The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian

by Isaac the Syrian

English, Greek (translation)

Genres: Religion, Christianity, Theology

607 pages, Hardcover

First published December 31, 1984

About the author

(Syriac: ܡܪܝ ܐܝܣܚܩ ܕܢܝܢܘܐ‎; Arabic: إسحاق النينوي; Greek: Ἰσαὰκ ὁ Σύρος), also remembered as Saint Isaac the Syrian, Abba Isaac, Isaac Syrus and Isaac of Qatar, was a 7th-century Church of the East Syriac Christian bishop and theologian best remembered for his written works on Christian asceticism.

He is regarded as a saint in the Assyrian Church of the East, the Chaldean Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox tradition. His feast day falls, together with 4th-century theologian and hymnographer St. Ephrem the Syrian, on January 28.

Reviews

[Lieutenant · Rating 5 out of 5]

How can I review these pages written with golden ink? This will stand for eternity as a book of holiness and will endure the vicissitudes of time, there was nothing that I could think “this must have been true when it was written”, no, it is as true today as it has ever been.

What it is: it is about the spiritual life that both those wishing to join the monastic life or people who are not living religious lives could read with much benefit even today. It will instruct you on how to guard your heart, why do we have doubts and how they vanish, how to make your life more fruitful and pleasant in the right way, how to find wisdom, how to and how not to do ascesis, and how to find God.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some books are so precious and demand such scholarship that you have to wait for a while to be able to have access to them. This is the case for The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac The Syrian, out of print for many years, and finally reedited and republished in 2011.

I had read some of his homilies a few years ago, in a binder, and in a monastery. I patiently waited for the re-edition and spent most of 2012 in reading them all.

I have to admit that even though they are presented by the publisher as being for monks and lay people alike, there are some passages that clearly went, not over my head, as I was able to intellectually understand them, but over my nous [mind-spirit-heart]: I am well aware that I would have been able to understand them some years back in the solitude of a monastery, but that now as I am living “in the world”, too busy with mundane things, I can no longer reach to the depth of some spiritual meanings.

But whatever I could grasp was definitely worth the wait and the effort. I’m not going to present here St Isaac’s theology, that would be too long. Let me just say that we often refer to his teaching on...

my full review is here:
http://wordsandpeace.com/2013/01/09/b...

[Br. Thanasi (Thomas) Stama · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection of homilies by St. Isaac the Syrian. I have been reading them since 2005. When I no longer had the collection available to me, I had to wait three years before they were reprinted to get my own copy.

[Troy Shelton · Rating 5 out of 5]

absolutely priceless