Letter 232: Every day that brings me a letter from you is a feast day, the very greatest of feast days. And when symbols of the feast are brought, what can I call it but a feast of feasts, as the old law used to speak of Sabbath of Sabbaths? I thank the Lord that you are quite well, and that you have celebrated the commemoration of the economy of salvation ...
Every day that brings me a letter from you is a feast day -- the greatest of feast days. And when you send gifts along with the letter, what can I call it but a feast of feasts, as the old law spoke of a Sabbath of Sabbaths?
I thank the Lord that you are well and that you celebrated the commemoration of our salvation [Christmas or Epiphany] in a church at peace. I have had troubles of my own, and I have been weighed down by the fact that my beloved brother remains in exile. Pray for him, that God may one day grant him to see his church healed from the wounds inflicted by heresy.
Do come to see me while I am still on this earth. Come, in accordance with your wishes and my most earnest prayers.
I must confess I am a little puzzled by your gifts. By your lamps you seem to be rousing me to work through the night; by your sweets you seem to be guaranteeing that my body is in fine shape. But there is no munching for me at my age -- my teeth have long since been worn away by time and bad health.
As for the questions you raised, I have included my answers in the enclosed document, written as best I could and as time allowed.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
Related Letters
What a very small quantity of vegetables you have sent me! They must surely be golden vegetables! And yet your whole wealth consists of orchards and rivers and groves and gardens, and your country is productive of vegetables as other lands are of gold, and You dwell among meadowy leafage.
God grant that when this letter is put into your hands, it may find you in good health, quite at leisure, and as you would wish to be. For then it will not be in vain that I send you this invitation to be present at our city, to add greater dignity to the annual festival which it is the custom of our Church to hold in honour of the martyrs. For ...
On my return from a long journey (for I have been into Pontus on ecclesiastical business, and to visit my relations) with my body weak and ill, and my spirits considerably broken, I took your reverence's letter into my hand. No sooner did I receive the tokens of that voice which to me is of all voices the sweetest, and of that hand that I love s...
(Amphilochius was acquitted of the charges made against him, referred to in former letters; but the result of the accusation on his own mind was such that he resigned his office, and retired to a sort of hermitage at a place called Ozizala, not far from Nazianzus, where he devoted his hours of labour to the cultivation of vegetables. The four le...
So far as my own wishes are concerned I am grieved at living at such a distance from your reverence. But, as regards the peace of your own life, I thank the Lord Who has kept you out of this conflagration which has specially ravaged my diocese. For the just Judge has sent me, in accordance with my works, a messenger of Satan, who is buffeting m...