Sermon on the Life of Honoratus

You recognize, dearest brothers, the day consecrated by the public grief of the faithful, which, as long as the Lord grants me these fleeting days of this life, will always come to me heavy with bitterness, yet full of dignity. For today that bishop of holy memory of this church, Honoratus in virtue, in priesthood, and in name, put off the body. Whatever I add to round off my speech could be judged absurd. If I say, 'He has gone to the stars,' even while he lingered on earth he was counted among those most brilliant stars of God. Shall I add, 'He stands before Christ'? But when in his life did he not stand before him? His whole life had that word of Elijah: 'The Lord lives, before whom I stand today.' Shall I say, 'He has left earthly things,' he whose way of life, as the Apostle says, was always in heaven? So likewise, as far as my mind can grasp, whatever comes to be said of such a man lacks a fitting conclusion by its very greatness. Joys fight with griefs. It is sweet to remember such a man; it is torment to be without him.

So a twofold matter calls me. On the one side the grace of his praises draws me to speak; on the other the common loss draws me back to sobbing. Forgive me, then, if, with these two affections tearing my mind apart, my mouth refuses its proper service, as though to two masters. Whatever memory suggests by way of praise, grief claims entirely for itself, counting it among the losses. And yet, even if I had serenity of mind and my tongue served my mind fittingly, could his praise be set forth by my words more abundantly than it remains in your minds? There is no one, I think, to whom the grace of that man does not appear greater than the richest eloquence of anyone could express. Since, then, as Scripture says, 'the memory of the righteous is ever with praise,' and no one can remember men of illustrious merits without praise, I shall set forth, as ability is given, some of the things which the hearts of your Love ponder about him. Your minds will surely help my efforts, and whatever my speech finds hard to express, your hearts will tell themselves in their own thoughts.

It is written: 'Wisdom is sung at the end'; that is to say, the way of life of the wise man is praised at the end of his way of life. Hence in another place too: 'Do not praise a man in his lifetime.' And again: 'Praise no one before death'; as if to say: praise after death. For in praising the living, the one praised is offered occasion for vain exultation, and the one who praises is branded with the mark of flattery. But praising the dead is useful in many ways: first, because while the one whom we might gratify by praise is absent, all the praise must be referred to the giver of grace; then, because only admiration of virtue remains where suspicion of flattery is removed. So the praise of the dead, offered in the holy assembly of the faithful, is full of edification and empty of boasting. The merits of the one praised also grow in this, that many profit by his praise. Nor do I fear that I may be thought to speak too favourably of my own, since, apart from the fact that nothing can be said that is not below his virtues, there is no one who does not count him as his own, feel him to be his own, and believe him his own. Yet I do not put my hand to the life of so great a man trusting in my wit or relying on my eloquence; if some master of ancient eloquence were to touch it, not only would he fail to adorn it with his eloquence, but he would sink beneath the weight of the material. Your love calls me; your affection supplies the confidence to say something about him. My speech, though from a lukewarm wit, will be animated, as we believe, by his own merits; what lies low in the words will be raised by the facts; and the love poured out on him will be stored up in the dwelling of your hearts.

It is known to all trained in the discipline of oratory to proclaim first the homeland and origin of those whose life they have undertaken to praise, so that what is lacking in their own virtues may seem to have gone before in the glory of their fathers. But we are all one in Christ, and the summit of nobility is to be counted among the sons of God; nor can the honour of an earthly origin add anything to our dignity, except by being despised. No one is more glorious in heaven than one who, rejecting his fathers' pedigree, has chosen to be reckoned by the fatherhood of Christ alone. So I pass over mentioning the ancestral distinctions of worldly goods in his family, and the nobility of his house, advanced as far as the consulship (which the world holds desirable and almost supreme), disdained by a greater nobility of heart. Nor was he pleased with the superfluous honours of his family, who through love of the truth no longer desired honours of his own.

My speech hastens rather to this: with what faith, in the years of his adolescence, he desired baptism of his own choice; with what mature counsel, while still in health, he feared death; how he foresaw that before baptism he would be without life; with what thirst he desired his life to be renewed; how sweet his infancy was, how modest his boyhood, how grave his adolescence; how he always surpassed every stage of age with grace and virtue and was always found greater than himself, so that you would think him brought up by some divine tutor. He is taught without any urging from his family. With God's help he keeps his baptism without any human care; and, what is greater than these, he turns to the religious life without anyone to admonish him, while the brightness of the font is still fresh and unspoiled. Without anyone to admonish him, I said; and what of the fact that his homeland stood in the way, that his father struggled against it, that all his kin resisted? For he had entered the hearts of all by his charm; and while Christ was taking him for himself, the world held him fast, vying for him in all his family. Some his sweetness had bound; others the allurements of companionship had tied; others admiration for his worldly abilities in the various exercises of the young held fast. As many graces as his former life had, by so many bonds was he drawn back from conversion. All feared that the common ornament of the family would be snatched away. And truly, who ever met him and did not take him as his own? What clothing did he ever wear that he did not adorn? So his homeland, his friends, and his parents all thought that a most splendid gem and the common ornament of all was being snatched from them; for they did not believe that all these things would be changed and reformed for the better, as we have seen, but that they would, as it were, die. Hence it was that his father, since he saw him do vigorously whatever he undertook, kept him from baptism as long as he could, fearing that he would be wholly carried off by love of religion, as indeed happened. Yet desire and love for Christ prevailed, and his faithful boyhood, brushing aside his father's delays, seized baptism. For even as a catechumen he had so formed himself among the first rudiments of the faith, rejecting wantonness out of reverence for the baptism he would one day receive, honouring the clergy as fathers, and sometimes helping a poor man out of his boyish allowance. Whatever that age could have, and love all the more for the novelty of having, he offered, lavish in compassion, already then rehearsing in small things the contempt of all things and the giving away of all he had.

