To Eulalius, Bishop of Persian Armenia, on the Fallen

I know that Satan has asked to sift you like wheat, and that the Lord has let him do it, so that he may show the wheat, test the gold, crown the athletes and proclaim the names of the victors. All the same I fear and tremble. I am not distressed on account of you, who are noble champions of the truth, but because I know that some people are weaker in heart. If among twelve apostles one was found a traitor, then no doubt among a number many times as great anyone could easily find many who fall short of perfection. Thinking this over, I have been troubled and very much disheartened, for, as the divine Apostle says, “If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it.” “We are members one of another,” and form one body, “having the Lord Christ for head.” Yet in my anxiety I have one comfort when I think of your holiness. Brought up as you have been in the divine oracles, and taught by the Chief Shepherd what the marks of the good shepherd are, you will no doubt lay down your life for the sheep. For, as the Lord says, “he who is a hired hand,” when he sees “the wolf coming,” “runs away because he is a hired hand and does not care about the sheep,” but “the good shepherd gives his life for the sheep.” [a]

In the same way, the best general shows his inborn courage not in peacetime but in war, by both spurring others on and putting himself in danger for his men. For it would be absurd for him to enjoy the dignity of his command and then, in the hour of need, run out of danger’s way. This is how the thrice-blessed prophets always acted. They made light of the safety of their bodies, and for the sake of the Jews, who hated and rejected them, they went through every kind of danger and toil. The divine apostle says of them: “They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were killed with the sword; they went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, afflicted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy; they wandered in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.” So too the divine apostles traveled over the whole world preaching, without home, bed, bedding, table or any of the necessities of life. They were scourged, racked and imprisoned, and they went through countless kinds of death. And all this they endured not for the sake of their friends; they faced these dangers of their own free will for the sake of the very men who were persecuting them. A far stronger claim is laid on you now to accept the danger that is attacking you at present, for the sake of fellow believers, brothers and children. Even animals without reason show this kind of affection. Sparrows can be seen fighting with all their might for their brood and putting out all the strength they have to defend it, and other kinds of birds too face danger for their young. But why do I speak of birds? Bears too, and leopards, wolves and lions, willingly suffer any pain for the safety of their offspring. Instead of fleeing from the hunter, they wait for his attack and do battle for their young.

I have brought up these examples not as though I were anointing your piety for endurance and courage with the example of dumb beasts. I have done it to console myself in my low spirits and to be assured that you will not leave Christ’s flock without a shepherd when the wolves attack, but will call on the Lord of the flock to help you and will fight wholeheartedly on its behalf. A crisis like this shows who is a shepherd and who is a hired hand, who feeds the flock with care and who, on the other hand, feeds on the milk and gives little thought to the safety of the sheep. “But God is faithful, who will not let you be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make a way of escape, so that you may be able to bear it.” [f]

But one thing I do beg your reverence: pay more attention to those who are not sound. Do not only strengthen the unsteady, but also raise up the fallen. For shepherds do not neglect the sheep of their flock that have fallen sick. They keep them apart from the rest and try in every possible way to restore them, and that is what we must do. We must make those who are slipping stand up again, give them a helping hand and a word of encouragement. When they are bitten we must heal them. We must not give up trying to save them, nor leave them in the devil’s jaws. This is how the divine Apostle Paul always acted. When the Galatians, after receiving the baptism of salvation and the gift of the divine Spirit, fell away into the sickness of Judaism and received circumcision, he wailed and lamented more than the most loving mother. He nursed them and set them free from that illness. We can hear him crying out, “My little children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.” In the same way the teacher of the Corinthians dealt with the man who had committed that abominable sexual immorality. He punished him as a father would and treated him with great skill. After cutting him off in the first letter, he took him back in the second, saying, “So on the contrary you ought rather to forgive him and comfort him, or perhaps such a one may be swallowed up by excessive sorrow.” And again, “so that Satan may not gain an advantage over us, for we are not ignorant of his schemes.” In the same manner he rightly rebuked those who had eaten things offered to idols, urged them as was fitting, and set them free from their grievous error.

That is why our Lord Jesus Christ allowed the first of the apostles, whose confession he had laid down as a kind of groundwork and foundation of the church, to waver back and forth and to deny him, and then raised him up again. In this way he taught us two lessons: not to trust in our own strength, and to strengthen the unsteady. So I beg you, reach out a hand to those who have fallen. “Draw them up out of the horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set their feet upon a rock,” and “put a new song in their mouth, a song of praise to our God,” so that the example of their lives may become an example of salvation, so that “many will see it and fear, and will trust in the Lord.” Let them be kept from sharing in the holy mysteries, but let them not be shut out from the prayer of the catechumens, nor from hearing the divine Scriptures and the exhortation of the teachers. And let them be barred from partaking of the sacred mysteries not until death, but for a set time, until they recognize their sickness, long for health, and are truly sorry for having abandoned their true Prince and deserted to a tyrant, and for having left their benefactor and gone over to their enemy. [h]

The precepts of the holy and blessed Fathers teach us the same lessons. I write as I do not to teach you piety but to remind you, as a brother might, knowing well that even the best of pilots needs advice even from his crew when the storm strikes. So the great and famous Moses, renowned throughout the world, who worked those mighty wonders, did not refuse the advice of Jethro, a man still sunk in the error of idolatry. He paid no attention to the man’s ungodliness, but recognized the soundness of his advice. And I beg your piety to pray earnestly to God for me, that for the remaining days of my life I may live in keeping with his laws. I have written this by the most honorable and devout presbyter Stephanus, whom I have been very glad to see because of the goodness of his character.