Should Your Fountains Be Dispersed Abroad

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Keraza Magazine issue 5-6 January 31, 2014

In the innermost recesses of a person's heart, three essential truths are revealed: the world's truth, one's own truth, and God's truth. God's wisdom willed for those truths to be mysteries concealed within the field of the heart: "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid" (Matthew 13:44). Consequently, the epitome of every person's efforts is in reaching spiritual knowledge: understanding the mystery of the vain world, understanding the mystery of humans who are created in the image and likeness of God, and understanding the mystery of God Who is love. This is beyond reach unless one goes into the chamber of the heart and communicates with the internal person, "Go into your room, and when you have shut your door" (Matthew 6:6). Solomon the Sage, through his wisdom, understood that human salvation occurs only internally, inside the heart: "Should your fountains be dispersed abroad, streams of water in the streets?" (Proverbs 5:16). When Virgin Mary experienced the presence of God within her, she converted her heart into a permanent chamber for her thoughts: "But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart" (Luke 2:19). The Lost Son did not find the way to his salvation, except after he regained his lost heart, "when he came to himself" (Luke 15:17). St. Isaac the Syrian, who described the steps of spiritual knowledge said, "It is the grace of God that brings a man within the door."¹

When our saintly fathers (the monks, ascetics, and solitaries) realized that the Evil one's worst nightmare is when we turn our focus from outside inwardly, collecting thoughts dispersed outside our inner person's heart, the Holy Spirit guided them to the Prayer of the Heart as a weapon to combat scattered thoughts, and as a guaranteed way to enter the King's chamber.

Today's person wastes away life in pleasure, deceived by the enticements of the enemy who creatively reshapes them anew each moment to ensure the person's distraction outside him/herself "in the streets?" No one escapes this warfare, not a child, a youth, or an elder, not a man nor a woman, to the point that they all try to outrace each other in inventing the best means to help them escape sitting with themselves, using the excuse of boredom or weariness.

May God grant us "according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man" (Ephesians 3:16), so that we may arise to the Prayer of the Heart and mental vigil, at all times and everywhere, until we find the pearl of great price hidden inside the field of our internal hearts. Amen.

Bishop Youssef
Bishop, Coptic Orthodox Diocese of the Southern United States

¹ The Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian. (1984). (D. Miller, Trans.) Boston: Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Homily 4, P. 39.