Letter 483: Theodore Studite, Letter 483; Greek heading: Κατηχητική.

Since your reverence has sought a word of admonition from our humility, even though our word is worthless and our life is neglected, nevertheless, because we love your salvation, inasmuch as you are also a virgin, a bride of Christ, a treasure of holiness, and since out of confidence you seek our admonition, and you seek it on account of the holy season of Lent [Tessarakoste, the forty days' fast] which is now standing at the doors: indeed the true virgin of Christ seeks, not on appointed days only, but at every season and on each day, how she may please the Lord and her bridegroom. Yet the time of the fasts has in every way its own particular mark of virtuous diligence with respect to the whole year. Therefore, O most honored one, even now be eager to carry out your accustomed rule of ascetic practice; for we are not able to lay down a boundary as to this or that, either for you or for those who practice asceticism together with you, because we do not yet know your order and manner of life. But there is one boundary and rule, of common benefit, owed by all, and especially by those who have taken up the monastic profession: that we do nothing outside of the things displeasing to God, but rather work out our salvation in fear and trembling; for true fasting is abstinence from every evil. Let us fast first of all from not letting wicked thoughts settle in the heart, and from thence be kindled into improper desires. For there is one desire and one true love, our Lord Jesus Christ, the good and beautiful bridegroom, for whom the soul that longs from her whole being hates flesh and blood and all the phantoms of corruption, and ever, borne on wings by her yearning for him, turns away, one might almost say, even from looking upon the very sun, and writhes both to go out from the body and to come to be with the one she longs for; which is the very highest object of desire for those who partake of reason. Let us fast, then, in the second sense, also from food, both in quantity and in quality, and to such a degree as the strength of the body bears; for the Apostle says: "each as he chooses in his heart, not from sorrow or from necessity" [cf. 2 Corinthians 9:7]; for God loves the cheerful giver, and what is according to one's strength. This can properly be said in your case, the superior [kathegoumene, abbess], but in the case of the sisterhood it has no force, because, according to the arrangement given by you, both the eating and the drinking and the rest of the manner of life rests upon each one, so that you have proper need of a discerning eye to oversee the matters concerning them. But in common upon all rests the abstaining from untimely idle talk, from unseemly envy, from meddlesome idleness, and rather the keeping of seasonable quiet and the uttering of fitting speech, and the loving and cherishing of one another according to the Lord, and the holding of all things in common and nothing set apart as one's own, nor indeed the doing of anything according to one's own will, even if it seem to be well-pleasing, but as it has been arranged by you; nor the having of a divided heart amid the affections of one's own kindred according to the flesh, much less, one may say, in loves of certain others, but the whole soul through and through being joined to God, and toward the superior and toward the sisters according to the spirit, so that it may be testified to be said of you, the very thing that was said also of the apostles, that "the heart and the soul of all was one, and no one called anything of his possessions his own, but all things were in common" [Acts 4:32]. Where, then, this has been accomplished, there the apostolic life is beheld, there the peace of God which surpasses all understanding [cf. Philippians 4:7], there the griefless and blessed life, there the dance of the prudent virgins, there the bridegroom Christ, in the midst, seeing and being seen, according to the mind nourishing and being nourished, sweetening and being sweetened, loving and being loved in return, since he both nourishes with his light-giving rays and is nourished by each one's increase in virtue; for he hungers for the salvation of each, and as it were inspects the fig tree; and if he finds upon it God-grown fruit, he is nourished by it; but if not, it is accursed, just as the Gospel relates [cf. Matthew 21:18-19; Mark 11:12-14]. Let us therefore be eager, sister in the Lord, both we and you, to bring forth fruits, sweet to the Lord, from innate and divine reflections, this indeed throughout the whole of our living, but this also in the coming sacred self-restraint [the Lenten fast], so that we may nourish him when he arrives at the holy Pascha [Easter], and blesses us for our fruit-bearing, and, as those conformed to his sufferings, will raise us up together and glorify us together with himself on the great and fearful day of his appearing; for to him belong glory, honor, and veneration [proskynesis], together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.