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Translated by Bl. Jackson.
St Basil the Great Resources Online and in Print
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This Part: 128 Pages
Page 46
Letter XXXIII. [2013]
To Aburgius. [2014]
Who knows so well as you do how to respect an old friendship, to pay reverence to virtue, and to sympathise with the sick? Now my God-beloved brother Gregory the bishop has become involved in matters which would be under any circumstances disagreeable, and are quite foreign to his bent of mind. I have therefore thought it best to throw myself on your protection, and to endeavour to obtain from you some solution of our difficulties. It is really an intolerable state of things that one who is neither by nature nor inclination adapted for anything of the kind should be compelled to be thus responsible; that demands for money should be made on a poor man; and that one who has long determined to pass his life in retirement should be dragged into publicity. It would depend upon your wise counsel whether you think it of any use to address the Comes Thesaurorum or any other persons.
Letter XXXIV. [2015]
To Eusebius, bishop of Samosata.
How could I be silent at the present juncture? And if I cannot be silent, how am I to find utterance adequate to the circumstances, so as to make my voice not like a mere groan but rather a lamentation intelligibly indicating the greatness of the misfortune? Ah me! Tarsus is undone. [2016] This is a trouble grievous to be borne, but it does not come alone. It is still harder to think that a city so placed as to be united with Cilicia, Cappadocia, and Assyria, should be lightly thrown away by the madness of two or three individuals, while you are all the while hesitating, settling what to do, and looking at one another's faces. It would have been far better to do like the doctors. (I have been so long an invalid that I have no lack of illustrations of this kind.) When their patients' pain becomes excessive they produce insensibility; so should we pray that our souls may be made insensible to the pain of our troubles, that we be not put under unendurable agony. In these hard straits I do not fail to use one means of consolation. I look to your kindness; I try to make my troubles milder by my thought and recollection of you. [2017] When the eyes have looked intently on any brilliant objects it relieves them to turn again to what is blue and green; the recollection of your kindness and attention has just the same effect on my soul; it is a mild treatment that takes away my pain. I feel this the more when I reflect that you individually have done all that man could do. You have satisfactorily shewn us, men, if we judge things fairly, that the catastrophe is in no way due to you personally. The reward which you have won at God's hand for your zeal for right is no small one. May the Lord grant you to me and to His churches to the improvement of life and the guidance of souls, and may He once more allow me the privilege of meeting you.
[2013] Placed in 369.
[2014] cf. Ep. xxxiii., lxxv., cxlvii., clxxviii., ccciv., and also cxcvi., though the last is also attributed to Greg. Naz. He was an important lay compatriot of Basil. Tillemont was of opinion that the dear brother Gregory referred to in this letter is Gregory of Nyssa; but Maran points out that the events referred to are the same as those described in Letter xxxii., and supposes the word episcopus to have been inserted by a commentator.
[2015] Placed in 369.
[2016] Silvanus, Metropolitan of Tarsus, one of the best of the Semi-Arians (Ath., De synod. 41), died, according to Tillemont, in 373, according to Maran four years earlier, and was succeeded by an Arian; but events did not turn out so disastrously as Basil had anticipated. The majority of the presbyters were true to the Catholic cause, and Basil maintained friendship and intercourse with them. cf. Letters lxvii., cxiii., cxiv.
[2017] Basil is supposed to have in the meanwhile carried out his previously-expressed intention of paying Eusebius a visit.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/basil/letters.asp?pg=46
