Letter 172

172. To Sophronius the bishop

How greatly you gladdened me with your letter I need not write; for you may surely guess it from the very things you wrote, such as they were. For the first fruit of the Spirit, love, you showed me through your letter. And what could be more precious to me than this in the present state of the times, when, because lawlessness has been multiplied, the love of the many has grown cold? For nothing is now so rare as the meeting with a spiritual brother, and a word of peace, and spiritual communion — which, finding in your Perfection, I gave great thanks to the Lord, praying that I may share also in the perfect gladness over you. For if your letters are such, what must the meeting be? And if you charm me so from afar, how much will you be worth when you appear to me close at hand? And know well, that if a multitude of countless occupations did not beset me, and these inescapable necessities to which I am bound, I would myself hasten to your Perfection. And yet this old illness of the body is a great hindrance to my movements; but even so I would not have reckoned it a hindrance, for the sake of the benefit I expect. For to be counted worthy to meet a man who thinks the same things and holds the faith of the fathers — as the report of our honoured brothers and fellow-presbyters has it — is truly to return to the ancient blessedness of the churches, when those who were diseased about questionings were few, and all were in tranquillity, being workers of the commandments who need not be ashamed, serving the Lord through a simple and uncurious confession, and keeping inviolate and uncurious the faith in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.