Послание 32. К Николаю, халтуларию 57

We understand how your great piety, our beloved lord, is indignant at our humility in view of some circumstance encountered. But you have truly proven at this time that your honest soul is pure from all enmity and filled with all piety, that for the sake of the peace of the Church of God you quickly and willingly entered into communication with our Holiness the Patriarch immediately after our first petition. This is a sign of sincere friendship, this is the quality of a God-fearing person, this is proof of active zeal for the truth. May the Lord reward you with a perfect righteous reward, even if nothing happens from it! For it is not for the completion of works, but for the disposition towards them, praiseworthy or otherwise, that God usually assigns rewards to those who do them. So, in one moment of time you acquired not gold and silver, but the indestructible treasures of heavenly reward. We also ask and urge you to persistently continue this work, so that you yourself acquire a rich treasure, and we, the humble, are rewarded with the sight of a bishop, or better, so that the Church of God, pacified through your mediation, weaves great crowns of praise for you. Nothing more needs to be said. But since you ordered to explain what is the condition for communication with the patriarch of our humility, we will not falsely inform your great excellency, as if before the face of the Lord who knows the secret. We have no obstacle to communicating with the bishop, except for the matter of the steward, who was deposed by divine rules. And after he is excommunicated from priestly service, as before by the good will of God and the Holy Patriarch and our pious rulers (for he is an steward and has an honorary title), we will immediately begin to serve together, and have fellowship and stretch out our hands, without at all entering into the proceedings of his concelebration in the last three years, for the sake of economy, not out of fear, but for the sake of benefit and salvation. Let the false tongues be silenced, rising up against the world of God and saying that if the steward is excommunicated from priestly service, then we will find a reason for the deposition of our bishop, as he had already served with the deposed one, and then for the condemnation of the preceding His Holiness Patriarch. The mouth that speaks such things is deceitful; This is an invention of slanderers and haters who do not want the healing of the current illness of the Church. No, it won't; We accepted and accept the previous patriarch, and therefore we will have communion with him until death, and we accepted and accept the current bishop, for we offer prayers for him daily. Let the steward who married the adulterer be excommunicated from the priesthood; and then we, as explained above, will serve together with him, if he orders, in the Catholic Church, each according to his own order. And if this comes true, then there will be joy in heaven, peace in our Church of God, the schism will disappear, harmony will clearly shine, our bishop will be crowned with praise so that this praise will pass on to subsequent generations. Our mighty Emperors, together with their precious diadems, will be crowned with angelic praise: “His priests will be clothed” with salvation, and even more so “His saints,” i.e. monastics “will rejoice with joy” (Ps. 132:9, 16). What and how great a reward will our ruler receive? Is it necessary to say? Or better yet, what won't happen? What pleasant thing will not happen? Let us add to this that the steward himself will be praised and glorified and will inherit great mercy for this both in the present century and in the future. We, sinners, will fall down and bow and give thanks, giving him, in deed and word, honor higher than any other person, as it should be. To confirm what has been said, we present a lengthy written statement that after his excommunication from the priesthood, as before, if we do not immediately come and enter into communication, as written above, let the sentence be pronounced on us, whatever you please, and let us not be allowed to speak any more about this subject. Thus, it is not an Angel, not a man, but the Lord Himself who draws, and encourages, and exhorts you through us. You might be interested in: