Letter 515: Theodore Studite, Letter 515; Greek heading: Βασιλείῳ μονάζοντι.

We do not decline to write our humble word, as often as your honored selves reasonably request it, provided indeed it be of profit to you; for this very thing we also indicated in the preceding letter. Therefore now too we offer it, at once consoling and at once admonitory. And what is the consoling part? That, since the superior [the abbess] has departed in the Lord together with a band of the sisterhood ten in number, as you report, the event is not without suffering, but is even greatly bewildering, inasmuch as, the head being absent, the whole body is dead, and, the most honored members having been cut away, those left behind are unsightly. Such, then, is what has come to pass, so far as it concerns the flesh. But since spiritual things are compared with spiritual, the occurrence is at once grievous and at once full of joy: the one on account of the loss, the other on account of the hope. You have escorted forth a sacred superior, and, as you recount, sisters most reverend. Here is a ground for joy: that those who have been taken up are preparing for you a place of rest through their intercessory entreaty, like those who go ahead along the road to secure the lodgings; while you who remain behind-the men, that is, and the women-emulous, both the men and the women, to lay hold beforehand of the good life and the venerable way of conduct [politeia, the monastic discipline], and ever looking thither, both men and women, where a little later we shall meet with the mother according to God and with the sisters. See, such is the suffering that has befallen you: full of good hope and full of joy, and not like that of those who have died according to the flesh, who, smitten with laments and irrational beatings of the breast, are filled with grief like the nations [gentiles] that have no hope. For this reason their departure is not even desirable to them, but is rather greatly to be shunned. But to us, for whom to live is Christ and to die is gain, the falling-asleep of our spiritual fathers is a sudden turn into joy, since they live in the Lord and are rather more exalted and more deathless than the life here. Casting off, then-both the men and the women-all irrational grief and ignoble tears, in accordance with the station to which you have been appointed by the grace of Christ-the one over the governance of the men's house, the other over the leadership of the maidens' house [the convent]-be sober, keep watch, play the man, be strong. Let all your affairs be in love, all in the keeping of the commandments, according to the precepts of Saint Basil [Basil the Great, author of the monastic rules], between you, the two monasteries; so that, completing-both men and women-a life without stumbling and without reproach, you may glorify God in your body and in your spirit, the one monastery being marshaled and established alongside the other in a manner befitting God-namely with you, the brother Basil, who have also written to us and are well known to us, being present and lending a hand to each of the monasteries so far as is possible; and not on the ground that you do not bear the responsibility of a superior, but rather, as one whose longing has been fulfilled through the undertaking of the one set in charge, throwing yourself in all the more and assisting in what is needful. You have, accordingly, good examples for the advancement of virtue: those who have gone abroad [departed], whether the women or the men. You have the lives of the saints, the legislations of the fathers. You have what is greater than these: God, the maker of all things, in the midst of you according to His unlying promise. You have the holy Theotokos [the Mother of God] as helper, all the saints as intercessors. You have also our nothingness, eager for you in that which is good. Do all things well, then; carry all things through peaceably; rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks-so cries the great Apostle [Paul]; by whose intercessions may both we and you be saved.