St. Isaac the Syrian and the Fullness of the Desert

Video about St. Isaac of Syria, a desert monastic who became the Bishop of Nineveh. The great luminary of the life of stillness, he became a monk at a young age. He was consecrated Bishop of Nineveh but after five months received permission to return to solitude. He spent many years far south of Nineveh in the mountainous regions of Beit Huzaye, and lastly at the Monastery of Rabban Shabur. He wrote his renowned and God-inspired Ascetical Homilies toward the end of his long life of monastic struggle, about the end of the seventh century. The fame of his Homilies grew quickly, and about one hundred years after their composition they were translated from Syriac into Greek by two monks of the Monastery of Mar Sabbas in Palestine, from which they spread throughout the monasteries of the Roman Empire and became a guide to the hesychasts of all generations thereafter.