Letter 106: Severus tells Isidora that consecrated hope outranks bodily sight, burial anxiety, and attachment to one place.

Severus rejoices to hear that Isidora and the children are well, but the letter quickly turns to grief and renunciation. Someone dear to Isidora has died, and Severus tells her that the departed woman is blessed; Isidora is also blessed because she did not see her in the body. That restraint, he says, was not hardness of heart. It was obedience to the law of the Spirit and to the hope of the resurrection. To explain this, Severus draws on the sayings of the ascetic fathers and on Israel's Levites. Those set apart for God must learn that their true household is not simply the household of blood. Moses blessed Levi because he said to father and mother, brothers and children, that he did not know them when God's covenant was at stake. Elijah, Jesus, and the gospel all press the same lesson: natural affection is not evil, but it must not overrule consecration. Isidora's refusal to cling to the body is therefore an offering, not a failure of love. He also relocates the meaning of burial and place. The patriarchs cared about the promised land because they looked prophetically toward the resurrection that would be revealed there. After Christ's resurrection, believers are not to imagine that holiness is trapped in one country, shrine, or grave. The earth is the Lord's, and the final trumpet will wake the dead wherever they lie. Severus uses this to free Isidora from anxious attachment to one place of mourning. The letter ends by joining consolation to teaching about worship. Jesus told the Samaritan woman that true worship would not be bound either to Gerizim or to Jerusalem, but would be in spirit and truth. Paul likewise teaches prayer everywhere with holy hands. Isidora may grieve, but she must grieve as someone whose hope is larger than sight, burial, or geography. Severus wants her to understand that the dead are not lost because the body is absent. They are held for resurrection by the God who fills every place. That is why Severus praises Isidora's restraint so strongly. He does not ask her to feel less; he asks her to place grief under the promise that death is not final. The absent body is not outside God's reach, and the worshiper who prays in truth is not poorer because one sacred place or visible consolation has been denied.

The fact that I learned from your Christ-loving modesty's letter (to speak with God's permission) that ^ Reg. Fus. Tract, ix. 2. - TroXtreta. ^ SLKaa-T-ijpia. VII. 9- both you and our common children are sound both in soul and in body was a cause of ggreat joy to me. And after other things. And she is blessed because of her departure: but you are more blessed in that you did not see her in the body, for the sake of the law of the Spirit and the future eternal hope. You will assuredly see her there, since by enduring not to see her here you have consecrated your endurance as a sacrifice to God. This principle is also stated in the sayings of the holy old men who after an approved fashion gained distinction in the solitary and immaterial life. Once indeed, when father Poemen was following the life of philosophic quietude with his brothers, and the door of his cell was shut, his mother stood outside the house, and he spoke to her thus in so many words, " Do you wish to see us here, or to see us in that country? "; and the old woman said to him: " If I do not see you here shall I certainly see you there, my son? "; and he answered her, "If you force yourself - not to see us here, you will see us there." And she went away rejoicing and saying, " Shall I certainly see you there? I do not seek to see you here."^ These things were said and done by those understanding old men, and fathers of the holy and solitary life, not be- cause they were cruel and unkind men in respect of the claims of nature, but because they were taught by the God-inspired scripture that those who have been set apart and consecrated to God have no 1 Apoph. Pat. Poem. 76 (P. G. Ixv. 340). VII. Q. family on earth, but among angelic hosts and the heavenly spirits. For this reason Moses in his blessings said of the tribe of Levi that was set apart to perform prightly functions, from which was Aaron the first high-pright, and those who after him wore the robe of judgment and the revelation and truth upon their breast (these were bright stones, which signified the fact that all things that are true and are not revealed to most men are revealed by God to the high-prights), " Give to Levi his revelations, and his truth to the saintly man." Then also he adduces the cause of such honour, saying, "Who saith to his father and to his mother, ' I have not seen thee ': and acknowledged not his brethren and his sons." ^ For this reason Elisha also, who was work- ing at the tilling of the earth, and was looking after twelve yoke of oxen ploughing, when he suddenly recgived the heavenly calling from Elijah the prophet, - was not allowed to see his parents and bid them fare- well: but, when he said, " Let me kiss my father and my mother and I will follow after thee," he heard the prophet indignantly commanding him and saying, "Go and turn back, what have I done to thee?"^ Jesus Himself also, the teacher and God of the prophets, and of the righteous men who have been from all time and from the beginning of the world, for the sake of example and instruction to us made answer in the sacred Gospels to the man who said to Him while 1 De. xxxiii. 8, 9. ^ ^ R. xix. 20. VII. 9- He was teachino- the multitudes, " Behold! thy mother and thy brethren stand without and seek to speak with thee," and said in the ears of everyone, "Who is my mother? and who are my brethren?": and He stretched forth His hand towards His disciples, and said: " Behold! my mother and my brethren. For, whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, he is my brother and sister, and mother."^ And again after other things. With regard also to the burial of that blessed God-loving virgin's body, if you determine upon a course worthy of the per- fection of Christians and the high garb of virginity, you will allow her to be buried in the place where she placed her spirit in the heavenly Father's hands, an expression which Christ, the new first fruits of our race, left us as an inheritance, when He died the voluntary death for our liberation and said, ** My Father in thy hands I place my spirit."^ For "the earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof " ^ says the singing prophet: who also in another place teaches that the whole earth is a foreign land to holy men, and that they have no country, in that he sings thus to God over all: "I am a denizen with thee, and a sojourner, - like all my fathers."* The reason that patriarchs such as Jacob and Joseph desired to be removed from the country of the Egyptians to the land of promise, and there recgive perfect burial, was that with prophetic ^ Mt. vii. 47-50. - Lu. xxiii. 46. ^ Ps. xxiii. I. * Id. xxxviii. 13. eyes they foresaw our God and Saviour's Resurrection, which was to take place there; for which reason also the observances of the divine service an,d worship were confined to these places only, so that in the legal writings also the following command is given by Moses, "Take heed that thou offer not thy burnt offerings in every place where thou shalt see, but in the place which the Lord thy God shall choose."^ But now, when the gospel service and the worship in spirit has embraced all the ends of the world, and one sacrifice has been offered for the sin of the whole world (for, "Behold!" He says, "the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world " ^), it is lawful for us to do spiritual service and to worship and pray everywhere, and no one can any longer be found amono- saints and those who conducted themselves according to the perfection of the gospel who gave injunctions or who ggreatly concerned himself about being buried in this land or in that. For they looked to the hope of the resurrection, and the last trump, which shall in the same manner awake those who sleep from the dust of earth, as says Daniel the divine among prophets,'^ and "from end to end of heaven,"* as Jesus Christ who spoke in the prophets said in the Gospels; who to the Samaritan woman also who thought that the observances of worship were limited and confined either to Mount Gerizim accordino- to the 1 De. xii. 13, 14. ^ John i. 29. ^ Da. xii. 2. ■* Mt. xxiv. 31. folly of the Samaritans, or to Jerusalem according to the opinion of the Jews, said, " Woman, believe me, an hour cometh when neither in this mountain nor at Jerusalem shall they worship the Father"; and again after a little more; " But an hour cometh, yea now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father also sseketh such worshippers. God is spirit; and they that worship him must worship in spirit and in truth." ^ Following these things the wise Paul also in writing to Timothy said, " I will therefore that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands without wrath or cogitations.""^