Letter 465: Theodore Studite, Letter 465; Greek heading: Εὐφροσύνῃ ἡγουμένῃ.

Only now do I more fully approve of your Honor, who have wept for your blessed mother, since the steward, on coming out, reported that she had been called away in the Lord. At this my lowliness too was set at ease, for I was anxious about your affairs as those of a sister in Christ. For it is necessary, O lady, that in our dearest ones we both, displaying the duty of love, mourn naturally, and, supporting ourselves upon the doctrine of hope, be comforted in a manner befitting God, and in neither direction do harm to what is good; for excessive grief is equal to insensibility. We are guided by measures and by divine canons, and most of all those of us who have taken up the profession of perfection. The people wept even for Moses the seer of God, but for forty days; and Jacob the patriarch, together with his children, wept for the wondrous Rachel, but for a few days; and the much-renowned Joseph wept even for him [Jacob], and others wept for others both in the Old and in the New Covenant, but within limits and not forever. So too you also, having done and still doing this, are praiseworthy both before God and before men. May you always behold in your mind her whom you long for, and I strongly counsel this, since from it you will become readily compunctious, a hater of the world, a lover of God, well prepared for the same departure; and what could be more conducive to salvation than this? May you shepherd in holiness the flock of God entrusted to you, as a spiritual mother, and not ruling in a merely human way; as one giving a pattern through your own self in the things that are according to the commandment, and not demanding what is beyond their strength; as one apportioned equally in love among all, and not attaching yourself to one in one way and to another in another after the manner of blood-kinship. Do you see how we have been given the law by the Truth itself? But what does the great Peter say? "And when the chief Shepherd shall be made manifest, you shall receive the unfading crown of glory" [1 Peter 5:4]. How great a thing it will be for you to cry out before the Lord, "Behold, I and the children whom you have given me" [Isaiah 8:18]; and I would add this also: "I have not grown weary in following after you, and I have not desired the day of man, O Lord" [cf. Jeremiah 17:16]. For so it stands: you have given all to God, you have counted all as refuse, that you may gain Christ [cf. Philippians 3:8]. So that, even if you must bear afflictions, with which those who live a godly life dwell together, bear them, lady; for many are the afflictions of the righteous, as holy David cries out [Psalm 33:20 LXX], kindled both intelligibly [in the mind] and perceptibly [through the senses] by the enemy, whose designs do not fail to recognize, whose stratagems turn aside by your prayers. "Our struggle is not against blood and flesh," as the Apostle says, "but against the principalities and powers of this world" [Ephesians 6:12], to escape whose snares is in truth a contest fit for an athlete. May you have a soul in which to lay up the things that befall you; for from this come a bridle upon sin and divine help. Such, for instance, are the sisters, who have your protection [prostasia, patronage and oversight]; for they must lay before you their own impulses, and to what each one is more inclined, and you must receive each one, and exhort the one, and encourage another, and make another secure, and, in a word, offer what is suitable to them all. And do not by any means grow despondent in this; God is a fellow-defender, the Lord upholds. Let us only make the beginning, and He Himself teaches knowledge. "I am jealous over you," says the Apostle, "with the jealousy of God; I have betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ" [2 Corinthians 11:2]. So regard our affairs, insofar as they amount to a faint, far-off echo of likeness, even though otherwise we are sinners; and may the God of peace, who has also taken to Himself in peace and holiness your mother who was called by the kindred name Eirene ["Peace"], also count you worthy to live as a citizen [of heaven] in her footsteps, shepherding her who herself shepherded and guiding her who herself guided, in the same Christ our God, to whom be glory unto the ages. Amen.