Nicene and Post-Nicene Church Fathers Series 2 - The Still Small ...

To the Church of Ancyra. Consolatory. 2001
Letter XXIX. 2000
My amazement at the most distressing news of the calamity which has befallen you for
a long time kept me silent. I felt like a man whose ears are stunned by a loud clap of thunder.
Then I somehow recovered a little from my state of speechlessness. Now I have mourned,
as none could help mourning, over the event, and, in the midst of my lamentations, have
sent you this letter. I write not so much to console you,—for who could find words to cure
a calamity so great?—as to signify to you, as well as I can by these means, the agony of my
own heart. I need now the lamentations of Jeremiah, or of any other of the Saints who has
feelingly lamented a great woe. A man has fallen who was really a pillar and stay of the
Church or rather he himself has been taken from us and is gone to the blessed life, and there
is no small danger lest many at the removal of this prop from under them fall too, and lest
some men’s unsoundness be brought to light. A mouth is sealed gushing with righteous
eloquence and words of grace to the edification of the brotherhood. Gone are the counsels
of a mind which truly moved in God. Ah! how often, for I must accuse myself, was it my
lot to feel indignation against him, because, wholly desiring to depart and be with Christ,
he did not prefer for our sakes to remain in the flesh! 2002 To whom for the future shall I
commit the cares of the Churches? Whom shall I take to share my troubles? Whom to
participate in my gladness? O loneliness terrible and sad! How am I not like to a pelican
of the wilderness? 2003 Yet of a truth the members of the Church, united by his leadership
as by one soul, and fitted together into close union of feeling and fellowship, are both preserved
and shall ever be preserved by the bond of peace for spiritual communion. God
grants us the boon, that all the works of that blessed soul, which he did nobly in the churches
of God, abide firm and immovable. But the struggle is no slight one, lest, once more strifes
and divisions arising over the choice of the bishop, all your work be upset by some quarrel.
2000 Placed in 368.
2001 cf. Letters xxiv. and xxv., and note.
2002 cf. Phil. i. 23, 24.
2003 cf. Ps. cii. 6.
To the Church of Ancyra. Consolatory.
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