By these and such exercises, then, the strong faith of the catechumen hurried him on to baptism. Thereupon his father, now on his guard and anxious with the suspicion of earthly affection, set about provoking him with various delights, enticing him with the pursuits of youth, entangling him in the different vanities of the world, growing young again, as it were, in the company of his adolescent son; occupying him with hunting and a variety of games, and arming himself with all the sweetness of this world to subdue that age. Not without reason did the worldly father fear that he would be snatched away, whom he embraced as unique among the other most accomplished young men.

But amid all these things his greater care was to keep his baptism. The young man disdained what his aged father delighted in, always urging himself with such exhortation: This life delights, but it deceives. Other precepts are read out in the churches; other commands have sounded in my ears. There modesty, self-control, quiet, and chastity are taught; here unbridled luxury is nourished. There piety flourishes; here bodily exercise. There Christ invites to the eternal kingdom; here the devil solicits to the temporal. All that is in the world is vanity and the lust of the eyes; and the world passes away and its lust, but he who does the will of God remains forever, as he too remains forever. Let us hasten, then, to be rescued from these snares while we are less entangled. What has long been bound is hard to loose. It is easier to pluck up what is tender than to cut down what is strong. 'Save your soul on the mountain,' lest evil thoughts seize you. The poison of pleasure creeps in quickly; the freedom received through Christ's grace must be kept for him. Let others admire gold and silver; let metals, as I see, be masters of those who master them. Let others possess estates and slaves, not without the captivity of their own minds. Let others rejoice in honours and crush the honour of the divine image in themselves. For me it is enough not to be the slave of vices; for me salvation is joy, wisdom is my bride, pleasure is in the virtues; for me let Christ be my treasure, who will repay me fleeting joys with better ones and will grant me in this life too to be delighted and adorned by the pursuits of discipline, and among them to become worthy of the heavenly kingdom.

Nor did such meditation bring long delays; at once the spark, nourished by such kindling, burst out into the flame of conversion. Taking up the yoke of the Lord's service with bowed neck, he shook off the yoke of freedom, understanding that the licence of youth is the worst kind of captivity. His luxuriant locks are cut to short hair. The splendour of his clothing is transferred to the brightness of his mind. The beauty of his milk-white neck is covered with stiff cloaks. Gaiety passes into serenity; the vigour of the limbs is exchanged for vigour of mind. Bodily strength passes into strength of spirit. The handsome face grows pale with fasting, and, once full of vigour, becomes full of gravity. In short, he is so suddenly shown to be wholly another man that his father lamented him as a father bereaved of his son. And truly it was a full mortification of the body; but his spirit was alive. Hence the whole persecution of his parents is stirred up. Then alone and for the first time he was defiant to his father, when he strove to be a son of God the Father, with love already set in order in him, as Solomon commanded. For the prophet mentioned declares in the voice of God: 'Set love in order in me.' He plainly set it in order, and, by the ordering of love, saw that God is to be loved first, and then neighbour. So his father's old age believed itself condemned by the conversion of that young age. He confronts him, resists, threatens; yet by none of these is the boy, trusting in God, shaken.

The Lord, the comforter, stands by his recruit, and does not fail to raise up one of his brothers as his companion, who, called to conversion by his example, the elder following the younger, accompanied him in virtue as in fellowship during the short time he lived. Hence there were pleasant contests between them in their way of life: whose mind was softer toward piety, whose food harder, whose speech gentler, whose clothing rougher; who spoke more rarely, who prayed more often; whom the bed held less, and reading more; whom injury moved less, and mercy more; who gave more readily what he had taken from himself; who more gladly offered a guest the bed of haircloth and that pillow of his familiar stone; who more readily cherished the stranger with tears before giving him alms, and fed Christ with affection before feeding the stranger at table; in whose mouth the world was rarer and Christ more frequent; who in that height of virtues seemed less in his own eyes, and the more he rose in merit, the more he humbled himself in compunction. A kind of private episcopate was exercised in their way of life. I lie if many bishops did not learn from them, while they were received by them, how to receive; for any who did not shrink from the rigour of that way of life carried away more humanity in their minds than refreshment in their bodies. So they adorned their whole homeland, and, as many still remember, some had their bodies cared for by them and others their spirits; according to each one's need, they were clothed, fed, or instructed with clothing, money, or teaching. No one exhausted by the labour of travel came there who did not feel he had arrived at his homeland and the fields of his own patrimony; no one going on from there to further parts did not seem to leave his own home again, and to leave his fellow citizens and kin a second time.

