Vigils Reading

HE WHO IS THE WAY

From a Sermon by St Isaac of Stella6

…Who does not want to be happy? Why do men universally quarrel and fight, bargain, resort to flattery, and inflict injuries on one another? Is it not simply in order to obtain, by fair means or foul, what seems good to them, something that promises to make them happy? For everyone imagines himself the happier the more he obtains what he desires.

Men agree, then in their desire for happiness, but their conceptions of it differ widely. For one it consists in physical pleasure and fleeting enjoyment, for another in strength of character, for yet another in knowledge of truth…

So he who is “the Way, the Truth and the Life”, he who corrects, guides and welcomes, begins with the words: “Happy are the poor in spirit”. The false wisdom of this world, which is true stupidity… relates to wealth that may fail, and to peace that is no peace, and to empty gladness. In direct contradiction, the Wisdom of God, the Right Hand of the Father, his own Son, the Mouth that speaks truth, declares that the happy people are the poor, they will be the kings of a kingdom that is everlasting.

As if he were to say: “You seek happiness but it is not where you think it is. You are running hard, but off the track. Here is the right road, here is the way to happiness. Poverty is the way, poverty willingly embraced for my sake. Happiness is the kingdom of heaven in me. You run energetically but not profitably, for the faster you run, the further you are from the track. Poverty is the way to happiness. Keep to the way and you will arrive.”

Courage, then, brothers; it is for us who are poor to listen to the Poor Man commending poverty to the poor. Someone speaking from experience is to be believed; Christ was born poor, lived poor and died poor. He willed to die; certainly he did not will to become rich. Let us believe Truth when he tells us of the way to life. If it is hard, it is brief, while happiness is eternal. It is narrow but it leads to life and brings us out into freedom; it will “set our feet in an open place”. It is steep, of course it is, for it goes uphill, it reaches to heaven! So we must be lightly equipped, not heavily encumbered, for the climb