Letter 48: To several monks

To the chosen ones, the strong ones of the faithful, the true and orthodox of the truth. Qamishoʿ and Sṭaya and Babbusa and Ḥḥishoʿ and Isḥaq and Bar Sahda and Dadyazd. Ishoʿyahb, the catholicos who serves by the grace of God, the holy church of the chosen ones. In God, who holds all, I greet you abundantly. Good bread for the fall of the world and for the creation of the lives of the chosen ones. The evil of the deficiency of faith: it is that which to you alone, before the rest of the lost ones, has happened to strike now, or a man of the present times. In that which was completed among you from before: that which was spoken from the Lord concerning the times of now. For has the son of man come and found faith on earth? For your mouth now cries out, as if by voice, through the testimony of your deeds against the remainder of the word of the Lord: that if not, there is no faith. How? For I heard from before and did not wish to believe. And I heard again from another. And I was hindered that without dispute I might release. For a demon, one of those who rebel on Mount Elaph, has flown against you. And it buzzed in the likeness of a wasp at the entrance of the corner, that which was set for you, upon which the weighty name of the holy church was placed in the district of Beth Beby, and it cast upon it the seals of its sorcery and deceived. While all of you, like stones that have no soul, were being shaken. And your mouths were stopped from speech. And your limbs were dried up from activity. And there was not found among you one who would move his hand even to the house of his eyes, and sign the sign of the cross on his face, or on his heart. How then would the help of God come to you? And you would be able to be roused from the sleep of the blindness of the mind, and to see to what depth and folly and shame and constriction you have been led by a single unclean raven, the servant of his deceit.

But you remained still, as though you were without motion, without feeling, and without sensation, like lifeless statues. You were not even able to bring forth the holy mysteries from there, like weak men—as if that one of the pressing needs of your affairs shows excessive weakness in a feeble manner. Rather, like men who have no hope and no God in the world, you abandoned even the holy and life-giving mysteries to the seal of demons. And you all withdrew to the monastery of your sins, with shamefacedness, without being aware of it. What then can now be possible, that a tear should be shed over you? Or what is sufficient, that the bond of prayer should break the hardness of your fall? Or where are the mourners and those who are worthy of the depths of a compassionate heart for you? Each one, to whom a mind of Christians is bound, I have no worthy and silent men to persuade you—those who are sensible of the word, and those whom the enemy has not utterly destroyed the whole building of your separation. For this testimony of your faith is that which is not your faith and your immovability concerning this affair, which is worthy of wonder and reproach. The beginning seems to me to be the fall of many: those who, at the time of the coming of the enemy of the world, are ready to destroy themselves along with the faith of truth and the true hope, through all the error of iniquity that occurs among the lost, as it is written. And this one rages greatly and turns about. And it extends to the depth of the smallness of the soul. Especially when it dies upon the non-existent. For where and in what does the stumbling-block of sin come to pass? That one is in you. For men from among you, even in their own time, are those who are the fathers of the blessed bishops. And from among you are the true heirs of the true faithful.

and the good discipline of the weighty priests. And now you have lost, through the laxity of your will, the entire good name of your fathers. And if it were possible that he might now be roused from the sleep of death, the blessed Mar Ishoʿyahb the bishop—he in whose days these heretical tares sprouted in this field of Christ, and who raised up great contests against them unto blood and death, until he delivered his contest, his throne, his rank, his house, and his inheritance to the heir of his life—would now come and see the sons of his sons, while they are with their hands and their fingers like a sacrifice to the heretical servitors of Satan, and with their hands in the venerable vessels of the Christians, like men who have lost their minds, and they are partners, companions, receivers, honorers, praisers, and anointers of heretics—those very ones whom he, with his hands, the holy canons buried. What then would he think and feel? And with what voice would he not cry out to the sons of his sons, the weak ones who denied the good inheritance of his faith and surrendered to the heretics? But the testimony of the pain is clear to the discerning. Even if that priestly mouth is now silent, with the covering of bread for the folly of his sons—for it covers you at the time that is fitting before the sea of the power of Christ our Lord—so also the blessed Mar Qamishoʿ the bishop, who for the worship of idols with the people of Saʿya labored in the toils of his zeal in vain, and the good inheritance of true faith he bequeathed to the sons of his disciples and to the bodily sons of his. Thus also all the faithful fathers of each one of you—those who, with a good name and a pure faith, grew old with the life of the body and left the inheritance of their faith, their customs, their honor, their authority, and their righteousness to you.

and now, even through the deficiency of prayer, you have diminished the hopes of your toil before God, the Lord of all. Behold, you are preserved by the help of God, by the faith and by the prayer of your fathers. All the honor, authority, and power of your region at this time is such that not even one of you is found to be a guide of the spirit for laxity and negligence in which you exist. But when the judgment of God concerning you at the proper time is hastened, each one will confess his own sorrow to God, who well knows his judgments. I, therefore, am a weak man. For I think that through the great simplicity in which you are, you will now also be wearied by the length of this letter, and that perhaps no other will read it before you, being patient with you, because of which I am weary. For as much as it is fitting for me to write to you concerning this matter, I also think that your action at this time is more concerned with prayer than with the letter. And before God accomplishes for you through the mercies of his grace, I also, a sinner and a mourner, have with you the good hope of the faith of your fathers, which is preserved, and that you are diligent for completion in those things which happen or not. And it is fitting to say that if you have not completely lost from yourselves the goodness of Christians, you wish to be healed by this, and it is also thought by others finally. Until you take upon your hearts, your tongues, and your hands the sign of the faith of the Lord, and you are blessed, those impure seals are the ones which the adversary placed through the servant of his will upon the door of your church.

and you are showing yourselves to be idle in what is right: to seek her, to enlarge her, to strengthen her, and to sanctify her as is fitting for the Church of God; to enter into one of the churches in every place and to participate in the divine mysteries, you are not permitted by the word of the Lord. And if it happens that, while you are being treated with deceit, you say or err in your thought, O heretics, that from the commandment of the one who is not, that which was, was. It is not true at all. For the Hagarene Arabs do not help those who say that suffering and death belong to God, the Lord of all. And if it happens that you are helped by the hand of that cause, yet you are able to make known to the Hagarenes and to explain to them concerning this present persecution, if it is that which has abolished for you the labor upon it. Therefore, act, O men, my brothers, everything with wisdom. And give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s. And that which is God’s is exalted, He who reaches with His hands every grace that abounds in His fear; He will perfect you in every good work to do His will at all times, all the days of your peaceful life. Completed.