Nilus of Ancyra→Gallus (correspondent of Nilus of Ancyra)|c. 415 AD|nilus ancyra|From Ancyra|AI-assisted
To Gallus the Monk.
What profit is there for you in your exile, and in the labor of ascetic discipline, and in all your great hardship, when your heart turns back again toward Egypt, and almost every single day you converse with your kinsfolk through letters, and through the burning affection of family ties you fall away from perfection? For perhaps you have not heard the Lord rebuking Mary when she sought him among his kinsfolk [Luke 2:48-49], and judging the one who loves father or mother above him to be unworthy of himself [Matthew 10:37], and through these words enjoining, without disorder, a severing of the bonds of kinship. If, then, you have left behind Haran -- which is interpreted "holes" [Greek trytle, a hollow or socket], and this signifies the senses -- and have come out from the valley of Hebron, that is, from the lowly works of sin, and from the wilderness in which wanderings occur, then hasten to migrate, as the patriarchs did, to Dothaim, that is, to the sufficient ceasing of carnal attachment; for Dothaim is interpreted "a sufficient ceasing," which all those strive to attain who reach out for the most blessed state of dispassion [apatheia].
What profit is there for you in your exile, and in the labor of ascetic discipline, and in all your great hardship, when your heart turns back again toward Egypt, and almost every single day you converse with your kinsfolk through letters, and through the burning affection of family ties you fall away from perfection? For perhaps you have not heard the Lord rebuking Mary when she sought him among his kinsfolk [Luke 2:48-49], and judging the one who loves father or mother above him to be unworthy of himself [Matthew 10:37], and through these words enjoining, without disorder, a severing of the bonds of kinship. If, then, you have left behind Haran -- which is interpreted "holes" [Greek trytle, a hollow or socket], and this signifies the senses -- and have come out from the valley of Hebron, that is, from the lowly works of sin, and from the wilderness in which wanderings occur, then hasten to migrate, as the patriarchs did, to Dothaim, that is, to the sufficient ceasing of carnal attachment; for Dothaim is interpreted "a sufficient ceasing," which all those strive to attain who reach out for the most blessed state of dispassion [apatheia].
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek below for scholarly use.