Letter 41: To Moshe the priest

To the beloved of God, my honored brother, Mar Moshe the priest. Ishoʿyahb, by the Lord’s grace, sends greetings. Again, when I was moved by the agitation of memory toward the shore of your custom, I was troubled; by the fullness of the heavens, even now I have been set in motion. And not long after the labor of the hours, for the increase of foreign remnants, when I began the letter, I became entangled; and I sent it to you. From them, what is to be examined: the son of Rachel, who he is; from them, also, the son of Jesse, who he is; and from them, again, the son of ʿAmram, who he is; and the others, also the son of Mattai, who he is; and when and how I wrote, not even these sufficed for you. From the likeness of the Gomorite of the folly, again, for the sake of the multitude of the future of the revelation, I was pressed. And the Catholicos, something of the Phantasiasts, I depicted. The remainder of the third, the foolishness of the weak man, is astonishing; or it would happen to him in such a way as this. For the sake of the censure after these things, I began the cause of the letter at its end. And also for it, when in the multitude of the reasons, I clothed the person of the depth of your affliction. And thus, for the man of the testimony, I fixed the sharpness of the movement toward your affairs by the power of peace. For all these things happened to you, that you might consider the weariness in your letter to me, as I thought, concerning that which was not in vain that I was set in motion from before in the reading of those things that I, at the time when I was answering, I wrote to you the letter of your return. For I had given you from before a little peace in the demonstration of the anointed one. That in those things, the pains of the beauty of the order, and not that a free-born man should be disturbed, who, by the spiritual law, spiritually I have united to the cause of the censure: the fullness of his letter he takes. Since, therefore, they were not read by you, those things that were written before concerning this. Concerning this, even now, thus. For behold, also I, I am aware, that concerning them, when upon them, I write.

Nevertheless, I was perplexed when you wrote, and also when I learned from others that concerning you there had arrived the rumor of the necessity of bread—that from which the weary people have suffered many changes, until even he himself, in turn, was disturbed by the question: from the elders of the world to the hungers of the thistles. For when I learned this, I felt as if I were in labor. That I might establish the scarcity of the hour as is fitting to seek, I was not easily able. For I came as one who reconciles your affairs also with those of my own: the whole world is that which brought you to an unaccustomed scarcity. And I reflected a little upon you, and I pondered much concerning you, and still I am placed beneath it. To the accustomed scarcity I turned you with an abundance of the demands of your circumstances, or they are not at all to be found. But when I was a little impressed by the spiritual law, and a little by the measure of the scarcity of the brothers, and again a little also by the thread of those who ask from the depth of necessity, I was a little like bread that stands. Its inner work as is possible: from it by portions and from it by measure; from it also for the thread of the world. Thus as a sacrifice, thus as a person, thus as a cause of villages. It reached also to you by gift: bread, as much as by measure for ten days; but by portions for twenty days. By its quantity, three measures of thirty; by its weight, it carries your entire beast; by its name, the need of the interior, thirty geriva; by its distinction, of seed: ten wheat and twenty barley; by its will and completion, your entire market, if I were able. Accept, therefore, that which is in deed as it is, and do not seek that which is in will as it is not. And if there should be any negligence concerning you from me in the time of need, let it be for you as is fitting for you.

And if you do not lack, do not act in haste. The goodness of the mercy of our Lord. Thanks be to the humility that is upon you every day. You, however, pray for my insignificance and be strong. Finished.