Letter 414: Theodore Studite, Letter 414; Greek heading: Θεοφίλῳ τῆς Ἐφέσου.

Having lent out my letter, I was eagerly awaiting to receive back the debt of love; but since I have not received it, I am glad to lend once again, for the loan is exceedingly sweet to me, that is, to converse with your sacred head [a reverential way of addressing the recipient], which suffers for Christ's sake, or rather, is crowned and adorned in the manner of a confessor [homologetes, one who confesses the faith under persecution]. For the mind that sees God and divine things does not behold with those eyes by which the world sees; for the world supposes that the things which perish and pass away are a portion of the good, knowing wrongly and being led astray, whereas the mind judges that alone to be blessed which does not set its well-being here, but is laid up as treasure for the age to come, unto the joy of unending gladness. So do I, the wretched one, beholding the things that concern your holiness, rejoice and rejoice together with you, thrice-longed-for one. You have despised earthly glory; you have chosen, together with Christ, the lowly and the despised things, or rather affliction and constraint, blows and exiles. How blessed are your deeds, how praiseworthy your sufferings, proclaimed in East and West, recorded in the heavens, gladdening the angels, delighting the confessors and martyrs, and branding the demons and the iconoclasts [eikonomachoi, the "icon-fighters" who oppose the veneration of holy images] who are like-minded and of like manner with them. Fittingly, then, do I exult together with you, father of fathers; but I ask that you also pray concerning me, who am in all things pitiable, that I may not fall away from following in your footsteps.