Sculpting Project 20: Abba Isaac’s Formula: Week 2

Sculpting Project 20: Abba Isaac’s Formula Week 2

“Come in, welcome again.”Abba Issac offers us the Desert Father’s hospitality, food for our body as well as the soul. “ Have you followed my directions and called to God with the Psalm verse ‘O God, incline unto my aid; O Lord, make haste to help me.’ ? This verse is necessary and useful for everybody at all times. We need God’s help in the hard times and in sad affairs. But we need His aid just as much in the joyful times.

I use this verse most frequently to deal with The Eight Thoughts. You have likely heard of The Eight Thoughts. Well, I guess by your time they were reduced to seven. You may remember the name The Seven Deadly Sins. These are seven of The Eight Thoughts I battle regularly.

How do I battle these? If I am seized by the passion of gluttony, look for food that is unheard-of in the desert, and feel myself, in the midst of the stark desert, drawn unwillingly to the desire for sumptuous repasts by the aromas of such things coming upon me, then I should say: ‘O God, incline unto my aid; O Lord, make haste to help me.’

If I become disquieted by the urges of anger or sadness, and if I am being pressed to cut off the gentleness that I have proposed to myself and that is dear to me, then, lest the disturbance of rage carry me off into a poisonous bitterness, let me cry out with loud groaning: ‘O God, incline unto my aid; O Lord, make haste to help me.’

If I am boiling over with a multitude of different distractions of soul and with a fickle heart and am unable to control my wandering thoughts, and if I cannot even pour out my prayer without interruption and without imagining foolish fantasies and recalling words and deeds, and if I feel myself constricted by such dry barrenness that I am not having any spiritual thoughts at all, then I will cry out in my need: ‘O God, incline unto my aid; O Lord, make haste to help me.’

(This battle, by the way, is Acedia the missing ‘thought/sin’ in your time. It has become so obscure that it is not even in your standard spellcheck. Some define it as a loss of enthusiasm for the spiritual life. A spiritual carelessness that is strongly present in your culture. I suggest you reinstate this word.)”

Paraphrase of The Conferences (Tenth Conference) by John Cassian / Acedia definition: Abbot C. Jamison

Abba Issac goes on to describe his battle with the rest of these Eight Thoughts. Following Abba Issac’s lead Abbot Christopher Jamison (a real abbot in the British reality TV series The Monastery) has written a book titled Finding Happiness. Jamison suggests that the way we can achieve happiness is by following Abba Issac into battle addressing the Eight Thoughts in our day-to-day life. Monastic steps to happiness for non-monastic people.

I think Abbot Jamison has a point to remember for our SoulSculpting. Obvious, but worth noting. To find happiness we must be willing to battle the “sin that clings so closely” Heb. 12:1. Abba Issac provides one tool that many have found effective in the battle.