Meanwhile everyone's love for them grew, multiplied, and spread, and their fame was carried to all further parts, and the whole homeland vied in services, love, and honour toward them. They could not attain obscurity and poverty: the more their life was hidden, the more their fame shone out; each would set the other forward for praise, expose him to glory, and refer their common virtue to the one. But while each wanted to be obscured under the shadow of the other, the brightness, as though reflected, shone on both. What gravity was theirs, what elderly maturity, how rare their visiting of women, even relatives, what flight from all vanity amid so many virtues; how gentle their consolation, how anxious their care for the salvation of those who had given themselves to their teaching! They led an angelic life on earth, 'in much patience, in vigils, in fasts, in chastity, in knowledge, in long-suffering, in kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in love unfeigned, in the word of truth, in the power of God.' Meanwhile they dreaded their glory; and although they referred to God's praise the fragrance of their good life spread far and wide, they grieved that it brought them the danger of vanity. They thought that they had received their reward in their lifetime, and, disdaining human society and favour, they burned with love for the desert.

Having taken counsel, then, and having, as it were, suffered persecution from their own honour, they set out for foreign lands. Again the homeland rises up, again the relatives resist. They fear to be robbed of their light, but now more reasonably. What a contest of faith and love there was then, good Jesus! What canvassing with counsels, prayers, and tears! Who did not claim for himself there the office of a kinsman, or whose tears did not vie with the father's? For the whole homeland felt it was losing fathers in those young men. And truly they had an old age white not with years but with graces, not decayed in limb but lovely in character. O how great, Lord, the dispensation of your providence, who do not let your lamps, shining with the fire of faith, stand fixed in one place, but carry them before you to light different places, inspiring the will to migrate and to flee glory, which in any case was to be multiplied by the very increase of virtue gained through the journey undertaken! Their substance, long since veiled by various works of mercy but still ample, is broken up, and kinsman and stranger alike are admitted as bidders for the patrimony. So there is no regard for relatives, at least where gain is concerned, as though they were selling what was not their own. The property, which had served the poor from the time they possessed it, is now sold to be distributed to the poor. The homeland receives the mercy poured out and repays it with tears poured out.

They go out from their land, from their house, and from their kindred, and by a like example they are shown to be true sons of Abraham. Yet lest anything be thought to have been begun rashly by them with youthful daring, they take with them an old man of perfect and mature gravity, whom they always called their father in Christ, holy Caprasius, then living an angelic life in the islands; although your Love has not known his name until now and still does not know his life, Christ counts him among his friends. Him they take as the director and guardian of their youth in the Lord, they whom many young men had already chosen as their own guardians. They seek a hiding place for their pilgrimage and flee the fame of their virtue; but wherever they go, another fame is born there, whether they will or not. Happy lands and blessed harbours, which the pilgrim thirsting for the heavenly homeland makes famous! Others go to the shores of the East and to whatever other places are full of saints, in order to receive example; these, wherever they go, rouse others by their good example. Their substance is scattered everywhere, and at their every arrival the good fragrance of Christ is breathed out.

This very man, whose memory nourishes us today, the church of Marseilles almost snatched away from this city even then, its bishop urging him and rejoicing in such a colleague. But what would that fervour not win by its contest of tears and the canvassing of its blandishments? So, warned by the new danger, they cross the seas the more eagerly and seek shores to which the Roman eloquence that was so abundant in them would be barbarous. It would take long to run through the profit each place drew from them, what health they brought to the churches without any exercise of clerical office, to how many teachers they were teachers in silence.

Let it suffice to mention that out of desire for Christ they fearlessly endured the swell of the sea and sought out the squalor and barrenness of the Achaean shore, and that men brought up so delicately, so softly, contended against such great changes of waters and winds. How heavy, how unbearable this was to that tenderness, the death there of his brother Venantius, a most blessed man in Christ, and the illnesses of Honoratus and his companions bore witness. What Methone thought it had carried out or received in that funeral it showed by its many companies of psalm-singers. Here the Hebrew, here the Greek, here the Latin exults; the Jew himself, though rejecting Christ, admires the faithful servant of Christ. The fervent choirs strike the very stars, and, as we believe, angelic choirs sing with the human voices; Christ comes to meet his faithful servant. 'Well done, Venantius, good and faithful servant'; and while you hear, 'Enter into the joy of your Lord,' remember us, whom the joys of the world still assail. The struggles of flesh and soul receive their end; eternal life and glory take their beginning.

From there Christ now brings your Honoratus back to you and, with a hidden hand, tempers his health for the return. For whatever he touches as he passes, he lights up. Italy rejoices to be blessed by his coming. Venerable Tuscany embraces him and weaves most gentle delays through its bishops. But God's providence, looking out for us, broke all these off, and him whom the desire for the desert had called from his homeland, Christ invites to a desert near this city. So he seeks an island, empty because of its excessive squalor and unapproachable for fear of venomous creatures, lying under the Alpine ridge not far away. Besides the advantage of seclusion, he was delighted by the neighbourhood of the holy and most blessed man in Christ, Bishop Leontius, and bound by his love, although very many tried to hold him back from this new daring. For the people living round about spoke of that terrible wilderness and vied, with ambitious faith, to keep him within their own borders. But he, impatient of human society and longing to be cut off from the world, if only by the barrier of a strait, carried in his heart and on his lips, bringing it out now to himself, now to his companions, the word: 'You will walk upon the asp and the basilisk, and you will trample the lion and the dragon'; and in the Gospels the promise made by Christ to his disciples: 'Behold, I have given you power to tread upon serpents and scorpions.' So he enters fearless, and dispels his companions' fear by his own confidence. The horror of solitude flees; the crowd of serpents yields. But what darkness did not flee from that light? What poisons did not yield to that medicine? I think it truly unheard of, and plainly to be counted among his miracles and merits, that the encounters with serpents, so frequent in those dry places, as we have seen, and stirred up especially by the summer heat, were never a danger to anyone, nor even a fear.

