St. Isaac the Syrian (Mid-week Message)

 

Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message

February 13, 2013 (Ash Wednesday)

St. Isaac the Syrian on Sin and God’s Compassion

The reading for the Daily Office on Ash Wednesday is the Book of Jonah (it is the synagogue reading for the Day of Atonement).  In it, God spares the city Nineveh when it repents and puts on sackcloth and ashes.  For the start of Lent, I thought you might find useful a quotation from St. Isaac of Nineveh, a Syrian mystic and ascetic who died in A.D. 700: 

“To the extent a person draws closer to God—even if only in his or her intentions—to just that extent does God draw close to that person with His manifold gifts.

“A handful of sand thrown into the sea, is what sinning is like, when compared to God’s Providence and Compassion.  Just as an abundant source of water is not impeded by a handful of dust, so is the Creator’s Compassion not defeated by the sins of His creations.

“What is imprinted in us at birth comes before faith and is the path leading to faith and toward God.   What God plants in our very being when we are born, it alone brings us to the point where we feel the need to trust God, Who had brought everything into being.

“Those in whom the light of faith truly shines never arrive at such shamelessness as to give God demands: "Give us this," or  "Remove from us this."  The genuine Father, whose great Love transcends in countless ways the love of any father we might know, gives us spiritual eyes.  Because of this, we continually view the Father’s Providence, and are no longer concerned in the slightest about ourselves.   God can do more than anyone else, and can assist us by a far greater measure than we could ever ask for, or even imagine.”

Grace and Peace, 

Fr. Tony+