In seipsum ad patrem et Basilium magnum

Tenth Oration. To Himself, and to His Father and Basil the Great, after His Return from Exile. 1. Nothing is stronger than old age, and nothing is more venerable than friendship. By these I was led to you, a captive in Christ, bound not by iron chains, but by the indissoluble bonds of the Spirit. Until now I thought I was someone strong and invincible, and—O the irrationality!—I was not yielding my discourses even to these my lovers and brothers, so that I might have freedom from affairs and philosophize in quiet, leaving everything to those who wished, while conversing with myself and the Spirit. I used to contemplate the Carmel of Elijah, and the desert of John, and the transcendence of those who philosophize thus; and I considered present circumstances a storm, and sought some rock, or cliff, or wall, under which I might be sheltered. Let others, I said, have honors and labors, others wars and victories; but let it suffice for me, fleeing wars and looking to myself, to live in such a way as I am able, as if crossing a small sea on a slender raft, and acquiring a brief stay there by the poverty of my conduct here. The reasoning is perhaps of a more humble sort, but at any rate safer: equally distant from both height and fall. 2. These things I did while it was still possible to write shadows and dreams, and to feast the mind on vain fancies. But now what? Friendship presented itself to me, and the gray hair of my father subdued me: old age of wisdom, term of life, a safer harbor, and friendship that enriches one in God and enriches. For now I dismiss my anger (let the gentle hear and rejoice).

and I look gently upon the hand that tyrannized me, and I smile at the Spirit, and my heart is restored, and my reason returns, and friendship, like a flame that was extinguished and withered, is rekindled and blazes up again from a small spark. My soul refused to be consoled, and my spirit grew weary within me. I said: I will never again trust in friendship. And why should I place hope in a human being? For every man walks deceitfully, and every brother will trip his neighbor, and we all are of the same dust and clay, and we have tasted of the same tree of evil; but has one person put on a more seemly appearance than another? And what benefit was that friendship to me, I said, that enviable and celebrated one, which began from the world and advanced into the Spirit? What then of the single roof and table? Or what of the common teachers and teachings? What of the union closer than that of brothers, or the genuine harmony afterward, if not even this much was granted me, to remain steadfast in a time of power and high station, when the opposite is sought and attained by the many—I mean to share in power and to partake of the good fortune of friends? 3. Why should I recount all the things of grief and despondency, which I call darkness, the inventions of the mind? For these things, and things more absurd than these, I will myself accuse my own folly or madness. But now I change and adapt myself, as these things are far more true and more fitting for us.

And that you may know the genuineness of our change, O wonderful one, you not only break the silence which you blamed and against which you cried out so much, but you also have the discourses as your advocates. This already is a clear sign of our friendship and of the Spirit in us. But what is the advocacy? And if I err in any way, correct it yourself, as you are accustomed to do in other matters. You could not bear that the Spirit of friendship be made secondary; for perhaps we are of less account than others, but the Spirit is far more precious to you than we are. You could not bear that the talent be hidden and buried in the earth; you could not bear that the lamp be long covered by the bushel, because you consider this my light and my work. You sought to have Barnabas added to your Paul; you sought to have Titus added to Silvanus and Timothy, so that the gift might run for you through those who genuinely care for you, and that you might fill the Gospel in a circle from Jerusalem to Illyricum. 4. For this reason you bring me forward, and take hold of me as I withdraw, and seat me beside yourself; this is my wrong, you would say, and you make me a partner in your cares and your crowns. For this reason you anoint me high priest, and clothe me in the long robe, and place the mitre on me, and lead me to the altar of spiritual holocaust, and sacrifice the calf of perfection, and consecrate my hands with the Spirit, and bring me into the Holy of Holies to behold, and make me a minister of the true tabernacle, which the Lord, and not man, pitched.

If indeed it is worthy both of you who anoint and of the one for whom and into whom the anointing is made, this the Father knows—the Father of the true and real Christ, whom he anointed with the oil of exultation beyond his partakers, anointing the humanity with the divinity so as to make both one—and God himself and our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained reconciliation, and the Holy Spirit, who placed us in this ministry, in which we stand and boast in hope of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom is glory unto the ages of ages. Amen.