117. К Касту, Валерию, Диофанту и Кириаку, пресвитерам антиохийским 95

Love is a kind of cruel and coercive thing, crueler than any persistent lender. It is not the same way that those who step on our necks demand money from their debtors, as you, having imposed a chain of love on us, force us to pay you with letters, no matter how often we pay our obligations. However, this is the nature of this debt: the more you pay it, the more you enter into it again. Therefore, although you often receive letters from us, you are still not satisfied. And this insatiability is again a matter of the same love. It is like a sea, which, receiving countless rivers from everywhere, is never filled. This is exactly the capacity of the perceptibility of your hearing: the more we bring into it, the more the flame of disposition towards us kindles in you. Do not think that we have now remained silent for some time because we suspected the sincerity of your friendship for us. We would do exactly the opposite if we really suspected this, and then we would write to you much more often. Just as the healthy do not need a doctor, so on the contrary, the careless and cold require special care. If, therefore, we found that your disposition towards us was beginning to waver, then we would hasten on our part to use all measures to rekindle it more. On the contrary, being firmly convinced and undoubtedly knowing that whether we write to you or not, it will always remain in you firmly, unshakably, constantly, unchangeably, inflexibly, freshly and strongly, we thought that for this there was no need for our letters at all, and if we wrote, we wrote solely out of a feeling of mutual attraction to you. So now we write to you not out of need, but out of love. Let continuous storms arise from different sides and countless waves rise high; the previous time has sufficiently shown that nothing can harm you and plunge you into the confusion of cowardice. Thus, we write to you not at all because you now need our consolation, but to tell you only that we rejoice, rejoice and triumph with pleasure at the thought that, despite such a distance between us, we enjoy such love of your measure. In full confidence that you will be very pleased to know about our situation, I inform you that I have freed myself from painful infirmity of the stomach and am currently healthy. We are no longer burdened or disturbed by the state of siege, nor by bandit raids, nor by desolation, nor by various other troubles; all this has passed, and we now enjoy safety, tranquility and complete silence, thinking every day about your affairs and starting a conversation about them with everyone who comes to us. This is what it means to love sincerely: whoever is dear to someone is always on his tongue. The same is now with us, because we love you dearly, as you know. After all this, I hope you will not think that we will grow cold or ever become indifferent in our disposition towards you. “Love never fails” (“Love never fails”) (1 Cor. 13:8), and no matter how much time passes, no matter how much the difficult situation of circumstances increases, no matter how much the distance separating you and me increases, it will not be stopped by anything and will never weaken, but will intensify and grow from it. The paragraphs in the text were arranged by us. – Editorial staff of “ABC of Faith” You might be interested in: