Vigilance of the Heart

By Scott Ferrier, MJ • Phoenix, AZ

“Keep your heart with all vigilance,
for from it flow the springs of life.”
–Proverbs 4:23

We are continuing the series on purity of heart and the path to heaven, according to the desert fathers. The fathers compared the human heart to ‘a promised land,’ into which the Philistines, the Babylonians, and other pagan peoples throw spears and arrows, that is, evil suggestions. Diabolical, carnal, or impure thoughts cannot have their origins in our hearts since the heart is created by God. Therefore, they come from outside. They do not belong to our natural way of thinking. They constitute an evil only when we consciously and freely welcome them, that is, when we identify with them. We live in a dangerous state, though, always exposed to temptation.

Saint Paul attests that sin is hidden in our flesh; the flesh opposes the spirit. How are we to understand this opposition? Flesh, in the sense Saint Paul uses, does not mean the body, because our body, the material component of the human person, is not evil; instead, this should be taken in a moral sense. 

Genesis 3 tells the story of the first sin: the temptation to eat the forbidden fruit, the conversation between Eve and the seductive serpent, Adam’s consent, and the banishment from paradise. The fathers believed that the experience of each person is being recounted in these early chapters of Genesis. Each of us possesses a paradise, a heart created by God destined to dwell in a peaceful state. And each of us lives the experience of the serpent, which penetrates the heart to seduce us. It takes the shape of an evil thought. Thought is the source and beginning of each sin (Gk.: logismos).

Saint Bernard says that we have forgotten the first positive precept which God gave Adam and Eve. “The Lord placed man and woman in the garden to till it and cultivate it.” Saint Bernard considered this a commandment. The garden is our own heart, and our fundamental task is to care for it. In prayer and contemplation, all our senses should be turned inward. It was through neglect that Adam and Eve opened the door to the suggestions of the evil spirit. 

A vigilant doorkeeper is alert and guards the door so no stranger can enter the house. Says Evagrius, one of the earliest and most influential monastic theologians, a vigilant guard needs to be put on the door of the heart. This guard never closes his eyes, but examines every thought, asking “Are you one of ours or from our enemies?”