Letter 58: Severus argues that Sannus should be received and healed rather than abandoned after one fault.

Severus tells Didymus that he has learned the full story of the devout deacon Sannus with accuracy. The case does not call for despair or permanent rejection. Sannus has stumbled, but one fault should not erase the labor already spent on him or the hope of healing still open to him. Severus compares pastoral care to teaching and medicine. A teacher does not abandon a student because the student learns slowly; a physician does not give up on the sick because treatment takes time. The aim is correction, not the display of severity. If someone can be guided back, the church should work patiently for that recovery. He also points to Christ's healing of the blind man in stages. The man first saw indistinctly, and only afterward clearly. That pattern teaches Didymus how restoration may happen in the church. A person's sight, habits, and courage can return gradually. Didymus should therefore receive Sannus, correct what needs correction, and help him move toward full health after the same pattern.

I have learned with accuracy the whole story of the devout deacon Sannus: and how before coming to the see where your love of God is priest he lived an indis- criminate or disordered life, and how you brought him back to devout habits, and how you laid down an injunction for him to keep. Now after examining the whole matter I have found that, because he appro- priated to himself some small sum which formed part of the revenue, you were wroth and angry with him, and removed him from the charge with which he had been entrusted. Therefore I beg you to receive this man, and place him in the same rank, without any difference whatever. If by careful observance he ob- served all the other points on which reform was difficult,. and gave up the long-standing practice of disorderly habits, which is like a necessity of nature, and was converted to a devout life, and took upon him the character proper to deacons, let us not upset everything on account of a sin in one single point: for it is im- possible for everything to be reformed at once. This is the practice of teachers also, gently to bear with pupils once and twice and many times, when they are at fault and do not repeat without mistake, until they fashion, when they warn patients to abstain from things that are pleasant and harmful, are often defeated and orant them indulo-ences, allowino- them to taste some of the things that they like: and they do not in every point insist upon strict observance of the irksome methods demanded by science, but they treat the patient in accordance with what is possible. This method of trradual treatment and cure was shown in a figurative manner by our Lord and God Jesus Christ also in the Gospels. When He might have healed one of the blind men who were brought to Him by word only, as He did in the case of that leper, saying in a manner befitting God, "I will be thou clean," ^ and immediately upon the word completed the cure, He cured him with a certain delay and procrastination. For " He led him," he says, " out of the village. And, when He had spat on his eyes. He put His hands upon him and was asking him if he saw aught. And, his eyes having been opened, he said, ' I see the men walking like trees.' Then He put His hands again upon his eves and his si^ht was restored and his eves were opened, and he saw everything clearly."' There- fore He that is our God and the instructor of our souls by working this cure with a certain wise delay instructs us that the bishops in His holy churches, who are His representatives, ought to make use of gradual modes of treatment in order to bring those whose minds are blinded to the fight, until their eyes are p. 197- gradually opened and they see the rays of truth clearly. Accordingly do you also adopt this plan, both in this present affair and in others that happen after the same pattern