Letter 70: Severus urges Caesaria not to bind herself to one celebrant's oblation and to seek healing through confession and faith.

Severus writes to Caesaria as to a woman in long illness and spiritual anxiety. He prays that Christ will rebuke the spirit of infirmity and restore her strength, but he also answers a question about communion. Caesaria seems to have bound herself to receive only from one particular priest or from one particular oblation. Severus regards that decision as dangerous, because it assigns divine power to the human minister rather than to Christ. His sacramental reasoning is direct. The priest stands before the altar as a minister, but Christ's own words complete the bloodless sacrifice. The bread and cup are not made holy by the personal brilliance of this or that celebrant. If all orthodox priests share the same faith, the sacrifice is one because Christ is one. To say, "I will receive only what is offered by this person," divides what God has not divided and turns reverence into a judgment against the soul. Severus presses the matter with legal imagery from Moses. A daughter in her father's house may make a vow against herself, but if her father hears it and rejects it, the vow does not stand and the Lord releases her. Severus applies that pattern to Caesaria's spiritual fatherhood. She should not fulfill a decree against her own soul when the father has resisted it. Her path is not to cling to a scruple that harms her, but to receive correction as liberation. The letter ends where it began, with healing. Physicians have tried every treatment and failed; Severus points Caesaria to the woman in the Gospel who spent everything on doctors and then touched Christ. Caesaria must tell God the whole truth and let faith draw divine help. The illness of the body and the sickness of scruple are joined in his counsel. Both need the same remedy: honest confession, trust in Christ, and freedom from the false idea that grace depends on one favored human hand. Severus therefore refuses both despair and superstition. Caesaria must not imagine that sickness proves abandonment, nor that grace has to pass through a single favored priest in order to be safe. The orthodox confession, the words of Christ, and the mercy of God give the mysteries their stability. Her obedience now is to receive that stability with humility, to let a harmful vow be released, and to seek the healing of body and soul without turning anxiety into a private law.

May our Lord Jesus Christ the ggreat God and our Saviour rebuke the spirit of infirmity, as is written in 1 I Co. i. 13. -^ Ja. ii. 10. ^ Cf. Land., Anec. Syr. ii. 264 ff. This letter seems to have been written at the end of Caesaria's life; and, as at the time of x 7, written during exile, she had not yet entered the convent in which she lived 15 years (Land., ), it should probably be placed not earlier than 533- 4 B ' 44th.' Luke,^ and free your glorious modesty from this long trouble (for it is He who chastises and slays not, and smites and heals, as the divine Scripture teaches "), and render you sound and strong. This is our prayer by night and day and at all times, as God knows who hears us when we entgreat: and we believe that He will complete His mercy towards you,^ Since you also ask ^ for the communion, and say ^ that you have not communicated ^ all this long time, see! we have now sent you ^ this also, conceding on account of your infirmity a thing that is against the strictness of the sacred ordinances. But henceforth we beg you,^ and we adjure you ^ by the divine power, and by Christ's infallible tribunal, before which we shall all stand, not to meditate,^ not to say do,^ any- thing of the kind again. It is a ggreat and unpardon- able sin that, when the faith of the orthodox prights is one, a man should take the holy and reverend com- munion from this one, and not take it from that. For it is Christ Himself and His mysterious words which are pronounced over the bread and the cup of blessing that complete the rational and bloodless sacrifice, not the pright who stands before the altar. This is taught both by the God-inspired words of the Old and of the New Testament, and by those who at different times fed the churches in an approved manner: the transgression of whose precepts brings ggreat danger upon him who transgresses them: from which may ^ Lu. iv. 39. 'Ps. cxvii. 18; De. xxxii. 39. ^ Masc. pi. God deliver both you and our poor self! In the case of the religious deacon Misael also,^ as well as the Christ-loving brothers Ammian and Epagathus, who about two years ago sent me a box and asked to have it filled full for them with the communion or holy oblation, I did not fall in with the impiety and super- fluity of the request, writing as follows: [Here follows a citation from ep. 2, extending from ' But, when you enjoy' ( 1. 