On Care for the Dead 15–23

Similar to this is also the case when people are withdrawn from the senses of the body more deeply than if they were asleep, and are occupied with such visions. For to them too images of the living and of the dead appear; but when they have been restored to their senses, whatever dead they say they have seen, they are believed to have really been with them; and those who hear this do not notice that images of some living people, who were likewise absent and unaware, were also seen by them. A certain man named Curma, of the town of Tullium, which is very near Hippo, a poor member of the town council, who had barely held the office of duumvir of that place and was a simple countryman, fell ill and lay for some days deprived of his senses and almost dead. A very faint breath in his nostrils, which could just be felt when a hand was held near and was the slightest sign of life, did not allow him to be buried as dead. He moved no limb, he took no food; he felt nothing with his eyes or with any other bodily sense, whatever irritation was applied. Yet he saw many things, as in dreams, and at last, after very many days, as if waking up, he told what he had seen. And first, as soon as he opened his eyes, he said: "Let someone go to the house of Curma the smith and see what is happening there." When someone went there, the smith was found dead at the very moment at which this man had been restored to his senses and had almost come back to life from death. Then, as those present listened intently, he told them that the smith had been ordered to be brought in when he himself was sent back, and said that he had heard there, in the place from which he had returned, that it was not Curma the councillor but Curma the smith who had been commanded to be brought to those places of the dead. So in those visions, like dreams of his own, among the departed whom he saw being dealt with according to the difference of their merits, he also recognized some whom he had known alive. I might perhaps have believed that these were really they, if among those dreams, as it were, he had not also seen some who are still alive to this day, namely some clergy of his district, by whose presbyter he was told there that he should be baptized by me at Hippo, which he said had also been done. So in that vision in which he afterward saw dead people too, he had seen a presbyter, clergy, and me myself, not yet dead, of course. Why should he not be believed to have seen them too as he saw us, both being absent and unaware, and so not the persons themselves but their likenesses, as also of the places? For he saw both the estate where that presbyter was with his clergy and Hippo, where he was baptized by me, as it seemed; in which places he was certainly not when he seemed to himself to be there. For he did not know what was happening there at that time, which he would doubtless have known if he had really been there. These, then, are visions which are not presented in the things themselves as they are, but are sketched in certain images of things. Finally, after many things that he saw, he related that he was also led into paradise and was told, when he was being sent away from there to return to his own people, "Go, be baptized, if you wish to be in this place of the blessed." Then, admonished to be baptized by me, he answered that it had already been done. The one who was talking with him said to him again, "Go, be baptized truly; for that you saw in a vision." After this he recovered and went on to Hippo. Easter was already drawing near. He gave in his name among the other candidates, unknown to us along with very many others; and he did not trouble to tell that vision to me or to any of ours. He was baptized, and when the holy days were over he returned to his home. After two years or more had passed, I learned all this: first through a friend of mine and his at my table, while we were talking of such things; then I pressed the matter and brought him to tell it to me in person, with respectable fellow citizens of his bearing witness both to his wonderful illness, how he lay almost dead for very many days, and to that other Curma the smith, whom I mentioned above, and to all these things, which, as he told them to me, they remembered and confirmed that they had heard from him then too. So, just as he saw his baptism, and me, and Hippo, and the basilica and the baptistery, not in the things themselves but in certain likenesses of things, so too he saw certain others who were alive, those same living people not knowing it. Why then not those dead people too in the same way, those same dead not knowing it?

