Letter 38: To Mar Aba the bishop

To the priest and lover of God, my honored brother Mar Aba the bishop, Ishoʿyahb in the Lord: greetings. I received with astonishment the letter of your love, O lover of God. And concerning the persecution against you, I confessed to the Lord and remembered the weight of the suffering upon the depth of the littleness of my soul, as if in a dream. I was disturbed by the memory of all the violence that passed over your piety at the hands of the wicked; I was especially grieved by the hope of your endurance. And I rejoiced in the glory of God. For I found in the strength of your sufferings the victory over your afflictions: that in you, as in the body of faith, the Lord of glory was being proclaimed. And I saw again the crown of your endurance: that in a weak body you received the struggle of tribulations with the manliness of a strong soul. And your body did not yield according to its nature to the force of sufferings in the flight of death; nor did your soul become faint according to its nature in the daily violent tumults; but you distanced yourself from the partnership of sufferings by the remoteness of another discourse. Rather, together, with the patience of your entire head, you bore all the violence of the wicked with the humility of violent spirit, until the remainder that is thought to stand, until the limit of the abandonment of the helper, until the limit of your violence and the boldness of the violence of the wicked, until the Lord God was pleased in his time to complete the power of his manliness in the brevity of your weakness. Because of these things, therefore, O my brother, to the abundance of the remnants of the littleness of my soul from my humble thought, and to the bitterness of my thoughts, I turned to the thanksgiving of God. And while rejoicing, I give blessing to your soul that loves God, that you were deemed worthy to participate in the sufferings upon the face of truth, at the beginning of the crown, as I think, for many who are about to be.

am astonished that the mystery of iniquity and the revelation of iniquity have already begun to be sought after as is evident. Many are being chosen, tested, and examined, as it is written. Nevertheless, blessed are you if you have been tested, examined, and found worthy. And blessed are you also if even now you are in the contest, and you are. Especially blessed are you if you are also equal to those who are greater. For whoever is trusted in a small matter is also trusted in a great matter, as it is written. Rejoice, therefore, in your hope of blessings, and be renewed in the spirit of your faith, as is fitting for you. For you have had, from the beginning, also the boldness that comes from sufferings, to ask in prayer for mercy and help for the Church of God. Pray, therefore, also for this persecuted Church of mine. Also for all those who are being persecuted in it, that together they may be crucified to share with you spiritually in voluntary sufferings, and that they may appease for you all those in your hands: the baptized faithful together with the unbaptized faithful, to bring them to the reward of the blessings of the righteous, the recompense of prayer in spiritual love. Pray also for my weakness, I ask of you, that I may be equal to the grace of repentance and find mercy before the Lord. And may the remainder of my days be spent in a life that is pleasing to the will of God. Completed.