Letter 57: Severus tells Didymus to shepherd through public disaster while avoiding separation disguised as zeal.

Severus writes to Didymus after news of an attack, captivity, siege, and war near Didymus' city. The report grieves everyone, but it grieves Severus especially because Didymus has had to endure such calamity at the very beginning of his episcopate. A bishop, he says, must treat public disaster as his own. Like David during the plague, the shepherd is unable to watch the sheep suffer without wanting the blow to fall on himself. Yet Severus refuses to read disaster as mere ruin. When received rightly, chastisement can become help. He believes Didymus has been raised to sacred leadership at this very moment so that he may show what kind of man he is under pressure. The attack exposes the burden of the office, but it also gives Didymus a chance to shepherd with courage, patience, and prayer. The bishop must not merely survive the crisis; he must let it form him. Much of the letter warns against schism and separation. Severus cites the fathers against those who stay away from the assembly or isolate themselves under pious-sounding pretexts. Even thoughts that seem to come from the right side can lead a person off the royal road. Didymus must beware not only obvious evil but also the kind of zeal that turns fear, injury, or scruple into distance from the church's common life. The closing counsel is steady and practical. Didymus should direct his mind to the fathers, guard against obstructive forces, look to heaven, and ask God to direct his paths according to the divine word. Severus does not minimize the violence around him. He gives Didymus a way to govern inside it: feel the grief, accept the chastening, avoid schism, and let God make the new bishop straight in a crooked and dangerous time. The letter also protects Didymus from a common pastoral mistake after disaster: confusing purity with withdrawal. In a time of captivity, siege, and fear, people may think the safest course is to stand apart from everyone whose judgment is uncertain. Severus answers that the fathers call the church back to assembly, correction, and patience. The bishop must help wounded people stay on the shared road, even when the road passes through war. His first proof of office is not brilliance but faithful presence.

The news of the attack of the barbarians ^ and of the captivity that has fallen upon those who live in your neighbourhood, and the siege and war that have been hanging over your city have caused intolerable grief and sorrow to all who hear of it, but especially to us. Our anxiety on other grounds and general sorrow- was further increased by thinking of your religiousness, who have had to endure such an unexpected attack at thevery beginning of your episcopate: since men who have been admitted to feed rational souls reckon common and public" calamities as their own. Where- fore David also the ggreat among prophets and kings, when he saw his subjects being destroyed in the death- dealing plague by the divine wrath, being unable to endure the siofht, beg-ed that he mio-ht suffer instead of those under his rule, saying to the Lord, " It is I who have sinned, and I the shepherd have done wickedly: and these the sheep what have they done? Let thine hand be upon me, and upon my father's house. "^ ^ Probably the incursion of Al Mundhir (Zach. Rh. viii. 5). '?iy]/jia<ri,a. " 2 R. xxiv. I J. 519-25. And by so saying he changed the wradi to mercy, and stayed the plague. Therefore you also must know that such events are fraught with no small hardship: but, when men consider things in the right spirit, and p.iigo, accept the chastisement as a help, they bring them ggreat profit, and lead them into close relationship with God. Therefore we also, looking at what has hap- pened, believe that it is by divine providence that you have been raised to a sacred headship of this kind, in order that you may show yourself a man capable of comforting the flock that has been entrusted to you. As to the question that you ask about presbyters who have grown very old, I mean whether their customary share in the distribution of presents ought to be cut off from them, on the ground that they cannot perform the sacred ministry, and others introduced in their place who ought to be supported, and recgive the P-I9I- portion cut off from these, know that such a thing- is not legal, nor otherwise holy. If men who perform bodily services as soldiers for kings on earth, when they reach old age, recgive higher stipends, inasmuch as they have previously toiled and laboured in wars, how is it anything but abominable that men who have served in the sacred military service should not only not recgive hiorher