Saint Isidore of Pelusium

He was only in the days of his adolescence when he committed himself to the monastic life. It was in the desert of désert de Lychnos Site of the religious career of Isidore. Lychnos, by all appearances, that he began his religious career, and as he soon surpassed all his brothers in prudence, in wisdom, as well as in knowledge and humility, he was elected superior general of all this peaceful militia. His attire and his food sufficiently reveal his great austerities. He wore only a garment of very reddish hair, and lived only on herbs and leaves.

Raised to the priesthood around his thirtieth year, he threw himself with indefatigable ardor and invincible zeal into the battles of the Lord. His cause was his own; he was not one of its least successful champions. He victoriously refuted the Jews through the prophecies, developed with great talent the mysteries of the most holy Trinity and the Incarnation against the A Ariens Heresy opposed by Columbanus in Italy among the Lombards. rians, Nestorians, Sabellians, and other heretics: he eloquently took up the defense of the persecuted Saint Chrysostom, and contributed powerfully to his return to the bosom of his flock.

The particular mission of Saint Isidore was to combat, without human consideration, vices and abuses wherever he found them. Everything, moreover, contributed to giving him authority over minds; his distinguished birth, the riches he had abandoned, the detachment he professed, the austerity of his life, the vast erudition he had acquired, the rare talent of employing it with force and energy, and above all those brilliant lights he had as if drawn from the bosom of the divinity through his eminent arm and his high contemplation; all this, we say, meant that he vigorously pursued sin with his pen in the great as in the small, in the high clergy as in that of the second order, in governors and magistrates as in the people, because his love for God could not suffer to know Him offended. It is thus that the Saints have conquered kingdoms, says the Scripture, wrought justice and obtained the celestial rewards.

Blessed with a beautiful old age, free from infirmities and full of virtue and glory, he passed into the kiss of the Lord in the year 449. We have no historical record of the desert of Lychnos; it only appears that it is the one that Saint Hilarion, according to Saint Jerome, visited while traveling from Palestine to the tomb of Saint Anthony.

Here are some maxims extracted from the Letters of Saint Isidore:

"The priest is the angel of the Most High: yet it is not said that angels are frivolous and dissipated. All discourse that wounds the gravity and holiness of the priesthood must be unknown to priests."

"It is not power," he wrote to Theodosius, "that honors Théodose Eastern Roman Emperor, brother of Pulcheria. and saves the prince; it is his virtues."

"If you flatter yourself," he replied to a man of war, "that your sword, your helmet, your breastplate will protect you from the punishments you deserve for your violence and injustices, know that others, much better armed than you, have not escaped the blows of a tragic death."

"Obey your princes," he said to the people, "in that which is not contrary to the law of God."

Here is the advice he gave to fathers and mothers when writing to Count Callimachus: "Parents will only obtain salvation by taking care to raise, as they ought, in the fear of God, the children they have brought into the world."

"If you wish to remain a widow," he wrote to a young lady, "do not conduct yourself like young women."

"It matters very little to know how to speak of everything; but it matters extremely to know how to conduct oneself well."

Here is the beautiful lesson he gave to sinners when writing to the magistrate Cassius: "May the grace that God has granted us until now to do penance not make us prone to sin again, for He no longer owes you the same grace, and He has the right to refuse it to you the moment you abuse it. How many are there who have died without having had the leisure to do penance? Moreover, do not believe that crimes are expiated as easily as you think; one does not usually cure vices except through long penance, through labors, fasts, vigils, prayers, and alms. Now, who has promised you that you will have all the necessary time?"

"It is an evil to sin, but it is a much greater one to do so without remorse."

"Three things make man perfect: prayer, virtue, and faith. Prayer is like its ornament, virtue like its body, faith like its soul."

"If all men were treated in this world according to their merits, so that the impious suffered the punishment due to their crimes, and the good received the reward of their virtue, the judgment of God would be useless; but it is necessary, since the wicked most often prosper in this world, and the just are often afflicted in it."

"Even if we were guilty of crimes so enormous that they seemed to us unpardonable, the sovereign Judge nevertheless allows Himself to be swayed as soon as we have recourse to His mercy with a truly contrite heart."

"He who wishes to take revenge and cannot is as guilty as if he had taken revenge; and he who would wish to give and has not the means, has as much merit as if he had given, because one must judge things, not by the event, but by the disposition of the heart."

Drawing one day a parallel between sacred and profane writers, he said: "The style of the former is simple and devoid of ornament, but the meaning is sublime and heavenly; that of the latter says nothing but what is base and groveling, albeit in elegant and flowery terms."

"One will never succeed in acquiring purity as long as one seeks the delights of the table."

"We are equally guilty," he wrote to the Bishop of Theon, "either when we wish to avenge our own injuries, or when we are not touched by those done to God."

"It is true that God is powerful enough to see justice done to Himself; but He nevertheless wishes that good people detest sin and make it detested, and it is in this conduct of zeal that the Saints made virtue and true philosophy consist."

We have from Saint Isidore of Pelusium five books of Letters cinq livres de Lettres A major epistolary collection of patristic literature. in Greek and some other works, the best edition of which is that of Paris, published in 1638, in-folio, in Greek and Latin. It is a collection of the previous editions of Abbot Billy, Bithershasius, and Father Schott, S.J. The 1638 edition was reproduced in Venice in 1745 (Latin text only), in Lyon in 1677, in Rome in 1670, and in Paris around 1848. The latter is that of M. Migne. Volu me LXXVI M. Migne Publisher of the Patrologia Latina. II of his Patrologia Graeca contains all that remains of the writings of Saint Isidore.

These Letters are generally short, of a concise and tight style, full of substance, learned, sensible, lively, and pressing. They show the profound understanding that their author had acquired of Holy Scripture, the ease and freedom of his mind, and the particular talent he had for inspiring the love of virtue and the horror of vice. They have been so esteemed that many have judged them equal to the writings of Saint Basil the Great, for unction and piety, and to those of Saint Chrysostom for the zeal he displays in the correction of abuses and the reformation of morals.

Father Possevino, in apparatu, said that one could not too highly recommend the reading of the Letters of Saint Isidore, and he wished that they be adopted in public schools to train young people in piety and eloquence. A word to the compilers of Christian classics.

Dupin speaks at length of the writings of Saint Isidore. He says that among other subjects, he had treated that of the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, and of the honor due to the most holy Virgin and the Saints.

Cf. Esprit des Saints, by Abbé Grimes.