Why linger further? With Christ working with him, so to speak, and every adversity that had first deterred him overcome, your Honoratus sets up there a kind of camp of God; and the place which had long repelled men from dwelling in it is made bright with angelic services. The hiding place is lit up while the light is hidden. The obscurity of a formerly unknown exile yields to the brightness of the voluntary exile. What then did that arrival, what did that improvement bring? Wherever Honoratus comes, there honour must needs be. Here he is first bound by the office of the clergy, long avoided; here the priestly fillet binds its runaway; and he who had refused to go to dignity found dignity coming to him. There appeared a presbyter worthy not only of double but of manifold honour, in whose presence the episcopate recognized no distance of priesthood and no privilege of title. No bishop ever presumed so much of himself as to count himself that presbyter's equal. But he kept the humility of a monk as whole in the priesthood as fully as, while a monk, he had possessed the merits of the priesthood.

By his industry a church sufficient for God's chosen ones is built there; buildings fit for the monks' dwellings rise; waters denied for ages flow abundantly, showing in their one spring two miracles of the Old Testament: for while they burst from the rock, they flowed sweet in the midst of the bitterness of the sea. Every region now vied in sending there those who sought God. Whoever desired Christ sought Honoratus, and whoever sought Honoratus plainly found Christ. For there Christ flourished wholly; he had settled in his breast as in a lofty citadel and a most splendid temple. There chastity, which is holiness, faith, wisdom, and virtue dwelt; there justice and truth shone. So, as with arms flung wide open to embrace, he invited all into his embrace, that is, into the love of Christ, and from everywhere they flocked eagerly to him. For what land, what nation, does not now have its own citizens in his monastery? What barbarism did he not tame? How often did he make, as it were, gentle doves out of savage beasts? What bitter characters he sprinkled with the sweetness of Christ! Those whose depravity had first been a punishment to themselves became afterwards by grace a delight to all; having tasted the sweetness of the good, they could not but hate more and more what they had been. For, as if led into a new light, they detested the old prison of the errors that had long beset them. Various plagues of the soul were driven out by his exhortation. Bitterness, harshness, and rage gave place to the freedom which Christ had offered, and rest delighted them after the long and heavy slavery of Pharaoh. A stupendous and admirable transformation: not the cup of Circe, as they say, making beasts out of men, but the word of Christ, like a most sweet cup, ministered by Honoratus, making men out of beasts. For what would that urgency, joined with eagerness, not hammer out? Or what stones would not be turned into sons of Abraham, where there was such a workshop of virtues for polishing minds, so that if he moved a man less toward his salvation by living exhortation, he would prevail upon God by prayer? He believed the sufferings of all to be his own and wept over them as his own; he counted the progress and labours of all as his own; knowing how to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep, he transferred the vices and virtues of all alike into the sum of his merits. For as virtue rouses virtue, so compassion spent on the wretched bears fruit. He reaps more from each than each reaps for himself; the salvation of each builds up one glory for him. Untiring, quick, indefatigable, he persevered, according as he perceived each one's nature and character. One he approaches in private, another openly; with one he is severe, with another gentle; and to change the manner of his correction he often changes the very face of his correction. Hence it was that we have seen no one so much loved or so much feared; for he so planted these two affections toward himself in each of his own that love of him brought in fear of offending, and fear of discipline brought in love.

It is incredible how much care he took that sadness should not afflict anyone, that worldly thought should not press on anyone; how easily he perceived what troubled each, as though he carried the minds of all in his own; with what dispensation of piety, besides, he provided that excessive labour should not weigh anyone down, nor too much rest make anyone sluggish. He weighed even the very sleep, if one may say so, of each brother with fatherly affection. Always shaking idleness from those strong in body, he compelled those fervent in spirit to rest. He knew the strength, the minds, the stomachs of all, by the prompting, I believe, of God, made truly the servant of all for the sake of Jesus Christ. It is marvellous how one man fulfilled so many offices at once, troubled as he was by such varied infirmity. Though unequal in strength, he kept pace by an equal rule in fasts and vigils with all the strongest, and with those still very vigorous in their new way of life. Weaker himself, he visited the weak; he provided at once refreshment for souls and for bodies; and lest anything less be given to anyone, his mind always went back over it: this one is cold, this one is brooding; to that one the labour is heavy; to this one this food is not suited; that one has been hurt by another; what this one inflicted is serious, and no less serious what that one felt. Great urgency is needed so that the offence may obtain forgiveness, so that this one may count the insults done to him light or nothing, and that one may sigh that he did the gravest. This was his constant work, his constant intention: to lighten the yoke of Christ for all, to turn away whatever the devil had cast in, to scatter the cloud of faults and recall the clear sky of grace, to implant by loving the love of Christ and of neighbour, and to cultivate the minds of all as his own breast; to renew joys, and to burn always with desire for Christ as on the first day of conversion.

