To Theoctista, the Emperor’s Sister, on the Quiet He Has Lost

Gregory to Theoctista, and so on. [a]

With what devotion my mind prostrates itself before your venerableness I cannot fully express in words; nor do I labor to put it into words, since even if I were silent, you read in your own heart how devoted I am. I wonder, though, that you have withdrawn from me the favor you showed me until lately, now that I have newly taken up the pastoral office. In it, under the cover of being a bishop, I have been brought back into the world; and in it I am caught up in such great earthly cares as I do not remember ever being subject to even when I lived as a layman. For I have lost the deep joys of my quiet, and I seem to have risen outwardly while falling down inwardly. So I grieve to find myself banished far from the face of my Maker. For I used to strive every day to make my way outside the world, outside the flesh; to drive all images of the body from the eyes of my soul, and to see the joys above in a bodiless way. And not only with my voice but in the core of my heart I used to say, “My heart has said to you, I have sought your face; your face, Lord, I will seek.” Moreover, desiring nothing and fearing nothing in this world, I seemed to myself to stand on a kind of summit of things, so that I almost believed there was fulfilled in me what I had learned of the Lord’s promise through the prophet: “I will lift you up on the high places of the earth.” For he is lifted up on the high places of the earth who, looking down on them in his mind, treads underfoot even the very things of this present world that seem lofty and glorious. [b]

But, suddenly dashed from this summit of things by the whirlwind of this trial, I have fallen into fears and trembling; for though I have no fears for myself, I am greatly afraid for those who have been entrusted to me. On every side I am tossed by the waves of business and sunk by storms, so that I may truly say, “I have come into the depth of the sea, and the storm has overwhelmed me.” After business I long to return to my heart, but, driven away from it by the empty uproar of my thoughts, I cannot return. For this reason, what is within me is made to be far from me, so that I cannot obey the prophet’s voice that says, “Return to your heart, you transgressors.” Instead, pressed by foolish thoughts, I am driven only to cry out, “My heart has failed me.”

I have loved the beauty of the contemplative life as a Rachel: barren, but keen of sight and fair; who, though in her quiet she bears less, yet sees the light more keenly. But by what judgment I do not know, Leah has been joined to me in the night, that is, the active life: fruitful, but weak-eyed; seeing less, but bearing more. I have longed to sit with Mary at the feet of the Lord, to take in the words of his mouth; and look, I am compelled to serve with Martha in outward affairs, to be anxious and troubled about many things. When a legion of demons had, as I believed, been cast out of me, I wanted to forget those I had known and to rest at the feet of the Savior; and look, it is said to me, so as to compel me against my will, “Go back to your house, and tell how great things the Lord has done for you.” But who, in the midst of so many earthly cares, can preach the wonderful works of God, when it is already hard for me even to call them to mind?

For, pressed as I am in this office of rank by a crowd of worldly occupations, I see that I am one of those of whom it is written, “While they were being raised up, you cast them down.” For he did not say, “You cast them down after they had been raised up,” but “while they were being raised up”; because all bad men fall inwardly while, by the support of temporal rank, they seem to rise outwardly. So their very raising up is their fall, because while they rely on false glory they are emptied of true glory. That is why he says again, “Consuming away like smoke, they will consume away.” For smoke wastes away as it rises, and vanishes as it spreads. And so it indeed happens when present prosperity goes along with the life of a sinner: the very thing by which he is shown to be exalted brings it about that he ceases to be. That is why it is written again, “My God, make them like a wheel.” For a wheel is lifted up in its back parts and falls in its front parts. Now to us the things behind are the goods of this present world, which we leave behind us; but the things before are those that are eternal and lasting, to which we are called, as Paul bears witness when he says, “Forgetting the things that are behind, and reaching out to the things that are before.” So the sinner, when he advances in this present life, is made like a wheel, since he falls in the things that are before while he is lifted up in the things that are behind. For when in this life he enjoys the glory he must leave behind, he falls from what comes after this life.

There are indeed many who know how to govern their outward advancement so as by no means to fall inwardly through it. That is why it is written, “God does not cast away the mighty, since he himself is also mighty.” And it is said through Solomon, “A man of understanding will possess governments.” But to me these things are hard, since they are also exceedingly burdensome; and what the mind has not taken on willingly it does not govern well. Look: our most serene lord the emperor has ordered an ape to be made a lion. And indeed, by virtue of his order it can be called a lion, but a lion it cannot be made. So his piety must himself take the blame for all my faults and failings, since he has entrusted a ministry of power to a weak agent.