Opening Reminder of the Promise to Correspond About the Spiritual Life. The Benefit Expected From It

Before your departure to Moscow we agreed to carry on our conversation about matters that concern you by correspondence, and so it was natural for me to expect that, upon arriving, you would let me know how you were settling in to your new surroundings. I waited, and I am still waiting, yet so much time has passed and nothing has come. What has happened? Are you well? May the Mother of God keep you. Or have you changed your mind?! Anything is possible—that, too, could happen. In case that is so, and in case some scruple on my account plays a part in it—some thought that you ought not to burden me, or something of that kind—I am writing now so that you might put that scruple out of your head altogether. Writing to you, and on such subjects, will be no burden to me; on the contrary, it will be no small pleasure, introducing a certain variety into my usual occupations. I will say something more: if what we had in mind does not come to pass, I will feel as one who has suffered some loss or been deprived of something. I will not undertake to explain how that is, but I repeat that it will be so and that it ought to be so. And so it turns out that instead of giving you advice, I find myself making a request: please write. Though you should not expect any great wisdom from me, even a thorough review of all that is needful will bring you no small benefit, reviving in your memory the whole of this domain and fixing your attention upon it—perhaps with a rekindling of particular energy as well. And in that last thing, what a blessing! For if there is disorder in our lives, it almost always proceeds not so much from feebleness of mind and heart as from a lack of zeal and fervor for what is right and proper.

So then—write.