The Letters of Nerses the Gracious

...struggled for the salvation of their flocks, and through sufferings they departed from this world. And after them, the ranks of the apostles, who were stripped of the world and worldly things, according to the Lord’s testimony: "You are not of the world." And according to Paul: "To me, the world has been crucified, and I to the world." Those whom he placed in order as an example of mortality, he said: "In fasts many times, in hunger and in thirst, in famine and in nakedness, and one by one in all things."

And since they were persecuted for the sake of justice, he writes again the reason: "I am bound for Jesus Christ for the sake of you Gentiles." The same was established as a rule by all shepherds who, after them, desired to lay down their own lives for the flock of Christ. Just as those supreme pontiffs hayrapetk patriarchs/chief bishops who were imitators of them in the universal world, who also built in every place and time the intelligible structure of faith upon...