Letter 159: Theodore Studite, Letter 159; Greek heading: Μακαρίῳ ἡγουμένῳ.

It is a joy to me to converse by letter with anyone at all who is devout, but how much more so with a father such as you and of such stature, whose love is strong within me and whose prayer is as welcome as a rain shower upon the grass? For indeed, most holy one, I have need to share always in your supplications, because I am unfinished and easily overcome, so that I may escape both the unseen persecution and the visible one. You see what its disturbances are, what its instruments of punishment are: shedding blood, perhaps, not perceptibly, out of envy, so that those who suffer should not seem to be martyrs (even though God judges affairs not according to their opinion, but by the verdict of the truth), yet by the gradual beating and crushing truly bringing about a shedding of blood. For when men are in hunger and thirst, in exiles and prisons, in irons upon the foot and in solitary confinements, in the seizures of their possessions and in expulsions, in sojournings in desert dwellings, in mountains and caves, according to what is written [Hebrews 11:38, of the persecuted faithful], -and I am not yet even speaking of the sheddings of blood through scourgings,- how are these things not martyrdoms? How many are the wearers of the crown! Lift up round about the eyes of your mind, O most blessed one, and behold all these things and others beyond them, confirming the account from your own contest as well. Yet nevertheless, in conquering, conquer, O thrice-longed-for one, whatever the things may be that are brought upon you and that shall yet be brought, so that the monastic polity may have you as its crowning ornament, and that the whole Church of Christ may recognize you as a crown-bearer of confession, and that we, the least, may receive an adornment of seemliness.