Letter 164

164. To Ascholius, bishop of Thessalonica

With how great a gladness your Holiness's letter filled me I could not easily show, my words being too weak for the plain truth; but you ought yourself to guess it within you, judging by the beauty of what you wrote. For what did your letter not have? Did it not have love for the Lord? The wonder concerning the martyrs, sketching the manner of their contest so vividly as to bring the events before our eyes? The honour and disposition toward me? Anything that one might name of the noblest things? So that, when I received the letter into my hands, and read it many times, and learned the grace of the Spirit teeming in it, I thought I had been born in the ancient times, when the churches of God were in flower, rooted in faith, united in love, as in one body, where there is one breath of life among the different members; when the persecutors were plain, and plain too the persecuted; when the peoples, though warred upon, grew more numerous, and the blood of the martyrs, watering the churches, nourished many times as many champions of piety, those who came after stripping for the contest in zeal for those who had gone before. In those days we Christians kept peace with one another — that peace which the Lord left to us, of which now not even a trace is left to us, so harshly have we driven it away from one another. Yet our souls returned to that ancient blessedness, when a letter came from far away, in flower with the beauty of love, and a martyr came to us from the barbarians beyond the Ister, proclaiming through himself the exactness of the faith that is followed there. Who could recount the gladness of our souls at these things? What power of speech could be conceived able to declare plainly the disposition in the hidden chamber of our heart? And when we saw the athlete, we counted his trainer blessed, who too will receive from the just Judge the crown of righteousness, having strengthened many for the contest on behalf of piety.

And since you brought to our remembrance the blessed man Eutyches, and exalted our homeland as having itself supplied the seeds of piety, you gladdened us by the reminder of old things, but grieved us by the reproof of what we see. For none of us is near to Eutyches in virtue — we who are so far from taming barbarians by the power of the Spirit and the working of the gifts that come from Him, that by the excess of our sins we have made savage even those who were gentle. For we reckon to ourselves and to our sins the cause that the power of the heretics has been poured out so far. For there is scarcely any part of the world that has escaped the burning of the heresy. But your tales are of athletic struggles, bodies torn for the sake of piety, barbarian fury despised by hearts that are not dismayed, the manifold tortures of the persecutors, the steadfastness in all things of the contenders, the wood, the water, the things that perfected the martyrs. But what are our affairs like? Love has grown cold; the teaching of the fathers is being ravaged; shipwrecks of the faith are frequent; the mouths of the godly are silent; the peoples, driven out of the houses of prayer, raise their hands in the open air to the Master in heaven. And the afflictions are heavy, yet there is martyrdom nowhere, because those who ill-treat us bear the same name as ourselves. For these things pray to the Lord yourself, and take all the noble athletes of Christ into your prayer on behalf of the churches, that, if indeed there still remain some seasons for the world's existence, and all things are not being driven on toward the contrary motion, God, being reconciled to His own churches, may bring them back to their ancient peace.