Why do we not believe that these are angelic operations, through the ordering of the providence of God, who makes good use of both good and evil according to the unsearchable depth of his judgments, whether by them the minds of mortals are instructed or deceived, consoled or terrified, as mercy is to be shown to each or punishment inflicted by him to whom the church, not in vain, sings of mercy and judgment? Let each take what I say as he will. If the souls of the dead took part in the affairs of the living, and they themselves spoke to us in sleep when we see them, then, to say nothing of others, my devoted mother would not desert me a single night, she who followed me by land and sea in order to live with me. For far be it that she should have been made by a happier life so cruel that, when anything troubles my heart, she does not even console her sad son, whom she loved uniquely and whom she never wished to see downcast. But surely what the sacred psalm sounds forth is true: "For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord has taken me up." If, then, our parents have forsaken us, how do they take part in our cares and affairs? And if parents do not take part, who are the others among the dead who know what we do or what we suffer? The prophet Isaiah says: "For you are our Father, since Abraham has not known us, and Israel has not recognized us." If such great patriarchs did not know what was being done to the people descended from them, to whom, because they believed God, the people itself was promised from their stock, how are the dead involved in knowing and helping the affairs and actions of the living? How do we say that those who died before the evils came that followed their death were well provided for, if even after death they feel whatever happens in the calamity of human life? Or perhaps we say these things in error, and think those at rest whom the restless life of the living troubles? What then is it that God promised the most devout King Josiah as a great benefit, that he would die first so as not to see the evils that he threatened would come upon that place and people? These are the words of God: "Thus says the Lord God of Israel: My words, which you heard and feared before my face, when you heard what I spoke about this place and those who dwell in it, that it would be deserted and be under a curse, and you tore your garments and wept in my sight, I too have heard, says the Lord of hosts. Not so: behold, I will add you to your fathers, and you shall be added in peace; and your eyes shall not see all the evils that I am bringing upon this place and those who dwell in it." Terrified by God's threats, he had wept and torn his garments, and through his hastened death he is made secure against all the evils to come, in that he would rest in peace in such a way as not to see all those things. There, then, are the spirits of the departed, where they do not see whatever is done or happens in this life of men. How then do they see their tombs or their bodies, whether they lie cast out or buried? How do they take part in the miseries of the living, when they either suffer their own evils, if they have incurred such deserts, or rest in peace, as was promised to this Josiah, where they endure no evils either by suffering or by suffering with others, freed from all the evils that they endured by suffering and suffering with others when they lived here?

Someone may say: "If the dead have no care for the living, how did that rich man who was being tormented in the underworld ask father Abraham to send Lazarus to his five brothers, who were not yet dead, and deal with them so that they too would not come into the same place of torment?" But because that rich man said this, did he therefore know what his brothers were doing or suffering at that time? He had care for the living, although he did not know at all what they were doing, just as we have care for the dead, although we certainly do not know what they are doing. For if we cared nothing for the dead, we would surely not make supplication to God for them. Finally, Abraham did not send Lazarus, and answered that they had Moses and the prophets here, whom they ought to hear so as not to come to those punishments. Here again the question meets us how father Abraham himself did not know what was being done here, when he knew that Moses and the prophets were here, that is, their books, by obeying which men might escape the torments of the underworld; and when, finally, he knew that the rich man had lived in luxury, but the poor man Lazarus in toil and pain. For he also says this to him: "Remember, son, that you received good things in your life, but Lazarus evil things." So he knew these things, which had certainly been done among the living, not among the dead. But he could have learned them not while they were being done among the living, but after they had died, from Lazarus telling him, so that what the prophet says may not be false: "Abraham has not known us."

Accordingly we must confess that the dead indeed do not know what is done here while it is being done here, but that afterward they hear it from those who go from here to them by dying; not everything, indeed, but what those are allowed to tell who are allowed also to remember these things, and what it is fitting for those to whom they tell them to hear. The dead can also hear something from the angels who are present at the things done here, as he judges each of them ought to hear, to whom all things are subject. For unless there were angels who could be present both in the places of the living and in those of the dead, the Lord Jesus would not have said: "And it happened that the poor man died and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom." So they could be now here, now there, who carried from here to there the one whom God willed. The spirits of the dead can also learn, by the revelation of the Spirit of God, some things that are done here which it is necessary for them to know, and those spirits for whom it is necessary to know them, not only things present or past but also things to come; just as not all men, but the prophets, knew things while they lived here, and not everything even they, but what the providence of God judged should be revealed to them. Divine Scripture also testifies that some of the dead are sent to the living, as on the contrary Paul was caught up from among the living into paradise. For the prophet Samuel, after his death, foretold even future things to the living king Saul; although some think that it was not he himself, as though he could have been called up by magic arts, but that some spirit suited to such evil works assumed his likeness; whereas the book Ecclesiasticus, which Jesus son of Sirach is said by tradition to have written, and which is ascribed to Solomon because of some likeness of style, contains in the praise of the fathers that Samuel prophesied even when dead. But if this book too is contradicted because it is not in the canon of the Hebrews, what are we to say of Moses, who is certainly read both to have died, in Deuteronomy, and in the gospel to have appeared to the living, together with Elijah, who did not die?

