To Rusticiana the Patrician, on Her Journey to Mount Sinai

Gregory to Rusticiana, and so on. [a] When I received your excellency’s letter, I was glad to hear that you had reached Mount Sinai. But believe me, I too would have liked to go with you, though by no means to come back with you. And yet I find it very hard to believe that you have been at the holy places and seen many fathers. For I believe that if you had seen them, you could never have gone back so quickly to the city of Constantinople. But since the love of such a city has in no way left your heart, I suspect that your excellency did not give yourself from the heart to the holy things you saw with the eyes of the body. But may Almighty God light up your mind by the grace of his love for humankind, and grant you to be wise and to consider how fleeting all temporal things are. For even while we speak like this, time runs on and the Judge draws near, and see, the moment is already close when we must give up, against our will, the world that we will not give up of our own accord. I ask that the lord Apio and the lady Eusebia, and their daughters, be greeted on my behalf. As for that lady, my nurse, whom you commend to me in your letter, I have the greatest regard for her and want her not to be troubled in any way. But we are pressed by such great difficulties that at present we cannot free even ourselves from forced levies and burdens. [b]