Hence it was that that whole congregation, eager for divine service, gathered at his name from different parts of the world, differing in customs as in languages, was united in love for him. All called him lord, all called him father, reckoning that in him homeland, kin, and all things at once had been restored to them. All had learned, as he suffered with them, to count his pains as their own, so that the excellent and most blessed man in Christ, Salvian the presbyter, one of his dear ones, said with good reason in his writings that, as the sun changes the face of the sky by its darkness or its brightness, so that congregation, thirsting for heaven and given over to heavenly pursuits, received from him, as from its own sun in Christ, cloud or serenity of mind, and was afflicted when he was afflicted and revived when he recovered. Hence came, and by his prayers still remains, the grace of the Holy Spirit poured out in his monastery, strengthened by the example and admonition of so great a teacher, in various gifts of the charisms, in humility and meekness, in love unfeigned, and in one glory of the head amid the diversity of the members.

Great, among these things, was his care for strangers and guests. For who ever passed him by? Who, despising his own convenience, did not at once break off any prosperous voyage, any pleasant winds, out of longing for so great a man? Or, if he was not allowed to land on the island, who did not count the forced compliance of a favourable voyage as the bitterest storm? No one came there without haste; no one there felt his delay; no one sailed from there who was not most secure, his love, his provisions, and his prayers following them, as he sent away those he had just come to know as though they had long been his own. In the squalor of the desert he furnished delights by his very presence, receiving all with such joy and love as though he had been expecting them; and he had, besides, resources equal to his generous spirit, dispensed with equal faith. For since he had gladly heard, 'Sell all that you have and give to the poor, and come, follow me,' each one most gladly put into his hands for distribution whatever he had vowed in his heart to mercy, safely entrusting all his goods to him whose example he had followed in leaving all. Hence the frequent concourse to him from regions near and far. And truly he was not one who, as a sparing or timid steward, would give a little out of regard for the congregation entrusted to him and growing daily, and keep back more. For what would he not do daily with another's property, who had once done this with his own? That is, he kept nothing for himself, nothing for his own, beyond food and clothing for the present days.

At times the substance for distribution was exhausted, faith never. For once, when he had kept back one gold coin out of many thousands from the chest that flowed freely for generosity, he gave this very coin most steadfastly to a poor man passing by, though many things were lacking, and said in my presence and that of others: 'It is certain that someone is already approaching to bring us something, if our generosity has nothing to give.' Scarcely three or four hours of the day had passed when someone appeared at once to confirm his words. O happy generosity, which faith served! O happy faith, for which generosity never caused delay! And truly, as much as his faith supplied, he did not dispense it all by his own hand. He had many most approved men in many places, by whose hands he always spent what was brought to him. So by the grace of one steward he had many stewards, and his faith, like a common spring, flowed out for very many, both givers and receivers. No one's straits came to him that went beyond him or did not find their end in him.

Hence letters were brought to him eagerly from all sides, though he was hidden, as he thought, or at least as he wished; and with what ever new affection he answered them, how grave, how gentle, how sweet! Hence the most beautiful saying of the blessed Eucherius, splendid to the world and more splendid to Christ, the rival of his virtue: when, living on the island next to his, he received a letter from him from the desert on tablets smeared with wax, as is usual, he said, 'You have given the wax back its honey.' Who then did not think himself blessed, his house blessed, his book-chests blessed, when enriched with a great blessing by a small gift from his mouth? And indeed there was so much salt, so much sweetness in his writings that they deserved to be stored not in book-boxes or cupboards but in the chest of the heart. Hence it is that very many carry them written in their minds and most gladly bring them out as a testimony of his love. In short, who ever bound to himself by services in person as many friends as he had who, though they did not know him, loved him and longed for him most eagerly?

Meanwhile, as I recall his great grace toward all, I am passing over his boundless care for me, though his care certainly brought me no small part of salvation in Christ. For for my sake, as far as his merit and my judgment are concerned, he did not disdain to come back to the homeland he had disdained; nor did he shrink from the labour of so long a journey, heavy especially because of his many long-standing infirmities; and there, with gentle hand, as a seducer and yet truthful, he tries to bring me to the love of Christ, me who even in those years was a friend to the world and defiant to God. It would take long to describe the force of his talent in his exhortations, in which, since even before his own resolve he had been able to apply the sharpest goads to himself for conversion, he now poured out manifold, having drunk from the springs of wisdom. But when the words of his piety descended too little into my ears, he turned to his usual defence of prayer, and the cry of his affection, repelled by my hardness, knocked at and pierced the most loving ears of God, even to obtaining mercy. And truly, when I struggled against him and sometimes even bound my obstinacy by an oath, out of that very dangerous worldly habit, he had promised beforehand with what I may call a prophetic spirit: 'What you do not grant me,' he said, 'God will grant.' And O how long he tried to soften my hardness with a shower of tears! How he contended with me for my salvation with loving kisses and embraces! For the present, however, as he said, I won a most evil victory. Thereafter the right hand of God took me up to be harried and tamed; for he had handed me over to it by prayer. What waves there were then in my heart! What storms of different and mutually warring wills were stirred up! How often willing and not willing took turns in my mind! In short, in his absence Christ carries out his part in me: after two days, through his prayers and by God's mercy, my defiance is subdued. For thought had put sleep to flight, and, as the loving Lord invited me, the whole world with its pleasures stood before me at a distance. What I was being urged to seek, and what to leave, my mind debated with me, as though in counsel with a friend. Thanks to you, good Jesus, thanks, who broke my bonds, moved by the loving supplication of your servant Honoratus, and cast on me the bonds of your love, by which, if I am held, the bonds of sin will never grow strong again. So I go to meet him, submissive, I who had gone away proud, and, laying aside every objection, I come as a new suppliant. So, so does the prayer of a saint bring back its fugitives, subdue the defiant, and take the rebels by storm.

