St. Isaac the Syrian

A monk of the seventh century from Beth Qatraye on the Persian Gulf, consecrated bishop of Nineveh and gone again after five months, to live in silence in the mountains and write. He was a bishop of the Church of the East, which did not accept Ephesus, and the Orthodox Church has venerated him for over a thousand years anyway, through the Greek translation of his Ascetical Homilies made at the Lavra of St Sabbas, because it recognised in them its own faith and its own prayer. He is the teacher of the merciful heart, which he describes as a heart that burns for the whole of creation, for people, birds, animals and even the demons, and cannot bear to see the least harm done to anything. Feast: January 28.