From this is solved also that question of how the martyrs, by the very benefits that are given to those who pray, show that they take part in human affairs, if the dead do not know what the living are doing. For we have heard, not from uncertain rumors but from sure witnesses, that the confessor Felix, whose place of sojourn you devoutly love, appeared not only in the effects of his benefits but also to the very sight of men when Nola was being besieged by the barbarians. But these things are shown by God in a way far different from the usual order assigned to each kind of creature. For because water was suddenly turned into wine when the Lord willed, we must not therefore fail to distinguish what water can do in the proper order of the elements from the rarity, or rather the uniqueness, of that divine work; nor, because Lazarus rose again, does every dead man therefore rise when he wishes, or a lifeless man get raised by a living one in the way that a sleeper is roused by one who is awake. The limits of human things are one thing, the signs of divine powers another; the things that happen naturally are one thing, those that happen wonderfully another; although God is present to nature so that it may exist, and nature is not absent from miracles. We must not think, then, that any of the departed can take part in the affairs of the living because the martyrs are present for the healing or help of some; rather, we must understand that the martyrs take part in the affairs of the living through divine power, because the departed cannot take part in the affairs of the living by their own nature.

And yet this question surpasses the powers of my understanding: how the martyrs help those whom it is certain are helped through them. Is it that they themselves are present in person at one time in so many different places, so far apart from one another, whether where their shrines are or beyond their shrines, wherever they are felt to be present? Or is it that, while they themselves are removed from all intercourse with mortals in a place suited to their merits, and yet pray in general for the needs of those who make supplication (just as we pray for the dead, to whom we are certainly not present, nor do we know where they are or what they are doing), almighty God, who is everywhere present, neither bound up with us nor removed from us, hearing the prayers of the martyrs, gives to men, through the ministries of angels spread everywhere, those comforts which he judges are to be given them in the misery of this life, and commends the merits of his martyrs where he wills, when he wills, how he wills, and especially through their shrines, because he knows that this is expedient for us for building up faith in Christ, for whose confession they suffered, by his wonderful and ineffable power and goodness? This matter is too lofty for me to reach and too hidden for me to search out. And so I do not dare to define which of these two it is, or whether perhaps it is both, so that sometimes these things happen through the very presence of the martyrs, sometimes through angels taking on the person of the martyrs. I would rather inquire into these things from those who know them. For it is not that there is no one who knows them, I do not mean one who seems to himself to know and does not. For these are gifts of God, who bestows some on these and others on those, according to the apostle, who says that to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for profit. "To one," he says, "is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit; to another faith in the same Spirit; to another the gift of healings in the one Spirit; to another the workings of powers; to another prophecy; to another the discerning of spirits; to another kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of speech; but all these are worked by one and the same Spirit, dividing to each his own as he wills." Of all these spiritual gifts that the apostle has mentioned, whoever has been given the discerning of spirits knows these things as they are to be known.