Then with what tears he watered my dryness, with what loving weeping he drew me too into tears! He received me with such humility and gentleness, as though he himself were being received by me. At once the cause of delay was removed. Then for the first time he recognized that homeland which he had long believed must be fled. He leads me out with him, his prey; he rejoices, triumphs, exults. He hastens to shut me up in the desert, already eager for seclusion by his example. He feeds me first with milk, and afterwards with solid food. He gives me drink too from that flowing spring of heavenly wisdom which was in him. And would that the narrowness of my spirit had received as much as he strove to pour in! He would surely have prepared me for you and given you one worthy of your desire; and without knowing it he would have trained a fit successor for himself. And how much he added to me, if I may say so without envy, of that love of his that flowed out to all, and how much lighter he made the light yoke of Christ for me by his gentleness! How often he called me his mind, how often his soul, how often his little tongue! How impatient he was of my absence, how always eager for the sight of me, unworthy as I was! What shall I say of all these things, except that prophetic word: may the Lord repay him for me?

Meanwhile, dearest brothers, touching briefly on what was done rather than recounting it, I have gone over things about your most skilful shepherd which were known to others rather than to you. For we saw his priesthood increased in name in this church, though in holiness and deeds it was already the highest before. But how was it, I ask, that one so unknown was sought from so far? Who fixed in your hearts that favour toward one absent and never seen before? Who stirred up that longing, so that he should be born to you, while those to whom the Lord had granted him in the desert were bereaved? Surely he who orders all things; he who granted him to his homeland as long as he saw fit, and carried the grace of so great a worshipper of his around over seas and lands for the benefit of those who saw it.

In sum, from the brief time during which he was given to you, it is easy to measure how far what I say of him in these matters falls short or exceeds. For you saw, dearest brothers, that watchfulness of his care, that zeal for discipline, those tears of piety, that constant and perpetual serenity of mind, to which his unchanging face bore witness. You heard also that mouth in keeping with his life, in which purity of heart matched brilliance of speech. You saw that breadth of love which was so great in him that the same holy man whose saying I quoted just now said of him with good reason that, if love itself had to be portrayed according to its own choice, it would seem that it ought to be painted above all in the face of Honoratus. Who, then, ever thought he had seen him enough? To whom did he not take the place of every affection? Who so joined gentleness with severity? Who so offered discipline mixed with cheerfulness? Whom did he correct without the joy of the one corrected? When did his gladness smell of any levity? When was his sadness not wholesome? When was his groaning not born of grief over another's sin? Who did not find him greater than he had seen him before? Always set at the summit of the virtues, he always found where he could grow.

Under his exhortation, what anxious man did not lay down his pain? What man of savage character did not curse his madness? What arrogant man did not loathe his own pride more than anyone? What wanton man did not detest his luxury? In short, made all things to all, as the Apostle says, he was the common medicine of all. There was almost no grace which he did not hold so firmly that he might be thought to cultivate and possess it specially, as though it were his only one. In no rank of life did he fail to flourish so that he seemed specially suited to it.

Indeed, as soon as he received the government of this church of Arles, his first care was for concord, and his chief labour to bind together in mutual love the brotherhood, still divided by passions heated over the choice of a bishop. As a proven driver of Israel, he knew well that nothing is easily commanded to those in discord. He strove, besides, to rule by love rather than to dominate by terror, so that correction, voluntary rather than forced, might add this ornament too to his subjects, that they should not seem compelled to their duty. So, discord being at once shut out, he gave place to love, which is the mother of all virtues. The church of Christ therefore flourished under him, as the monastery had flourished before. It grew in graces and diminished in metals: once discipline had entered, he shut the mammon of iniquity out of his house as out of the Lord's house; what had long been heaped up idle he at last assigned to worthy uses; he sent their treasures on to those long dead, and those who had offered them felt once more the refreshment of their offerings. He kept back only what was sufficient for his ministry; and if need had required, he would not, I think, have spared even that. He made the vows of an earlier time his own to dispense.

He did not stop working even at the end. He enriched many from his bed by dispensing the word. But how long did the bed hold him, who had long grown used to overcoming even the weariness close to death? Last of all, with pains already struggling against him, he preached a sermon in the church on the day of Epiphany: never knowing, as faith wrestled with his infirmities, how to yield to the pain of the body rather than to the fervour of the spirit, he served your desires beyond his strength. For it was not some illness coming upon him from outside, nor a sudden heat of fever, that carried him off; but a long-drawn-out infirmity, contracted long before through the excessive rigour of his way of life and growing worse because he gave too little room to relaxation, consumed him by gradual wasting on the eighth or ninth day after that feast. Yet for scarcely four days did he deny his presence to us, who were busy with the duties of love, fearing, surely, that the nearness of his passing would sadden his own. He was never a burden to anyone amid the gravest illnesses; his infirmities did not cause anyone, as usually happens, any horror. And so, in this way, that dwelling-place of the Holy Spirit came to rest.