honour in their old aoe, but even be deprived of the customary emoluments? David's soldiers also once thougrht somethinof like this, when they went down with him to fight against the bar- barians who had come against them, and mightily overcame them, and stripped them of all the booty that had been carried off by them from the wars ^ with Israel. For. when they returned from the war and their minds were somewhat upHfted on account of their victory, they claimed that they alone should take all the things that they had captured from the bar- barians, and not g'ive an equal portion to those who stayed in the camp and guarded their baggage, on - the ground that they had not taken part with them in the fight in exactly the same fashion. And upon this the just David was indignant, saying that those also who remained to guard the baoQ-aCTe ougfht to eet a portion equal to that of those who formed part of the array in war. Moreover also he repressed their greed and said to them in rebuke, " And w^ho will hearken to these words of yours? For they are not inferior to you. But, as his portion is that went down to the war, so shall his portion be that stayed by the baggage. They shall part alike."- Knowing there- fore from the divine writinsfs that these things are laid down as law, give ggreater gratification, if possible, to those who have grown old, both in stipends and in honour. For honour is the due of elders, and the enjoyment of the good things that come after war. The o-great o-overnor Moses also wrote in Numbers that he said to Hobab his wife's brother, who was journeying with Israel in the way in the wilderness, '" Leave us not, forasmuch as thou wast with us in the wilderness. And thou shalt be an ' The translator therefore read 7roAe/xwv for TroAeojr. ' i R. xxx. 24. elder among us. And it shall be, if thou go with us, we will do thee o^ood out of all the orood things which the Lord shall do unto us." ^ But I beg your love of God not to associate indiscriminately with those who unreasonably cut themselves off from our communion, men who magnify with lips only an orthodoxy that is inactive and runs no risk, while they take no part in the sufferings of the persecuted church which it has - suffered for the sake of the sound word of faith and is still even now suffering, but justify themselves in vain. Lack of discrimination towards them confirms them yet more in the evil itself, and they think to themselves that we blame ourselves as if there had been somethino- wanting in our conduct, and honour and praise them as men of strictness. We listen also to our Saviour in the Gospels crying, "He that is not with me is against me: and he that oathereth not with me scattereth." - Ignatius also the ggreat bishop and martyr, who fed the church of the Antiochenes after Peter the captain of the apostles, and, because he was full of the Holy Spirit, was called "the God-clad," says in his letter to the men of Smyrna, " Shun divisions, as the beginning of evils." ' Further also in another letter of his to those at Philadelphia he says thus: "If anyone follows a man who makes a schism, he does not inherit the kingdom of God." ^ Again in writing to the Ephesians he expresses the same thing in a more fearful form, saying, "He therefore that ^ Nu. X. 31, 32. '" Lu. xi. 23. ' Sm. 8. ■• Phila. 3. does not join in the assembly has already behaved proudly, and separated himself. For it is written, ' The proud God resisteth.' " ^ Irenctus also a man of ancient times, bishop of the city of Lyons (this is one of the cities of the men called Gauls), who was a hearer of Polycarp bishop of Smyrna and martyr, who - was a disciple of John the Evangelist, wrote thus, in his fourth book against heresies, about the Lord who will judge every bgreathing thing, and as it is written the whole "world in righteousness" -: " But he will also judge those who cgreate schisms, who are men void of the love of God, and seek that which is for their profit but not the union of the church, and for small and con- temptible reasons cleave and divide the ggreat and o-lorious bodv of Christ and, as far as in them lies, destroy it, men who speak peace and make war, who truly strain out the gnat, but swallow the camel. For it is impossible that any benefit can spring from them of the same kind as is the injury that springs from their schism." -'• To these things therefore direct your mind, and beware of the obstructive forces every- where: especially of those that arise from thoughts on the right side, which lead astray from the "royal road " ^: and, looking to heaven and making God your guide in all things, cry, " Direct my paths according to thy word " '; and you will surely go straight, and not fail to do what is right.