NPNF2-08. Basil: Letters and Select Works - Holy Bible Institute

To the Church of Neocæsarea. Consolatory.for ever live beyond their reach I pray the Lord who ruleth over all, and who granted longtranquillity to Gregory His servant, the first founder of your church. 1997Do not lose that tranquillity now; do not, by extravagant lamentation, and by entirelygiving yourself up to grief, put the opportunity for action into the hands of those who areplotting your bane. If lament you must, (which I do not allow, lest you be in this respectlike “them which have no hope,”) 1998 do you, if so it seem good to you, like some wadingchorus, choose your leader, and raise with him a chant of tears.2. And yet, if he whom you mourn had not reached extreme old age, certainly, as regardshis government of your church, he was allowed no narrow limit of life. He had as muchstrength of body as enabled him to show strength of mind in his distresses. Perhaps someof you may suppose that time increases sympathy and adds affection, and is no cause ofsatiety, so that, the longer you have experienced kind treatment, the more sensible you areof its loss. You may think that of a righteous person the good hold even the shadow inhonour. Would that many of you did feel so! Far be it from me to suggest anything likedisregard of our friend! But I do counsel you to bear your pain with manly endurance. Imyself am by no means insensible of all that may be said by those who are weeping for theirloss. Hushed is a tongue whose words flooded our ears like a mighty stream: a depth ofheart, never fathomed before, has fled, humanly speaking, like an unsubstantial dream.Whose glance so keen as his to look into the future? Who with like fixity and strength ofmind able to dart like lightning into the midst of action? O Neocæsarea, already a prey tomany troubles, never before smitten with so deadly a loss! Now withered is the bloom ofyou, beauty; your church is dumb; your assemblies are full of mournful faces; your sacredsynod craves for its leader; your holy utterances wait for an expounder; your boys have losta father, your elders a brother, your nobles one first among them, your people a champion,your poor a supporter. All, calling him by the name that comes most nearly home to each,lift up the wailing cry which to each man’s own sorrow seems most appropriate and fit. Butwhither are my words carried away by my tearful joy? Shall we not watch? Shall we notmeet together? Shall we not look to our common Lord, Who suffers each of his saints toserve his own generation, and summons him back to Himself at His own appointed time?Now in season remember the voice of him who when preaching to you used always to say“Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers.” 1999 The dogs are many. Why do I say dogs?Rather grievous wolves, hiding their guile under the guise of sheep, are, all over the world,tearing Christ’s flock. Of these you must beware, under the protection of some wakefulbishop. Such an one it is yours to ask, purging your souls of all rivalry and ambition: such1331997 i.e. Gregory Thaumaturgus.1998 1 Thess. iv. 13.1999 Phil. iii. 2.414