Letter 181: Theodore Studite, Letter 181; Greek heading: Εὐθυμίῳ καὶ τοῖς λοιποῖς ἀδελφοῖσ.

What is this report that has rung about the ears of my lowliness? What is this tidings that has suddenly struck my wretched soul with amazement? That Euthymius too, my true son, is among the martyrs together with nine others, whose names are Ephraim, Aphrodisius, Ammonas, Hyperechius, Stephen, Parthenius, Hegesimus, Symeon, and Dorotheus. I almost disbelieve it; I am almost too checked to write, encompassed at once by tears and by joy. Glory to you, O God, who have made you to blaze round about with martyrs' contests. You yourselves, good children, have borne the marks of Christ [the stigmata, the wounds of the Passion] in your honored limbs; you have likewise given your back to so many scourges; the earth has been sanctified in your blood. Whence and how, out of all men, have you yourselves obtained as your portion this glory? Great was your boldness of speech; worthy of a prizewinner was your reply to the Christ-fighter Anthony [an iconoclast official]. Blessed are you in the Lord, a holy firstfruits, a pillar of manliness for the Church of Christ, the noble zeal and rekindling of the monastic order. One hour is the penalty, and everlasting the recompense; for a little while the things that pain, and unfailing the good things. Go forth, you golden children, and be ranged together with your Cretan martyrs equal in number to yourselves. Pray accordingly that I too, your unworthy father, may, by the good pleasure of God, follow after you. Zion has heard and rejoiced, and the daughters of Byzantis [Constantinople] have exulted; and indeed the East and the West, blessing your God-crowned company of ten. Thus have I discoursed with you in few words, though many praises are your due; their memory the time to come will make known, for the boasting of the orthodox, for the shame of the enemy. But for the present, suffering ill and grieving together with you in my disposition, since the limbs that are pained by the blows are my own, I beseech and implore, I greet and embrace you, I stretch out my hands to you: stand, my lords, stand! Still Christ presides over the contest, still he wills to multiply your crowns. Of those whose beginning is wondrous, may the end too be worthy. Let us not dread the things to come; he who strengthened you then is present also now, and rather will he embrace you and lighten your pains and exalt your horn. Say you also: their blows have become to us as the arrows of children. You are the seed of those who were bedewed in the fire and who muzzled lions [the Three Children in the furnace and Daniel among the lions]. Let us not, then, having begun well and been anointed with martyrs' blood, afterward grow slack; for it is a fearful thing, O children, to fall into the hands of the living God. Human pains are to be likened to gnats. So therefore do I also believe, and so shall even I, wretched as I am, be adorned through you; nay rather, I shall also be saved. The end of my words: consider that, as much as you have been proclaimed abroad throughout the inhabited world, so great also is your contest of the good consummation, God, that is, granting strength. Greet one another with a holy kiss; those who are with me, already loving you, send their love.