Письмо XXV. Пресвитеру и игумену Конону

I believe, as I have perceived and been taught, that God is love (1 John 4:16) and that just as He is one and never ceases to be one, He also unites together those who live according to His love and gives them one heart and one soul (Acts 4:32), even if there are many of them, so that, having one soul, they may know each other’s hearts and not be troubled in the vagueness of ignorance, each guessing for himself about the disposition of the mind neighbor. Therefore, believing, holy father, that by the grace of Christ operating in you, you know everything that is in my heart, as I dare say about you, I dare for now to avoid coming to you, knowing that you will attribute my refusal not to disobedience, but to a bodily illness that forcibly restrains me from traveling and does not allow the aspiration of my soul to be realized in reality. But even though I am absent in body, I am always with you in spirit and never separate from you in soul, and with this letter I greet you, my God-given father, and representative, and trustee of my salvation, and your holy flock, worthy of the Kingdom of Christ, and I ask you to pray to the Lord for me, so that I may find a living and active faith in Him, not deadened by passions, but having the power of His cross, and death, and burial, and resurrection: the power of the cross - by not committing sin, and death - by the complete rejection of vice, burial - by the abandonment of spiritual dreams about the sensory, and resurrection - by the abundance of virtues and the abundance of true knowledge of God, and the aspiration of thought from the corruptible upward; so that I may become co-corporeal and like-minded with Him (Eph.3:6). Yes, simply to say, as He promised, I am like Him in everything (1 John 3:2), except [358] natural identity with Him, so that it does not turn out that, having killed the life He gave me in the above, I will fall in justice to the same condemnation with those who killed their own life - our Lord Jesus Christ. Truly, it is a terrible thing that surpasses any judgment - for the sake of love for perishable things, to voluntarily put to death the life given to us by God through the gift of the Holy Spirit. And this fear is certainly experienced by those who try to value truth above selfishness. You might be interested in: