Letter 9: Theodore Studite, Letter 9; Greek heading: Γελασίῳ μαθητῇ.

O my child, Abba Gelasius, how did Satan, the author of evil, ever cast you out from your cenobitic paradise [the communal monastery], as once he cast Adam out of Eden, when you were persuaded by the counsel of the serpent-minded Ammoun? And now you lodge in places that the Lord does not watch over, bearing thorns and laboring, in the sweat of your face, at the passions of dishonor. For what good have you accomplished, or are you accomplishing, having gone out? What rather have you done that is not wicked and abominable? The intellectual light of your guidance has failed; the spark of spiritual friendship has been quenched. Your friends and your neighbors (and I mean not only your beloved brothers, but also the angels of God) have stood against you from afar off, and the demons have drawn near, seeking to destroy the ascetic labors you had previously wrought. Where now is your pure prayer? Where now your unshaken confession, your light-bringing avowal, your angelic standing in the choir, your God-imitating obedience, your Christ-bearing humility, that good and pleasant thing of which David the psalmist sings [Psalm 132/133:1], your dwelling together with the brothers in one place? Since you have become bereft of all these things, my child, you have had the contrary things introduced in their stead: darkening of the mind, insensibility of the soul, hardness of heart, distrust, despair, faintheartedness, fear of death, trembling at the reckoning. And what need is there to enumerate each one, seeing that, groaning and trembling, you altogether pass your life like Cain? And I do not yet speak of the swarm of carnal passions, fanning up your inward parts and inflaming sin. Therefore indeed, my child, recognizing the truth through this humble letter of mine, and looking up toward the light, and being pricked to compunction in a godly way, and being wounded in a friendly way, and pondering and recognizing both whence you fell and in what dire straits you were and where you sojourn, so to speak, among the tents of Kedar [a biblical figure for a barbarous, godless dwelling-place; cf. Psalm 119/120:5], revive and leap up and be raised and be renewed and be warmed again; and not in an hour, not in a day, not in a week, but more swiftly, bidding farewell to all, come in good health and without hesitation to me, your wretched father, and to your good brotherhood, and to my great father and your father. And to this end I wished indeed, when I learned that you had been driven away there, to send a brother also together with this letter, that he might draw you back; but since the letter-bearer and presbyter assured me that you would assuredly come from the letter alone, on this account I was content with the letter. And indeed by all means, my child, as has been said, not only I the wretched one and my father, but also our masters, the Forerunner [John the Baptist] and the Theologian [John the Evangelist], command you to set out most speedily, before an unexpected death overtake you with its end. But if still, which I do not suppose, you should harden yourself in hardness and act with self-will, know that you are excommunicate both from all the saints and from us sinners, until you see our face. But if you set out, as we have enjoined, then already, in coming, you are absolved both as to the divine gifts and as to the other foods.