Letter 115: (Sent about Easter a.d. 382 with a copy of the Philocalia, or Chrestomathy of Origen's works edited by himself and S. Basil.) You anticipate the Festival, and the letters, and, which is better still, the time by your eagerness, and you bestow on us a preliminary festival.
Gregory to Theodore, with a copy of the Philocalia.
You anticipate the festival by your eagerness, outpacing both the season and my letters. This is a beautiful trait -- to be so eager for holy things that you cannot wait for the appointed time.
I send you, together with my Easter greetings, this copy of the Philocalia -- the anthology of Origen's works that Basil and I compiled together in happier days. It is, I think, a useful collection: it contains the best of Origen's thought while leaving aside the speculations that brought him into controversy. Read it with profit, and remember the two friends who labored over it -- one now at rest with God, the other still laboring here below.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
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