It is incredible how whole he kept the vigour of that unstained mind to the very end. First, he always comforted his own most abundantly and feared nothing more than that they should be worn down by long despair, understanding that the end is almost easier to bear than uncertainty. He always wiped away the tears of those standing round with well-seasoned words, though the more he wiped them away, the more he provoked them. Hence he reckoned our grief heavier than his own pain. Not easily would anyone, with so strong a heart amid whatever harsh and hard things there were to bear, have neither wished for death nor feared it. For he whom it had not irked to live amid all kinds of hardship in the service of Christ did not fear to pass to the new life through that common gate of new life. For the last necessity of human beings had been meditated on by him beforehand, and did not come upon him suddenly. So, under the very sight of the end, as though emigrating, as though bidding farewell, lest he leave anything unfinished or arrange anything less fully than he had intended, he questioned each of us and urged us to remind him if anything had escaped his memory. Meanwhile he confirmed everything with his signature, and when we wanted to spare his weariness, he compelled us to do everything that had to be done; he compelled us, as always, with that gentle command of his.

Once, when I was struggling to hold back the storm of my tears and to stop the streams of my weeping, he said: 'Why do you weep at the inevitable necessity of the human race? Ought my passing to find you unprepared, when it has not found me unprepared?' And when I, hindered by sobs, added as best I could to his words that I no longer grieved at my own bereavement, since I trusted that the patronage of his prayers would never fail me, and indeed I presumed that it would be stronger after his passing, but that I was gravely afflicted by the single wound of his pains and of his hard struggles at the end, he said: 'And what do I, the least of all, bear compared with what very many of the saints endured most bitterly at their end?' And having mentioned some of them, he added what I believe he had read somewhere: 'Great men,' he said, 'suffer much, and they are born as an example, to teach others to suffer.'

When the authorities gathered to him, the prefect and men of prefectorian rank, how fervent were the commands he brought out under the chill of death, taking the sharpest opening for his exhortation from his own departure! And it was plainly fitting that he who had always given examples of life should summon even his death as an example. 'You see,' he said, 'how fragile a lodging we live in. However high we climb in life, from there death will drag us down. No honours, no treasures redeem anyone from this necessity. It is common to the just and the unjust, to the powerful and the humble. We owe great thanks to Christ, who by his own death and resurrection has given life to our death with the hope of resurrection, offering eternal life and dispelling the horror of eternal death. So live your life that you may not fear the end of life; and await what we call death as a change of dwelling. Death is not a penalty if it does not lead to punishment. Hard indeed is the tearing apart of flesh and soul; but much harder will be the partnership of flesh and soul in the flames of Gehenna, unless throughout life the spirit, recognizing its nobility, declares war on the body and battle on bodily vices, and, separated from the filth of the flesh by a happy divorce, keeps both substances unstained for eternal peace, to be happily joined there where the saints will exult in glory and rejoice on their couches, that is, in their bodies as in their own dwellings, when they recognize as their accustomed lodgings the members, their companions, which they had dedicated to righteousness. Do this, then; this is the inheritance your Honoratus leaves you; with his last breath he invites you to the inheritance of the heavenly kingdom. Let no one be held by too much love of this world. It is best to disdain by will what you see you will lose by necessity. Let no one melt away in riches, let no one be a slave to money, let the vain pomp of riches corrupt no one. It is a crime to take the price of salvation as the material of perdition, and for anyone to be caught by that by which he could be redeemed.' Meanwhile he admonished more by his face, more by his eyes, more by his mind flashing toward heaven. The words of one who reports it are unequal to his fiery speech; but no less unequal to his spirit were the words of the one admonishing. So, having poured out his prayer with such exhortation and with an unusual emotion, he bestowed an extraordinary gift of blessing.

As the service of his limbs failed, new grace of mind kept springing up. When everything had been arranged (for not many of his affairs remained incomplete), running over all his dear ones in his mind, he enriched with a greeting sent through those standing by all those whom his weariness did not allow him to name. To me he said in my ear: 'Make my excuses to that holy man, that what he wished could not be done.' Great and admirable care, amid those grave straits of death, to have provided that he should not fail, as far as in him lay, to wipe away anyone's sadness, and certainly not to leave anything unexcused! And what of this, I ask: that, though he was leaving among strangers all his own whom his love had drawn to this city, he commended no return to anyone, no fellowship, and did not assign fixed places to live, as though truly foreknowing that there would be no dispersal of his own, except of those who had already, while he was still alive, departed in the decision of their minds? And truly we know of hardly anyone who has left our fellowship except someone whose departure he himself foretold, who had found either his homeland dearer than the sight of him or the discipline too heavy. Meanwhile a heavier sleep pressed on him; and when, alarmed, we sometimes interrupted it, he said: 'I am surprised that in such great weariness of mine, after such long sleepless nights as went before, my sleep seems heavy to you.' And when, fearing everything, we urged him at the last to stay sitting up longer, he replied with jesting gentleness, as was his custom, and his usual serenity of mind, that he would bear with our being troublesome in this part of our anxiety. So his life was spent almost before his sweetness was.

Then, taken by his last sleep, he passed away sleeping into the rest of death, without any of the struggle that the last moments usually bring. He felt none of the hard delays of dying. That holy, noble, sincere soul, untouched by any contact with the world, is received by angelic choirs. Meanwhile the sleep of many is visited by various visions, all of which, however, had one form: that the companies of the saints went out to meet that holy man. And truly, at once, at that same point of midnight, a gathering filled the church to meet the holy body, so that it was thought to have been roused only by angelic messengers. The lifeless body remains, always enlivened by the spirit, full of grace; for his face, dear to all, kept the whole beauty of his countenance. You know these things well, and you depict them for yourselves far more fully in the meditation of your minds than words can.

