Letter 72: Severus tells Ammonius that liturgical remembrance must not imply false communion.

Ammonius calls Severus wise and himself weak, but Severus refuses the compliment. He says he is not inviting Ammonius into a wrestling arena where one man defeats another. The issue is not personal superiority but how to remember Peter, bishop of Alexandria, and how to handle inherited church judgments without either rashness or false peace. Severus answers by distinguishing careful memory from careless rehabilitation. He does not want names, commemorations, and old ecclesiastical conflicts handled as if they were private preferences. The church's memory teaches the living. To mention a bishop in the wrong way can suggest approval of what should still be mourned or rejected. At the same time, Severus does not want Ammonius to act from panic or pride. The question requires a disciplined reading of the fathers, the facts, and the communion implied by liturgical remembrance. His advice is therefore deliberately measured. Ammonius must not imagine that Severus has a hidden wisdom unavailable to others, but he must also not treat public commemoration as a small ritual detail. Like water covering the sea, the prophetic word can cover offenses when repentance and truth are present. Without that truth, forgetting becomes another kind of falsehood. The presbyter's task is to guard the church's prayer so that it does not speak peace where the church has not received peace. Severus is also teaching Ammonius how to ask difficult questions without turning them into contests of prestige. The presbyter calls himself weak and Severus wise, but Severus strips away that theater. What matters is not who appears clever. What matters is whether Alexandria's worship tells the truth about its own fathers, wounds, and reconciliations.

You bear witness to a wisdom in us which we do not possess, and you call yourself weak in comparison with this, as if we were inviting you to a wrestling- arena or a contest: but for my part I will in due season use the words of Job who says, " But where was wisdom found? and what is the place of under- standing? Man knoweth not the way thereof, neither is it found among men."- Wherefore I looked to the Giver of wisdom, and to Him I yielded abundance of ^ Ep. ii. 246. 2 Job xxviii. 12, 13. understanding thoughts, and I do not come to your brotherly person with many words, but use as few words as possible. For I think that either you have forgotten what I wrote to you before, or you are purposely turning your mind away from it. For what else ought I to have done but communicate with you when the mention of Peter was inserted in the sacred tablets, without raising any objection? but I ought not also to be required to praise and call distinguished a man who is not at heart so regarded by me, although you are otherwise minded. And after other things. Whereas you say of Peter who was bishop of your city that he wrote to those who were at one time and another bishops of the city of Antiochus, and openly anathematized the things done at Chalcedon against the right faith, and the impious Tome of Leo, know that we too are not unaware of this: but we express blame on the ground that he embraced the communion of those who did not write the same things as he did. Indeed not a single man among those outside in the epistles that he addressed to him can be shown to have anathematized those who spoke or speak of two natures after the union, let alone the Chalcedonian Synod, or the blasphemous Tome of Leo. Tell me: if now also upon our writing to the prelate of the royal city 288. maybe, and anathematizing the things that we actually anathematize he were to draw up a trimming letter, containing only a confession of the right faith, but not further an anathema of the offending things also, would this suffice for a pure, sincere, firm conjunction? Not in the least. For instance, when Timothy was instituted after the expulsion of Macedonius, and sent a synodical letter to the saintly John, archbishop of the city of the Alexandrines, with nothing satisfactory about it, his holiness both wrote an epistle in answer, and through some method of mediation required him to remove the offending things by anathema; for he had held his peace, and had adopted the reprehensible course of silence. But the party of Dioscorus and Chseremon, having always been hirelings and hucksters of piety, were not contented with this only, but also caused a letter to be drawn up by the pious king, addressed to the saintly John, archbishop of your city, which con- tained no small complaints, on the ground that he had not been contented with the Henotikon only, as Peter and Athanasius and John who succeeded the latter had been, without requiring reference to be made in actual words to the impious things done at Chalcedon or to the impious Tome of Leo. And they induced the illustrious king for the purpose of proof to include in his pious letter a copy of the letters; the letters that Peter, Athanasius, and John addressed to the bishops who were outside: which had been produced at an earlier time also in the city of the Sidonians, when the synod of bishops was assembled there, and cast great shame upon us who were combating on behalf of orthodoxy, and nothing else was left to us except only to hide ourselves and yield to manifest refutations.^ To these was also attached a letter of the pious John the archbishop written to Dioscorus and Chaeremon, to the effect that he did not ask for anything beyond the Henotikon only with no further addition. Do not therefore tell me that Peter wrote this and that to those who in earlier times occupied the throne of Antiochus' city: but show that they ever took upon themselves to write things agreeing with Peter's statements. Or, if you do not show this, he will be clearly convicted of having communicated with those who did not say and think the same as he did. How then did you bring yourself, and that though you are firm on all points, to write this assertion: " We for our part have done nothing new or great in anathematizing the Synod of Chalcedon and the impious Tome of Leo " } The analogy ^ of the dead man, who defiles or does not defile water, and the difficulty arising from it you must not take in this way, subjecting the mind to bodily conceptions, and restricting pollution to the effect of a multitude of bodies. In the mind of those who examine with intellio-ence, a mention whether one or many of men who have committed impiety causes the same abomination: which nothingf else can extinguish except an abundance as I have said of the water of right faith, copiously poured upon everyone, ^ Cf. Zach. Rh. vii. 10. ^ Q^i^pi^. IV. 3- and a loyal anathema of the offending things, like much water which covers the sea according to the expression of the prophet. ^