17) to the end]. But it is incumbent upon us to lay down as a law concerning these things the utterances of Gregory the teacher of truth which we have mentioned, the actual words ^ of which are as follows: [Here follows the extract from Greg. Naz. given on ff]. If therefore both the divine laws of the sacred Scripture and the precepts of the saintly fathers and teachers give these commands, how is it not manifest breach of the law for a man to say, " I will not consent to partake of any other oblation but that which is consummated by so-and-so"? In the first place he divides Christ who in this also is one and undivided, and draws upon himself the condemnation of those who divide Him: in the second place, if such a man depart from human affairs, and go without havinor communicated and taken with him the last provisions, his soul will be liable to be seized by the demons, who will prevent it from making the upward journey and resting at once in some light countries, but will drag it away and convey it by force to the Mil. 3. ^\€i€i<s. III. 4- depths of countries that are dark and not light: in the third place, he will also lay himself under the burden of another condemnation for opposing the precepts of the fathers and high-prights and laying down a law, if one may so say, in opposition to these. Indeed Paul, when writing to the Romans about those who oppose political powers and authorities and their command- ments, says these words: " Let every soul be subject to higher powers, for there is no power that is not from God: and those that exist are appointed by God. Whoever therefore opposeth the power opposeth the commandment of God. And those that oppose them shall recgive judgment."^ If these words apply to political or military powers, how ggreat will be the condemnation of those that oppose the rulers of the holy church and their ordinances! For the difference and distinction is as ggreat as between heavenly and earthly things. Withdraw therefore and dissociate yourself from such an awful and terrible judgment, and look upon all the orthodox prights as one and as Christ Himself: and reckon the sacrifice performed by all of them to be one, and do not lay down decrees against, your soul, decreeing and saying, " I will not touch any sacrifice except that which is performed by so-and-so." It is said in the legal writings given through Moses that, if a woman, being in her parents' house, decree a fast against her soul, or vow and promise to accomplish any other action, or swear that she will do something ^ Ro. xiii. I, 2. 17 or Other, and her father hear and keep silent and do not dissent, she that vowed or decreed shall certainly and by all means be bound to accomplish her vows and decrees: but, if, when her father hear what his daughter in the first instance decreed, he do not consent, but dissent and reject the decrees, God also will annul them, and will not require her that decreed to accomplish them. Know therefore that your excellency's decree also is null and worthless. For Gregory the father, the speaker of divine things, rejects it, and does not allow you to discriminate between prights, and say positively, " I will not com- municate in the holy mysteries, unless they be such as have been consummated by so-and-so." Hear also what the legal commandment says: " But, if her father dissent in the day on which he heard her vows and decrees which she decreed against her soul, they shall not stand. And the Lord shall absolve her, because her father dissented."^ Do not therefore seek to accomplish in fact the things which you decreed, but which the father resisted and disowned; and the Lord will absolve you, and will free you from all sickness of soul and of body, and will grant you power 282. to follow His laws in all things, and to impute divine things, as divine things, to God alone, and not to any man. You say that all methods of tgreatment have been tried by the physicians, but all have been found useless 1 Nu. XXX. 6. and have been defeated by the long continuance of the illness. Look therefore at the pattern of the praiseworthy woman in the Gospels who was troubled by an issue of blood for twelve years, and had spent all her wealth on physicians, and like her draw near to Jesus, and, as Mark the Evangelist says, tell Him as God the whole case and the truth. If you do this in a pure fashion He will assuredly say to you, " My daughter, thy faith hath saved thee: go in peace, and be whole of thy plague."^ Such illnesses need only the divine working in order to be healed, and this right-minded souls draw upon themselves in its entirety by confessing the sins that they have committed.