Nor did anyone not think himself to suffer great loss if he missed the sight of his body, if he did not, as reverence or love moved each, press a kiss on his mouth or on any of his limbs, or on the bier on which that holy body had been clothed with great eagerness of faith and afterwards, as it was brought to the tomb, stripped with greater. For faith did not spare even the cloaks sanctified by his clothing, and counted it a most precious gift to have plucked some fringe of his coverings. Your affection vied in his funeral rites. In his funeral you refreshed my pilgrimage, still hidden among you; you fed me with such love of your hearts poured out on him. For whom did his own roof hold that day? Or whom, overwhelmed as by a grief of his own, did the walls of this city not give to this basilica? It was counted a great honour to have put one's hand to the bier or set one's neck under it. You saw his glory, not without your own glory: for that reverence of the funeral was the devotion of faith, and it was as joyful to have had such a man as it was grievous to have lost him. Nor does the grace of his tomb give us little confidence: for we presume to have in heaven the patronage of the one whose bones we have laid here. We saw spices and incense carried before his bier; but God received greater perfumes from your minds, in your great affection toward so great a shepherd. The glory of God leapt for joy before him in his glory, and love was in harmony among the dissonant choirs of different languages.

The loving Lord, who, by stirring your minds to the election of my littleness, granted that I should not be far from his tomb, will grant this too at your prayers, that I may not depart far from his ways, but may hasten to do whatever I learn that he did, without any examination or discussion of his deeds. For God, as I see, begot me for you through him even then. For you he prepared me, unworthy as I am. For you he sought me with such labour, without knowing it. For you he trained me, after a fashion, with such eager care and concern, seeking in me the vein of faith as of his own blood. For you he strove with such labour by letters, with such urging on his journey, to remove me from the island to which I had returned out of love of seclusion when he left it at the beginning of his episcopate (I do not dare to say without knowing it; perhaps foreknowing it), so as to settle my homeland in your love beside the seat of his tomb. But what are we to do, since by his timely departure he has handed me over to you untimely? It is not for us to blame, even lightly, in anything the secret judgment of the eternal King: you would not easily have felt what good you had lost, had your good been given back to you whole.

O great and renowned is your glory, Honoratus! Your merit did not need to be proved by signs; for your way of life itself, full of virtues and lofty in the newness of the admiration it aroused, provided a kind of perpetual sign. Many things, indeed, were granted to you by God, as we know who stood closer to you; but among them you counted the least part, and your greater joy was that Christ should write down your merits and virtues than that men should note your signs. And yet what greater sign of virtue can there be than to flee signs and hide virtues? And truly your prayer was in a way so familiar to the ears of Christ that I think it was obtained by your most earnest prayers that signs should not proclaim your virtue. Peace too has its martyrs; for you were a perpetual witness of Christ as long as you dwelt in the body. This too is astonishing, that the strength of your youth, thinned by the perpetual rigour of abstinence and reduced to the slenderness of appearance which we saw, though its beauty was kept, was consumed by a daily cross; which you nevertheless always kept without any notable excess of scruple, always fleeing all extremes and the desire for glory that is akin to extremes. Never was anything in your mouth but peace, chastity, piety, love. Never did anything dwell in your heart but Christ, the fountain of all these, who ministered to you, and through you to very many, the fruits of love, joy, peace, long-suffering, goodness, kindness, faith, modesty, continence, overflowing in manifold abundance for the salvation and joy of many; so that not without reason you sang to him: 'Those who fear you will see me and rejoice'; to him you always ascribed every good of your way of life, constantly pressing on yourself and your own: 'What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as though you had not received it?' But the good of your life was the more yours, the more you denied that it was yours.

In you was the common comfort of all who long for the Lord. Some glory in the prosperity of this life; you, on the contrary, urged us to exult in God, murmuring with a voice of gentle melody what echoed your affection: 'Let the heart of those who seek the Lord rejoice.' You never had a greater pleasure than in prayers and psalms. Christ had so settled in your inmost parts that sometimes, I speak from experience, when your limbs were bound in peaceful sleep, your tongue sounded him even in dreams in its usual office. Often, sleeping, you poured out words of most wholesome exhortation, often words of most loving prayer. For in the bed there was rest for the body, and for the mind rest in Christ. And these things we experienced, each of us who was present. And you, the one rest of all, how eagerly, how often you told your dreams, not foreboding anything nor anxious with any worry about the future, but roused by the restless desires of the soul: martyrdom, namely, which you always carried in your meditation; and, the Lord, I believe, sometimes playing with and provoking your desire, you went through it in sleep as though a persecution had been stirred up against your faith. And truly I think no one would deny that what you lacked for martyrdom was torturers, not spirit. For daily, in most sincere discourses, you were a witness to the confession of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Nor has anyone easily discoursed so clearly, so lucidly on the Trinity of the Godhead, distinguishing it in persons and uniting it in the eternity and majesty of glory.

Remember, then, friend of God, remember us always, as you stand undefiled before God, singing that new song and following the Lamb wherever he goes. You are his attendant; be our patron, an acceptable interpreter of our prayers and a strong advocate. Carry up the prayers of your foster flock poured out at your tomb; obtain that, by common accord, all together, priest and people, may deserve to attain in some measure what you commanded and what you taught. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, who took you up into his glory, and who lives and reigns as God with his Father and the Holy Spirit for ever and ever. Amen.