Письмо XIX. Пирру, святейшему пресвитеру и игумену

Your saint, God-pleasing father, having read the letter, I learned that your mind is completely enlightened by the fullness of the Spirit, and I recognized that it surpasses natural intelligence as much as it has achieved Divine and supernatural wisdom. After all, it seemed to me that through the writing I saw before me your God-wise mind, sparkling with only the pure rays of the Spirit, with which it tends to be transformed into something closer to the Divine, who was worthy of adoption by the Father of all, and freeing me as much from ignorance of the Divine teaching as it previously seemed to me that I had knowledge of it. Therefore, amazed at the sharpness of your mind in everything, I only cried out in the same words that a certain woman once cried out to the Lord, shocked by the power of His speeches: “Blessed is the womb that bore You, and the breasts that You sucked!” (Luke 11:27). I glorify not only the one who gave birth to you, a blessed, honest father, as worthy to become the mother of such a son, but also your thought, which always conceives, and bears, and gives birth to the pious word, for by grace it became a womb that contains the supernatural Word by the affinity of the will with the Word Himself. And according to your strong skill, emanating from your heart, as if from your breast, you nurse the Word, feeding it with action and contemplation, and It grows along with pious thoughts and good disposition and - an amazing thing! – by its own growth creates the deification of the nurturing mind. What else could I tell you, honest father, knowing that you became the parent of such Words, in which, as if from some lofty mountain of knowledge, you revealed the decree of the Divine teaching, as if God-written tablets, found and revealed through a new Mediator, sent to us by the great Moses, the priest of priests and the head of the Divine [344] priesthood of the whole earth; and this decree was communicated by the holy and unitedly worshiped Trinity through the above-mentioned bishop and, for the sake of unanimity, more closely united the Churches that despised the innovation in faith, which was liked by many in the city of Alexandra. The final decree preserved the thought in which our God-bearing fathers commanded faith to the holy Churches, one and the same affirming God the Word both before and after the acceptance of intelligently animated flesh, which for our sake He united with Himself by hypostasis, having received from the holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary - because, of course, He deigned to become His seed incarnation, in order to truly become a man, and to show in seedless conception and incorruptible birth a renewed nature, which does not undergo any diminishment in renewal. For, through goodness to man, the secret was voluntary self-deprecation - not a falling away from the Divine, but a free descent into the flesh: after all, having become what He was not, He remained what He was, for unchangeable. And he preserved what he became, remaining what he was, for he loved mankind. In what he did in a Divine way, he showed without change what he had become, and in what he endured in a human way, he confirmed the immutability of what he was. After all, He accomplished the Divine carnally, because through the flesh, which is not devoid of natural action, and the human – Divine, because by autocratic desire, and not by external compulsion, He allowed Himself to be tested by human suffering. And he did not do the Divine Divine, for he was not only God (ὅτι μὴ γυμνὸς ὑπῆρχε Θεός), and not carnal - human, for he was not just a man. Therefore, miracles were not without suffering, and suffering was not without miracles, but the first ones - I will say not without impudence! - were not dispassionate, but the latter were obviously wonderful; both miracles and suffering are extraordinary, for both the Divine and the human came from the same incarnate God the Word, who in both both confirmed the actual truth of both what he consisted of and what he was. [345] After all, what is created from any parts by a combination of natural convergence without merging and preserves unchanged the natures from which it was composed, and preserves without diminishing the power of its component parts to accomplish a single task, be it suffering or a miracle - as, father, your miraculous and corresponding to the mystery of the Divine Incarnation is depicted as likening a red-hot sword, the cutting of which, as we know, burns, and the burning, as we know, cuts. For fire and iron underwent a hypostatic convergence, and neither one nor the other, due to the union with the other, lost its natural ability and, after the union, contains it inseparably and without separation from the conjugate and coexisting. This means that I discovered the precision that permeates your letter in the presentation of the Divine teaching, having thought about which, to the extent of my inherent small ability to think, I ardently desired to become able to preserve it and retain it with my mind without the slightest damage from any oblivion. You, revered father, have pity on me, your servant, and out of your love for mankind, grant the necessary forgiveness to those who are unable to fulfill the command. And do not blame my disobedience, but rather approve of me for trying to realize my own ignorance. After all, rashness is worthy of hatred, the first product of extreme ignorance, from which usually comes the vice of arrogance, which instills in those affected by it a disposition of soul hostile to God; and accept my prayer, not tainted by passion, and do not push away the one who addresses you the same speeches that first Moses, and then Jeremiah, already addressed to God in similar circumstances; the first one said: “I pray to You, Lord! I am not a man of speech, and I was like that both yesterday and the day before, and when You began to speak to Your servant: I stutter and am tongue-tied” (Is. 4:10). The second: “Oh Lord God! I do not know how to speak, for I am still young” (Jer. 1:6). I am truly a stutterer and tongue-tied, and lacking the understanding necessary to speak about lofty matters; I have neither a mind devoted to Divine subjects, nor a power of speech that could correspond to the greatness of what is being discussed. After all, I am still subject to passions in my youth, and my flesh wins, rebelling against the spiritual law. And even if we assume that I have the ability to do this, who would be so rash and impudent as to still talk about things that were thus prophesied by the hierarchs by God’s judgment? 223 I would rather ask in your precious letter to clarify to me by definition what action is (ἐνέργεια), and in how many senses action is spoken of, and what to think about “action” (ἐνέργημα) along with it, and what is the difference between both words and between them and “deed” and “doing”, so that I can understand the meaning of the scriptures. After all, I still have not been able to understand exactly in what sense and how one should speak and think about a single action. We don’t just utter meaningless words, but express our thoughts in words. For this reason, I have often discovered that the theologizing Fathers conceded in words, but never in thoughts, because the secret of our salvation lies not in syllables, but in what is thought and what is real. They did this by caring for the world, and this by strengthening souls with the truth. And enough about that. I ask, honest father, your holiness to favorably accept the divine Fathers who bring this unimportant letter - after all, for the common benefit of the monastic order, they exposed themselves to the dangers of navigation - and deign to become everything for them, as the strict meaning of the Divine commandment desires from those who strive for the Divine and who set the incarnate Word as the only model for their life. In this matter, they are worthy of your care, because they impeccably bear the Divine yoke of virtue and knowledge. I am afraid that for what I write, I will be reproached for inappropriate frankness and rudeness from people who do not know you, father, and have not experienced [347] your favor, and that it will rightly be said about me, as a certain sage, alien to our teaching, put it when he saw an uncouth simpleton arrogant about something: A smart man with a smile kindled insolence in a fool. In everything, then, holy father, forgive me, your servant, and with your most holy prayers propitiate Christ the God to me, Whom you always honor with purity of mind and severity of life. τοῖς οὕτω κατὰ θείαν ψῆφον ἱεραρχικῶς θεσπισθεῖσιν ἐπιδιατάττεσθαι; You might be interested in: