Letter 122: Severus tells Georgia that God's help is visible in her life and urges patient care for her father.

Severus tells Georgia that he never regards her affairs with indifference. He cares earnestly for her salvation as for a beloved daughter, and he reads the events of her life as evidence that God is giving her strong help from above. Her watchfulness, modesty, and perseverance show that grace is supporting her, not abandoning her. The letter moves from encouragement to counsel about family influence. Severus wants Georgia to use her position and steadiness for the salvation of those around her, especially her father. She should not despair because another person's will cannot be forced. Nor should she grow careless because she herself has received help. God often works through patient example, prudent speech, and the quiet strength of a life that refuses to be drawn away from faith. Severus' pastoral balance is gentle but demanding. Georgia must not treat her noble status as spiritual security, and she must not treat family affection as a reason to compromise. At the same time, she should not become harsh. The goal is to bring her father near to the one Shepherd by patience, prayer, and clear loyalty to the truth. Severus closes with confidence that Christ, who promised one flock and one Shepherd, can make her exalted father his own as well. This confidence does not make Georgia passive. Severus wants her to interpret her circumstances as a vocation. The help she has received from God should become help offered to another. Her modesty, steadiness, and concern for salvation are not private ornaments; they are the means by which a daughter may become a persuasive witness inside her own household.

Since for my part I never regard your glorious modesty's affairs with indifference, but with great earnestness concern myself for your salvation, as for that of a beloved daughter, and I look into God's deep judgments, by the evidence of actual facts I perceive that you are supported by great help from above, and conduct your life with very watchful care. For that you should have reached the flower of your age and not yet been yoked in marriage to your glorious parents perhaps and to the others who love a worldly manner seems a reason for anger as well as a matter of sorrow. But I regard it as a thing of ^ Pt. XX. 9. - Ps. ix. 38. 30 great profit and pronounce it to be so. This, I think, is the meaning to which the statement made by the wise Paul to the Corinthians also points; "If any man thinketh that he is put to shame in his virgin if she hath passed the flower of her age, so also ought it to be."^ What he says is in fact something like this; "What is thought by some to be a cause of shame, I mean that a virgin should reach an advanced time of life, this I have thought to be both advan- tageous and beneficial." Just as the fruit of a tree, when taken before the time, causes no pleasure by - its taste, because it is without the sweetness that gives the pleasure, but actually hurts the teeth, by reason of its sharpness or acidity, in the same way also a virgin who has not yet ripened in her season so to speak, but has the disposition of the flesh undeveloped and too tender, hurts and does not profit the man who marries her: because her character is not fixed, and inasmuch as her time has not yet come is unstable and not constant, but rather easily excited and driven to childish wrath, and disturbed perhaps by melancholy and irrational gloominess. How is it anything but shameful that, while a wrestler does not go down into the violence of the arena [unless he has been thoroughly trained in wrestling, or a soldier | ^ into the battle array, unless he has been thoroughly trained ^ I Co. vii. 36. - This is clearly the sense required, but more than this is needed to fill the gap. in military matters, a virgin should be introduced into the society of marriage, and should pass to the headship and government of her husband's house without having been perfectly trained in her parents' house, or learned how she should govern a house, and in what way she ought to behave to each of those that are under her authority? It has often happened that bad men, when they have obtained women who are undeveloped and of unfixed character, have per- verted them to their own bad model, and stamped the lines of their own wickedness upon their tender dis- position as upon wax. Whence, when they have been sated and not been able your modest mother in your father's glorious house, p- sm- and through advanced age has been instructed in administrative science, and has been perfectly exercised in such useful exercises, and you have at the same time also increased the wisdom of your character, you will go to your husband's house like some image and statue that is perfect in beauty and not lacking in anything, and you will be to him " a helper like unto him "; since woman was in fact created by Him who said in the beginning, " It is not good that the man should be alone; let us make him a helper like unto him."^ A woman who is trained and skilled in oovernino" a house, and intellisfent and a real helper in the world's difficulties, is in truth a 1 Ge. ii. 1 8. haven for a man. For in fact, when a man has gone out to. in a law-court, either because he is doinof or because he is sufferinor wron©-, or aorain he is often inflamed to o o o anger, and wantonly insults or on the contrary is in- sulted in his turn, the anger of another blowing against him like som.e storm. But, when the time calls and he returns to his house for food, agitated and disturbed by anxieties, he encounters his wife's intelligence: he finds her temper both placid and calm: he tells what has happened to him in the street. Then she like a trained physician gently looks into the hidden sources of trouble: she touches his heart with intelligent words, >5- and learns the causes. And, when she has found that he has been excited without good reason, she appeases the fury of his mind by offering peaceful that^ I have written these things also. And I beg you, lady, not to tell anyone whatever that you have received this letter from me, even if he be an angel from heaven. You will in fact both bring- dano-er o o upon me by telling it and vex God; and you will make many angry with me, because I did not wTite to them too just as I have done to you, But we believe that Christ, the God of orthodoxy, who every day carries out the words that say, " Other sheep also 1 Possibly from another letter. XI. I have which are not of this fold; and I must bring- them also and they shall hear my voice, and they shall be one flock and one Shepherd,"^ will make your glorious and exalted father also His own.