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Translated by Bl. Jackson.
St Basil the Great Resources Online and in Print
This Part: 129 Pages
Page 95
Letter CCLXXIII. [3229]
Without address. Concerning Hera.
I am sure that your excellency loves me well enough to regard all that concerns me as concerning you. Therefore I commend to your great kindness and high consideration my very reverend brother Hera, whom I do not merely call brother by any conventional phrase, but because of his boundless affection. I beseech you to regard him as though he were nearly connected with yourself, and, so far as you can, to give him your protection in the matters in which he requires your generous and thoughtful aid. I shall then have this one more kindness to reckon in addition to the many which I have already received at your hands.
Letter CCLXXIV. [3230]
To Himerius, the master.
That my friendship and affection for the very reverend brother Hera began when I was quite a boy, and has, by God's grace, continued up to my old age, no one knows better than yourself. For the Lord granted me the affection of your excellency at about the same time that He allowed me to become acquainted with Hera. He now needs your patronage, and I therefore beseech and supplicate you to do a favour for the sake of our old affection, and to heed the necessity under which we now lie. I beg you to make his cause your own, that he may need no other protection, but may return to me, successful in all that he is praying for. Then to the many kindnesses which I have received at your hands I shall be able to add yet this one more. I could not claim any favour more important to myself, or one more nearly touching my own interests.
[3229] Written in the last years of Basil's life.
[3230] Of the same time as the preceding.
Reference address : https://elpenor.org/basil/letters-3.asp?pg=95