The Life
Isaac was born around 613 in the region of Beth Qatraye in eastern Arabia. He and his brother entered the monastery of Mar Matthew near Nineveh in northern Mesopotamia. His learning, virtue, and ascetic life attracted the brethren, who proposed he head the monastery. Isaac left for the desert instead. The fame of his holy life eventually led to his consecration as Bishop of Nineveh around 670. He resigned after only five months. He retired to the wilderness of Mount Matout where he lived alone for many years, devoting himself entirely to contemplative prayer and theological writing. His eyesight failed from constant reading. He retired to the monastery of Rabban Shabur where he reposed around 700. His Ascetical Homilies, composed in Syriac and translated into Greek, have shaped Eastern Christian monasticism for thirteen centuries.
Isaac was born around 613 in Beth Qatraye in eastern Arabia, a mixed Syriac- and Arabic-speaking region that included the modern country of Qatar. The precise circumstances of his birth are not preserved. The tradition records simply that he was born in a deeply Christian family and was drawn from his earliest years to the ascetical Christian life. He and his brother entered the monastery of Mar Matthew in the mountains near Nineveh in northern Mesopotamia. They received the monastic tonsure together. The monastery of Mar Matthew was one of the great Christian monastic centers of seventh-century Mesopotamia, with traditions of biblical study, liturgical chanting, and ascetical discipline. Isaac’s formation in the monastic life began at Mar Matthew and would shape his entire subsequent contemplative and theological work.
Isaac’s learning, virtue, and ascetic manner of life soon attracted the notice of the brethren of Mar Matthew. They proposed that he head the monastery as abbot. Isaac, in his humility and his deep love for the contemplative life, did not want this burden. He preferred the life of silence over the responsibilities of monastic administration. He left the monastery to live alone in the desert as a hermit. His brother urged him more than once to return to the monastic community, but he would not agree. The deep love of solitude and the deep desire for unceasing prayer were formed in him from his earliest monastic years and would shape his entire subsequent ascetical and theological life. The choice for solitude over administration was the founding decision of his contemplative vocation.
The fame of Saint Isaac’s holy life eventually spread across the entire region. When the see of Nineveh fell vacant, the bishops of the Church of the East assembled to elect a new bishop and chose Saint Isaac. He was consecrated around 670 by Mar George I, the Catholicos-Patriarch of the Church of the East. His episcopate lasted only five months. The traditional account records a particular incident: two Christians came to him asking him to settle a dispute about a debt. Isaac counseled the creditor with the words of the Lord: “Forgive your debtor as you would have your own debts forgiven.” The creditor responded that the gospel had nothing to do with his business. Isaac, deeply grieved that even the Christians of his diocese would not receive the teaching of the Lord, concluded that he was not suited to the pastoral office. He resigned and went south to the wilderness of Mount Matout.
After his resignation Saint Isaac retired to the wilderness of Mount Matout, a refuge for anchorites south of Nineveh. There he lived in solitude for many years. He devoted himself entirely to the contemplative life: unceasing prayer, ascetical discipline, study of the Holy Scriptures, composition of the mystical and ascetical writings that would later make him one of the most influential spiritual writers in the entire history of the Christian Church. The wilderness of Mount Matout became his monastic cell, his theological library, and his apostolic platform all at once. He was, by all accounts, a recluse of extreme asceticism, eating only a few crusts of bread with herbs each day, sleeping minimally, devoting nearly every waking hour to unceasing prayer and the composition of his theological writings.
Saint Isaac’s eyesight eventually failed from his constant reading of the Holy Scriptures and the theological writings of the fathers. He had spent decades in the solitude of Mount Matout reading and writing in the dim light of his hermitage. The blindness, when it came, forced him to retire from the solitary life. He moved to the monastery of Rabban Shabur where the monks could provide him with the care his blindness now required. He spent his final years there, continuing to compose his theological writings by dictation to his disciples. He reposed in peace at the monastery of Rabban Shabur around the year 700, attended by his fellow monks. He was about eighty-seven years old. He was buried at the monastery.
Saint Isaac is one of the most extraordinary cases in the entire history of Eastern Christian veneration. He was, in his historical context, a member of the Church of the East. He was therefore not in ecclesial communion with the Greek-speaking Orthodox Church of his age. And yet the purity of his own Orthodox Faith is so evident in his writings that the Eastern Christian Church has nonetheless recognized his sanctity. He is venerated as a saint in the Church of the East, the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Syriac Orthodox Church. His inclusion in the Eastern Orthodox calendar is the clear demonstration that the Eastern tradition does not regard canonical boundaries as the ultimate test of Orthodoxy.
The biblical foundation of Saint Isaac’s entire ascetical theology is the simple command of the Psalm: “Be still, and know that I am God.” The practice of stillness (“hesychia” in Greek) — the cultivation of the inner silence in which the soul can hear the voice of God — is the foundation of the entire Eastern Christian contemplative tradition. Saint Isaac spent decades in the wilderness of Mount Matout pursuing this practice of stillness. The Ascetical Homilies he composed in that solitude are the theological articulation of the deep contemplative wisdom he had acquired through his decades of stillness in the desert. May we, in the noise of our own ordinary lives, find some measure of the stillness in which the voice of God can be heard.
Saint Isaac reposed in peace at the monastery of Rabban Shabur around the year 700. He was about eighty-seven years old. He had spent the last years of his life blind, dictating his theological writings to his disciples. He had given his entire life to the contemplative pursuit of God: decades at the monastery of Mar Matthew, decades in the wilderness of Mount Matout, his final years at Rabban Shabur. He died at peace, attended by his fellow monks. He was buried at the monastery. His feast day is observed in many Eastern Christian calendars on January 28, often together with the feast of the fourth-century theologian and hymnographer Saint Ephrem the Syrian, reflecting the long-standing liturgical commemoration across the different churches of these two great Syriac fathers together.
Isaac gives the Christian Church a particular gift: the early Eastern dramatization that the contemplative life is the theological foundation of the entire Christian tradition. He resigned the episcopate after only five months for the contemplative life. He spent decades in the wilderness of Mount Matout pursuing unceasing prayer. His eyesight failed from constant reading. He composed the Ascetical Homilies that have shaped Eastern monasticism for thirteen centuries. His writings take up a greater portion of the Philokalia than those of any other writer. We may not be hermits. But we are all called to cultivate the contemplative depth that the providence of God has prepared for our particular vocations.