Letter 243

243. To the bishops of Italy and Gaul, concerning the condition and confusion of the churches. To the truly most God-beloved and most longed-for brothers and like-minded fellow-ministers, the bishops throughout Gaul and Italy, Basil, bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, who consented to call the whole Church of God his own body, and showed us, each one, to be members of one another, granted to us all to have intimacy toward all, according to the harmony of the members. Therefore, even if we are very widely separated from one another in our dwellings, yet by the principle of conjunction we are near to one another. Since, then, the head cannot say to the feet, 'I have no need of you,' surely you too will not endure to disown us, but will sympathize with our afflictions, to which we have been delivered for our sins, as much as we rejoice with you who are glorified in the peace that the Lord has granted you. Already, indeed, at other times we have cried out to your love for our succour and sympathy; but doubtless, because the vengeance has not yet been fulfilled, you were not permitted to rouse yourselves to the succour we seek. For we desire above all that, through your Reverence, our confusion should be made plain even to him who rules over your part of the world; and, if this is difficult, at least that some should come from you to visit and console the afflicted, in order that they may set before your eyes the sufferings of the East, which it is impossible to take in by hearing, since no words can be found to set our condition vividly before you.

A persecution has overtaken us, most honoured brothers, and the heaviest of persecutions. For shepherds are persecuted, that the flocks may be scattered. And the heaviest thing is this: that those who are ill-treated neither receive their sufferings in the full assurance of martyrdom, nor do the people honour the contestants in the rank of martyrs, because the name of Christians is attached to the persecutors. There is one charge now severely prosecuted: the exact keeping of the traditions of the fathers. For this reason the pious are driven from their homelands and removed to the deserts. Gray hairs are not respected by the judges of injustice, nor the practice of piety, nor a way of life according to the Gospel carried through from youth to old age. But while no malefactor is condemned without proofs, bishops have been convicted on mere calumny, and, with no proof brought forward for the charges, are handed over to punishments. Some have neither known their accusers, nor seen courts, nor were even slandered to begin with, but, violently seized in the dead of night, were driven into exile, delivered over to death by the hardships of the wilderness. And the things that follow upon these are known to all, even if we keep silent: flights of presbyters, flights of deacons, and the plundering of all the clergy. For one must either worship the image or be handed over to the wicked flame of the scourges. There are groanings of peoples, continual weeping both in houses and in public, while all lament to one another what they suffer. For no one is so stone-hearted that, bereft of his father, he bears his orphanhood meekly. There is a sound of mourners in the city, a sound in the fields, in the roads, in the deserts. One voice from all, uttering pitiable and gloomy things. Joy and spiritual gladness are taken away. Our festivals have been turned into mourning; the houses of prayer have been shut up; idle are the altars of spiritual worship. No longer are there gatherings of Christians, no longer the presidency of teachers, no saving instructions, no festal assemblies, no nightly hymn-singing, no longer that blessed exultation of souls which comes upon the souls of those who believe in the Lord at the assemblies and the communion of spiritual gifts. To us it is fitting to say: 'There is in this time no ruler, nor prophet, nor leader, nor offering, nor incense, no place to bring fruit before the Lord and to find mercy.'

These things we write to those who know them, because there is no part of the world that has not by now learned of our calamities. So that you ought not to think we make these statements for the sake of instruction, nor to remind your harmonious selves. For we know that you would never forget us, no more than a mother forgets the offspring of her womb. But since those held fast by some overwhelming pain are wont somehow to lighten their pains through groanings, this we too do; we, as it were, unload the weight of our grief by announcing to your love our manifold calamities—if perhaps, moved more vehemently to your prayers on our behalf, you may beseech the Lord to be reconciled to us. If, then, afflictions alone were what wore us down, we might have counselled ourselves to keep quiet and to rejoice in our sufferings for Christ, since 'The sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.' But as it is, we fear lest the evil, growing—like some flame that travels through burning matter and, when it has consumed what is near, lays hold also of what is far off—since the evil of the heresy spreads, and there is fear lest, having devoured our churches, it creep at last upon the healthy part of your region also. Perhaps, then, because sin abounded among us, we were the first to be handed over for devouring to the raw-eating teeth of the enemies of God; or perhaps—what is even more likely to conjecture—because the Gospel of the kingdom, beginning from our regions, went out into all the world, for this reason the common enemy of our souls strives to spread the seeds of apostasy, taking their beginning from these same regions, into all the world. For upon those on whom the illumination of the knowledge of Christ shone, upon these he contrives that the darkness of impiety should come too.

Reckon our sufferings, then, as your own, as genuine disciples of the Lord. It is not for money, nor for glory, nor for any other of the temporary things that we are fought against, but for the common possession, the ancestral treasure of sound faith, that we stand contending. Suffer along with us, O lovers of the brethren, that the mouths of the pious are shut among us, while every bold and blasphemous tongue of those who speak injustice against God is opened. The pillars and the support of the truth are in dispersion, while we, overlooked because of our smallness, are without freedom of speech. Be in anguish for the peoples; and do not look to your own case only, that you are anchored in calm harbours, the grace of God having granted you every shelter from the tempest of the spirits of wickedness. But stretch out a hand also to the storm-tossed churches, lest, being forsaken, they utterly suffer the shipwreck of the faith. Groan over us, that the Only-begotten is blasphemed, and there is no one to gainsay it. The Holy Spirit is set at naught, and he who is able to refute is driven away. Polytheism has prevailed. With them there is a great God and a small one. The name 'Son' is held to be not a name of nature, but an appellation of a certain honour; the Holy Spirit is held to be not the completion of the Holy Trinity, nor a sharer in the divine and blessed nature, but one of the things that come from the creation, thrown in at random and as it chanced with the Father and the Son. Who will give water to my head, and to my eyes a fountain of tears? And I will weep for the people many days, the people who are being thrust toward destruction by these wicked teachings. The ears of the simpler are swept away; they have come at last into the habit of the heretical impiety. The infants of the Church are reared up together with the words of impiety. For what shall they do? Baptisms are with them, funeral processions for the departing, visitations of the sick, consolations of the grieving, helps for the worn-down, succours of every kind, communions of the mysteries—all of which, performed by them, becomes a bond to the peoples of concord with them; so that, when a little time has gone by, even if some freedom should come, there is no longer hope that those held fast by the long-standing deception can again be called back to the knowledge of the truth.

For these reasons many of us ought to have hastened together to your Reverence, and each to become an expositor of his own affairs. But as it is, let this very thing be a proof to you of the hardship in which we live: that we are not even masters of our own travel. For if anyone should withdraw even for the briefest time from his own church, he will leave the people surrendered to those lying in wait. But by the grace of God we have sent one in place of many, our most reverent and beloved brother Dorotheus, the fellow-presbyter; who is able, by his own narration, to fill up whatever has escaped our letters, since he has followed all things with exactness, and is a zealot for the right faith. Receive him in peace and send him back to us quickly, bearing us good tidings of the zeal you have for the succour of the brotherhood.