weighed down by fear of God and shame is not readily upset by the things that sway it."

And when the temperature of love rises, "there is seen an unaccustomed change."  (He talks about this state in the thirty fifth homily).

The love of God is by nature fervent.  And when it comes upon a person without measure, he cannot contain it.  "Love does not know shame, and for this reason she does not know to give a form of propriety to her members."

And it brings about an unaccustomed changed in him, the signs of which are perceptible on his body. His face becomes flushed and shining with joy.

Fear and shame leave him.  He becomes like someone in a state of ecstasy.

The power of his intellect deserts him, and he becomes like a man out of his wits.

Fearsome death he regards with joy.

The contemplation of his intellect is permanently fixed on heavenly things.

Though absent, he consorts with others as if he were present, unseen by anyone.  

His natural knowledge and sight pass away; he is not aware of his movement by sense perception.

If he performs any action he is not altogether aware of it, because his intellect is rapt in contemplation.

And his mind is constantly in converse with someone else.

This is the spiritual drunkenness with which the Apostles and Martyrs were inebriated; and being wise, they were thought fools.  Others wandered in the wilderness . . . being well-ordered amidst disorder.

May God grant us to attain such derangement.

Archimandrite Vasileios

Abbot of Iveron Monastery, Mount Athos

Abba Isaac the Syrian

An Approach to His World

Isaac the Syrian - A Teacher Who Leads Us to the Kingdom of Freedom in Christ

Abba Isaac, as a man transformed by the grace of God, becomes as teacher as Christ is Teacher.  He comes in love and humility offering freely and tenderly renewed health to the others and arousing within them the appetite and desire for Life.  He does this respecting the mystery and uniqueness of each person; understanding that he must allow others to take their own path to freedom.  Abba Isaac guides but does not constrain what must be given room to grow and breath.  Even if he knows you better than you know yourself, Abba Isaac realizes that you must come to see these realities yourself; you must come to see the beauty of God's grace and what he has made you to be.  You must be allowed to knit together your life and learn where to find hope. Abba Isaac lays out clearly the trials that we will face but leaves us to face them when and how they come to us.  His gift to us is to teach us to diagnose our own sickness, see where are passions lie, use our own experience to map out the path the set before us. As teacher he leads us to the Kingdom of freedom in Christ in order that we might drink from the living springs of water that well up within us. And all of this Isaac gives in order that we might lead and nourish others; that like Christ we might live and die constantly in order that others might live.   

You do not save man with advice and exhortations from outside.  Nor do you offer him freedom by telling him, "Do whatever you want."

Wordlessly, like a sun of tender love and a fresh breeze of courage, your love needs to be able to give him health and arouse within him his own person appetite for life.

This happens with Abba Isaac.  He is wholly on fire, and passes on the mystery of cooling fire, the mystery of the Church.  A love proceeds from his being which provides the other with a space for freedom; it gives him possibilities for realizing his own self.

He embraces the other in leaving him free in his entirety.

He knows you.  He understand you.  He leaves you free to move, to get to know your being and your endurance, the nature of things and their beauty.

In this life and this environment freedom is not just a permissible state of affairs, but an indispensable presupposition.  "It behooves us to observe our liturgy in complete freedom, far from every childish and disquieting thought."

He speaks calmly and simply.  Clearly and in hints.  So that each person can take a thread, a strand of wool to knit his own garment to fit the body of his own being; to warm his bones and hatch out his hope.

He informs us of the trials facing those who engage in the struggle at the various stages of spiritual life.  And he concludes: "You may comprehend the subtle pathways of your mind by the kinds of trials that beset you."  "Examine in which of these passions you are alive, and then you will know in which parts you are alive to the world, and in which you are dead."

He leaves us to understand for ourselves where we stand, to diagnose our own sickness: "Blessed is the man who knows his own weakness, because this knowledge becomes to him the foundation, the root and the beginning of all goodness."  He helps us to flee for refuge to Him who is strong: "Whoever subjects himself to God is near to having all things subject to him."

He leads us by the hand towards the true knowledge of man, which is the fount of the knowledge of all things: "When a man knows himself, the knowledge of all things is granted to him."

"Whoever desires to learn these things, let him make his way on to the past indicated above; let his doing of them follow up his consideration of them!"  "For the testimony of his own understanding is sufficient to persuade him above endless words having no experience behind them."

"Our intellect . . . is able of itself to move toward the good uninstructed."  And he urges: "Be diligent to enter into the treasury that is within you, and you will see the treasury of heaven: for these are one and the same."  "Be peaceful within yourself, and heaven and earth will be at peace with you."

"And when in actuality a man has come to these things, he himself will learn by himself, and will need no one else to teach him."

That is where the true teacher leads us: to the "kingdom of freedom", to the point where we do not need a teacher.  Where we find the spring which flows, or is able to flow, within us.  Where we drink from our own spring.  Where our whole being becomes a flowing spring.

Spiritual knowledge and contemplation "immaterially manifests itself within the soul by the grace of God, suddenly and unexpectedly, and it is revealed from within.  For 'the Kingdom of the heavens is within you.'

Then you quench your own thirst and the thirst of others.  You learn to be active and still.  You find relaxation in toil, and renewal in old age, in the passing of time.  And the ocean of eternal life in the ultimate death and immobility of everything.  "He regards fearful death as a joy."

Thus you teach and keep silent, you are nourished and nourish, you live and die constantly.  All in the same action.  And this action raises up the true man and reveals him as god-man by grace, as a true light.

Archimandrite Vasileios

Abbot of Iveron Monastery, Mount Athos

Abba Issac the Syrian

An Approach to His World