Isaac de Ninive

Isaac de Ninive or Isaac the Syrian (Beit' Katraja, ~ 640; Rabban Sabor, ~ 700)

Ascetic, writer, bishop, Mystical and Theology N Nestorien, Isaac the Syrian was one of largest spiritual of the Christian East.

Life

Of the man himself, one does not know almost anything, if not that it was, in VIIe century, bishop nestorien of Ninive.

Born in current the Qatar (Persian Gulf), with his brother, he became monk whereas he was very young.

Its reputation of holiness was spread in the Perse empire, so much so that the inhabitants of Ninive claimed it as bishop. It was devoted, towards 660, by the Catholicos (supreme patriarch) of the Church chaldéenne, Georges 1° (658-680). He abdicated only five months to withdraw himself later like Anachorète with the Matout mount among the ascetics of Kurdistan. The reasons of its departure of the episcopate remain dubious. According to the sources, one can is to think of a voluntary departure (Two faithful, which had required of him to slice their different, pushed back his councils evangelic while saying to him: " Leave your Gospel apart from this business! ". Isaac is said: " If they are not laid out to subject itself to the precepts of Christ, that do they need me? ") or under the pressure (Some think that the spiritual doctrines of Isaac were fought by certain its fellow-members in the episcopate, jealous of its prestige).

It lived there in loneliness, eating little (three breads per believed week and some vegetables). An assiduous reading of the Holy Books and abundant tears of componction used the sight to him. Then, practically blind man, it withdrew himself with the monastery of Rabban Shabbour (Saint-Sapôr), where it dictated his works with his disciples.

Its thought

Its thought makes the synthesis of the large spiritual currents of old Christianity: that of Évagre Pontique, more speculative, which stresses the purification of intellect; that of Macaire, more biblical, centered on the topics of the " cœur" and of the " plenitude of Saint-Esprit" ; that of Origène, with the hope of the universal hello.

For Isaac, the ways of the knowledge of God are existential: faith, the prayer, humility, purification of the spirit and its union with the heart. Then the heart rises until it reaches the heights of the love and which the joy remains at the bottom of him. The prayer becomes " spontanée" : the man becoming sanctified, " that he eats, drinks or sleeps, the perfume of the prayer exhales sound âme" spontaneously;. It carries out the love evangelic of next, becomes a being of reception, mercy, blessing. The charity of the heart becomes cosmic, its unbounded hope, he requests even for the snakes and the demons. He perceives " the flame of the choses" and the wild beasts pacify themselves around him.

Isaac and charity

If Isaac is a large ascetic, spiritual the more famous as of its time, he was also a man of a great charity.

Some quotations will be enough to have an idea:

" Do not try to distinguish that which are worthy and that which is not it; that all are equal in your eyes to like them and serve them. The Lord it did not divide the table of the publicains and the women of bad vie"

" I want a heart which ignites charity for whole creation, the men, the birds, the animals, for the demons, for all the creatures. Also request for the animals and even for the reptiles, worthy them also of a pity infinie."

" Here, my brother, a command that I give you: that the mercy always carries it in your balance, until the moment when you will feel in yourself this mercy that God tests towards the monde."

Heritage

Contemporary of saint Jean Climaque and sound " Scale of the Paradise " , Isaac carried out a hidden life, of which one knows almost nothing, but the radiation of its thought was spread across the centuries, the cultural and linguistic eras, the borders of the Christian confessions.

The fact that Isaac was Nestorien prevents it from being one of the spiritual writers most famous and most influential of all East, neither to appear in orthodoxe martyrologe, nor to even be regarded as a saint by the Syrian Church of Antioche (Monophysite).

Its writings, written into syriaque, were represented, very early, in Greek, Ethiopic, Arabic, then, in modern times, in Latin, Italian, Spanish and in other European languages, of which French (in 1981). Not only they were accepted as of the XI century in the Syrian Church of Antioche (that the western world, orthodoxe Greek or roman catholic, called " monophysite" or " jacobite "), but moreover they inspired holy to Syméon the New Theologist and later exerted their influence on Russian mysticism.

If its writings did not have the favor to appear in the Greek Philocalie of Macaire, nor Dobrotolioubié (philocalie slavonne) of Païssy, some of them however entered the Russian edition of made by Théophane the recluse. Isaac avoided writing on the subjects discussed of the time, and that gave to its text some oecumenical value which was worth to him to be accepted out of the nestorianism.

He is recognized like saint by the orthodoxe Église. (festival on January 28th).

The work of St Isaac profits in French from translation and recent studies

External bonds

Information in English on Saint Isaac
Article of the " Catholic Encyclopedia"

Category: Syrian writer Category: Writer qatari

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