Such, we must believe, was that John the monk whom the emperor Theodosius the elder consulted about the outcome of the civil war; for he also had prophecy. For I do not doubt that it is not only that each person has one of these gifts, but that one person can have several. This John, then, when a very devout woman was impatiently desiring to see him and was pressing hard through her husband to obtain it, while he was unwilling, because he had never allowed this to women, said: "Go, tell your wife: she will see me next night, but in sleep." And so it happened, and he admonished her in whatever a faithful married woman ought to be admonished. When she awoke, she made known to her husband that she had seen the man of God such as he knew him to be, and what she had heard from him. The one who learned this from them told it to me, a serious and noble man, most worthy to be believed. But if I myself had seen that holy monk, since, as is reported, he was most patient in being questioned and most wise in answering, I would have asked him, as regards this question, whether he himself had come to that woman in sleep, that is, his spirit in the likeness of his body, as we dream of ourselves in the likeness of our body; or whether, while he was doing something else, or, if he was asleep, dreaming something else, such a vision was produced in the woman's dream, whether by an angel or in some other way, and he foreknew, by the revelation of the spirit of prophecy, that it would happen as he promised. For if he himself was present to her as she dreamed, he surely could do this by wonderful grace, not by nature, and by the gift of God, not by his own power; but if the woman saw him in sleep while he was doing something else, or was asleep and occupied with other visions, then surely something happened like what we read in the Acts of the Apostles, where the Lord Jesus speaks to Ananias about Saul and tells him that Saul has seen Ananias coming to him, when Ananias himself did not know it. Whichever of these that man of God answered me, I would go on to ask him about the martyrs: whether they themselves are present, in sleep or in any other way, to those who see them in whatever form they will, and especially when demons in men confess that they are tormented by them and ask them to spare them; or whether these things are done by God's will through angelic powers, for the honor and commendation of the saints, for the good of men, while the martyrs are set in supreme rest and are free for other, far better visions, apart from us and praying for us. For at Milan, at the shrine of the holy martyrs Protasius and Gervasius, the demons named Bishop Ambrose, who was still alive, by his name, just as they named the departed whom they mentioned in the same way, and begged him to spare them, while he was doing something else and knew nothing at all of this as it was happening. Or whether these things are done sometimes through the very presence of the martyrs, sometimes through that of angels; and whether and by what signs we can tell these two apart, or whether no one can perceive and discern them except one who has that gift through the Spirit of God dividing to each his own as he wills. That John would, I think, have discussed all these things with me as I would wish, so that either I would learn by his teaching and know that what I heard was true and certain, or I would believe what I did not know on his telling me what he knew. But if perhaps he had answered me from holy Scripture and said, "Do not seek what is too high for you, and do not search out what is too strong for you, but what the Lord has commanded you, think on that always," I would have accepted this too gratefully. For it is no small gain if, where things are obscure and uncertain and we cannot comprehend them, it is at least clear and certain to us that they are not to be sought, and if what each person wishes to learn, thinking it would profit him to know, he learns does him no harm not to know.

Since these things are so, let us not think that anything reaches the dead for whom we have care except what we solemnly supplicate for them by the sacrifices of the altar, of prayers, or of alms; although they do not profit all for whom they are done, but only those who, while they live, have gained that they should profit them. But because we do not discern who these are, we must do them for all the regenerate, so that none of those whom these benefits can and should reach may be passed over. For it is better that they be superfluous for those whom they neither harm nor profit than that they be lacking to those whom they profit. Yet each person does these things more diligently for his own near ones, so that the same may be done for him by his own. But whatever is spent on burying the body is not a safeguard of salvation but a duty of humanity, according to the affection by which no one ever hates his own flesh; hence it is fitting that he take what care he can for the flesh of his neighbor, when the one who took care of it has departed from it. And if those who do not believe in the resurrection of the flesh do these things, how much more ought those who believe to do them, so that such a duty, spent on a body that is dead but yet will rise again and remain for eternity, may also be in a sense a testimony of that same faith! But that someone is buried at the shrines of the martyrs seems to me to profit the departed only in this, that by commending him also to the patronage of the martyrs, the affection of supplication for him is increased.

You have, on the matters that you thought should be asked of me, such reply as I have been able to give; if it is longer than enough, forgive me, for this came about from love of talking longer with you. Let me know, then, by your reply, how your venerable love has received this book, which its bearer will doubtless make more welcome to you, namely our brother and fellow presbyter Candidianus, whom, having come to know him through your letter, I welcomed with my whole heart and let go unwillingly. For by his presence he greatly comforted us in the love of Christ, and, I must confess, it was at his urging that I complied with you. For so many things distract my heart that, if he had not constantly reminded me and not allowed me to forget, my reply to your question would surely have been lacking.