You can read Mara Bar Serapion's letter here: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/mara.html
(Question 1: SEE BELOW) Can you explain the underlined, last statement in Mara Bar Serapion's letter, below:
The letter ends with a dialogue between Mara Bar Serapion and one of his friends when they were captured and exiled from their city in the Middle East by the Romans:
(Question 2: SEE BELOW) How do virtuous parents suffer torture from their children's excellence of character?One of his friends asked Mara, son of Serapion, when in bonds at his side: “Nay, by thy life, Mara, tell me what cause of laughter thou hast seen, that thou laughest.”
“I am laughing,” said Mara, “at Time: inasmuch as, although he has not borrowed any evil from me, he is paying me back.”
Mara Bar Serapion tells his son:
Can you make sense of this?About the objects of that vainglory, too, of which the life of men is full, be not thou solicitous: seeing that from those things which give us joy there quickly comes to us harm. Most especially is this the case with the birth of beloved children. For in two respects it plainly brings us harm: in the case of the virtuous, our very affection for them torments us, and from their very excellence of character we Suffer torture; and, in the case of the vicious, we are worried with their correction, and afflicted with their misconduct.