We Return to Abbot Isaac

Even apart from this new matter that has lately arisen, our delight in the earlier conference on the nature of prayer would call us to put everything else aside and come back to your holiness. But this grievous error of Abbot Sarapion, conceived, we imagine, by the craft of the vilest demons, adds something to that desire of ours. For we are cast down by no small despair when we consider that, through the fault of this ignorance, he has not only completely lost all the labors he has carried out so praiseworthily for fifty years in this desert, but has also run the risk of eternal death. So we want first to know why, and from what cause, so grievous an error crept into him. And next we would like to be taught how we can reach that condition in prayer which you described some time ago, not only fully but splendidly. For that admirable conference has had this effect on us: it has only dazzled our minds, and has not shown us how to practice it or make it our own. [a]