Letter 896

To Pergamos the Reader [anagnostes, a lector in minor orders]. If repentance, which is good, greatly profitable, and beneficial, displays its own strength even up to a person's last breath, and is accepted even at the very gates of death itself - justifying and saving, as he gives up his spirit upon his cot and is about to depart from the racecourse, the one who has sinned and repented and lies stretched out supine before Christ, breathing his last - then for what reason, tell me, do you push yourself toward despair, when you ought rather to hasten toward the acknowledgment of your faults and toward repentance?

Εἰ μέχρι τῆς ἐσχάτης τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἀναπνοῆς, τὴν οἰκείαν ἰσχὺν δείκνυσιν ἡ ἀγαθή, καὶ μεγαλοφελής, καὶ ὀνησίφορος μετάνοια, καὶ ἐν αὐταῖς προσλαμβα-νομένη ταῖς τοῦ θανάτου πύλαις, τῷ ψυχορραγεῖν ἐπὶ τοῦ σκίμποδος καὶ μέλλειν ἐξιέναι τοῦ σταδίου δι-καιουσα καὶ σώζουσα τὸν ἐξαμαρτήσαντα, καὶ μετα-μεληθέντα, καὶ ἐνώπιον τοῦ Χριστοῦ ἐκτεταγμένον ὕπτιον καὶ τὰ τελευταῖα πνέοντα, τίνος χάριν, εἶπέ μοι, σαυτὸν ὠθεῖς πρὸς ἀπόγνωσιν, δέον σπεύδειν πρὸς τὴν ἐπίγνωσιν τῶν πταισθέντων καὶ μεταμέ-λειαν;