Letter 474: Theodore Studite, Letter 474; Greek heading: Τοῖς μοναχοῖς τοῦ Φωτεινουδίου.

The opening address of this letter is one of joy to you, brothers, but its occasion for writing is most of all one of grief: that the good shepherd has departed from you, the father in the Lord, the guide and luminary, who for many years shepherded many sheep and left the flock full of nurslings—reckoned, in fact, at two hundred less twenty—the venerable man and partaker of divine grace, exceedingly white in his hair and still more whitened in his heart, rich in love and richer still in almsgiving, truly adorned with very many virtues, lest, by enumerating them one by one, I be found drawing out a long discourse. Oh, oh! How are these things not grievous, how not lamentable, how is the contemplation of the flock not as it were a contemplation of desolation, so far as regards what has come to pass? But what then? Shall we persist in mourning? Shall we be more disconsolately cast down? Shall we abandon ourselves to grief? Not so, O brothers; rather, knowing that it is the decree of God for all human beings who have come into birth to be dissolved again and to receive instead the better and unharmed life—of which the firstfruit is Christ our God, the author of life—let us be comforted with the comfort of God, let us come to ourselves, let us say: the Lord gave, the Lord has taken away [Job 1:21] the good teacher, the holy leader. For what man is there who shall live and not see death [Psalm 88(89):48], that we should suffer estrangement of soul over our father? We must give thanks that we were deemed worthy of such a man, and that the temporal extension reached to old age and the rank of an elder, and indeed that he left you not unprotected nor desolate, but even blessed his last departure and prayed fitting prayers and appointed one of those among you to preside over you—whom we exhort to gird up his loins like a perfect man and, with Christ-imitating humility, to hold fast to the ministry [diakonia, the office of service] entrusted to him, walking by the rule and the footstep of that blessed man in the word that is according to God's commandment. And in the same way we also exhort you, the good brotherhood, to submit in the Lord to the newly established leader [kathegemon, the appointed superior] with one-minded faith and love, and to show that God is truly among you, and the holy father too, ready and binding all together into concord and harmony of spirit. Yes, longed-for brothers, so shall you be, so be made firm; even if every beginning does not at once possess ease, yet as it advances with time it is established into a knowledgeable habit. Do not be made like those who, out of love of rule, are unstable and unskilled. And since the matter of the persecution stands on a razor's edge, do not, I beg of you, betray your faith nor your piety; but, if it comes about that you must in no way be drawn into agreement with the heretics in any manner whatsoever, bear it nobly, counting all things secondary—not only the monasteries and all that is in the monasteries, even if they should be exceedingly poor, but indeed your very own bodies as well—choosing the good flight and being crowned with the blessedness of persecution, the surpassingly glorious and surpassingly wondrous blessedness, just as the blessed one has also enjoined upon you. But as for the fact that he was captured (yes, and alas for the defeat!)—still, he has been recalled, still he has been corrected and has been joined again with the pious and is one of our brothers and fathers, inasmuch as he has also been received back by our most blessed patriarch, the consecrator of holy rites. Knowing these things, then, brothers, be of good courage, keep good order, fare well in Christ Jesus our Lord, who would both give that man rest among the righteous and perfect you in all good things, our beloved brothers.