Letters 118.1–119.6

My son and your brother Ausonius, at the very moment of departure, having given me his presence late and taken it away quickly, and having said hello and goodbye in the same instant, thought he would be going back empty-handed unless he carried to you some of my trifles in hasty speech. The travel warrant had already been issued, the post-horse was being saddled, and the sword-belt was being fastened around the noble young man clad in his scarlet tunic; and yet he set a secretary before me and made me speak, so that a swift hand might follow what was quickly uttered and the shorthand signs might catch up with the speed of my tongue. So it is not with the care of a writer but with the rashness of one who dictates that I break my long silence toward you, offering you the bare good will of friendship's duty. It is an extempore letter, without order of thought, without the charm and arrangement of style, so that you will find in it all the friend and nothing of the orator. Think of it as poured out in marching order and thrust upon one eager to depart as provision for the road. The divine Scripture says: "A tale out of season is like music in mourning." So we too, despising the charm of the art of rhetoric and the prettiness of boyish, applause-seeking eloquence, have taken refuge in the gravity of the holy Scriptures, where there is true medicine for wounds and sure remedies for griefs; in which a mother receives back her only son on the bier, the crowd standing around is told, "The girl is not dead but sleeps," and a man four days dead comes out, bound, at the call of the Lord.

I hear that within a short time you have buried two little virgin daughters, their funerals almost joined, and that your most chaste and faithful wife Faustina—or rather your sister in the warmth of faith, in whom alone you found rest after losing your children—has been taken from you by a sudden falling asleep. It is as if a shipwrecked man found robbers on the shore, or, in the words of the prophets, fleeing (a lion) met a bear, and, stretching his hand to the wall, was bitten by a snake. Losses to your estate followed: the devastation of the whole province by a barbarian enemy, and in the common plundering the private ruin of your possessions; herds of cattle and flocks driven off; your servants captured or killed; and, for your only daughter, whom such frequent bereavements had made dearer to you, a most noble son-in-law chosen, from whom—to say nothing else—you have received more grief than joy. This is the catalogue of your trials; this is the battle of the ancient enemy with Julian, a young recruit of Christ. If you look at yourself, these things are great; if at the bravest warrior, they are a game and the shadow of a contest. To blessed Job, after the swarms of evils, the worst of wives was left, so that through her he might learn to blaspheme; from you the best was taken away, so that you might lose the comfort of your miseries. Yet it is one thing to bear a wife you do not want, another to long for one you love. He, amid so many deaths of his children, had the ruin of his house as their one tomb, and, tearing his garments to show a parent's affection, he fell to the ground, worshiped, and said: "Naked I came out of my mother's womb, and naked let me return. The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away; as it pleased the Lord, so it has been done. Blessed be the name of the Lord." You, to put it most sparingly, accompanied the funerals of your own amid the attentions of many kinsmen and the consolations of friends. He lost all his riches at once, and as the messengers of evils followed one after another he was struck by each blow unmoved, fulfilling in himself that proclamation about the wise man: "If the shattered heavens should fall upon him, the ruins will strike him unafraid." To you the greater part of your substance has been left, and you are tempted only as much as you can bear. For you have not yet reached the stage at which the whole battle line is thrown against you.

The once rich master and richer father was suddenly bereaved and stripped. And since in all these things that had happened to him he had not sinned before the Lord nor said anything foolish, God, exulting in the victory of his servant and counting his patience as his own triumph, said to the devil: "Have you considered my servant Job, that there is no one like him on the earth? An innocent man, a true worshiper of God, keeping himself from all evil, and he still persists in innocence." Finely he added, "and he still persists in innocence," because it is difficult for innocence, when pressed by evils, not to grieve, and to be in danger in faith by the very fact that it sees itself unjustly enduring what it suffers. Answering this, the devil said to the Lord: "Skin for skin, and all that a man has he will give for his life. But stretch out your hand and touch his bones and his flesh, and see whether he will not bless you to your face." The most cunning adversary, grown old in evil days, knows that some things are external—called by the philosophers of the world too adiaphora, that is, indifferent—and that perfect virtue does not consist in losing and despising them; while others are internal and, being given from oneself, compel the one who loses them to grieve. So he boldly rejects God's praise and says that the man deserves no praise at all who has given nothing of himself but everything outside himself, who has offered his children's skins for his own skin, has laid down his purse and enjoys the health of his body. From this your prudence understands that your trials have come as far as this limit: that you have given skin for skin, hide for hide, and are ready to give all that you have for your life; but that the hand of God has not yet been stretched out against you, nor your flesh touched, nor your bones broken—in whose pain it is hard not to groan and to "bless" God to his face, in the sense of cursing. Hence in the books of Kings too Naboth is said to have "blessed" God and the king, and for this he was stoned by the people. But the Lord, knowing that his athlete, or rather his bravest man, could win even in that last and perfect contest, said: "Behold, I hand him over to you; only guard his soul." The holy man's flesh is given into the devil's power, and the health of his soul is preserved; lest, if the devil had struck that in which sense and the judgment of the mind reside, the fault would not be the sinner's but his who had overthrown the state of his mind.

Let others praise you and celebrate your victories over the devil in panegyrics: that you bore the deaths of your daughters with a cheerful face; that on the fortieth day after they fell asleep you changed your mourning clothes, and the dedication of a martyr's bones restored white garments to you, so that you did not feel the grief of bereavement, which the whole city felt, but exulted at the martyr's triumph; that you escorted your most holy wife not as one dead but as one setting out on a journey. I will not deceive you with flattery or trip you up with slippery praise, but will rather say what it profits you to hear: "Son, when you come to the service of God, prepare your soul for temptation." And when you have done everything, say: "I am an unprofitable servant; I have done what I ought to do." You have taken the children whom you yourself had given; you have received back the handmaid whom you had lent me for a brief comfort. I am not saddened that you have received her back, but I give thanks that you gave her. Once a rich young man boasted that he had fulfilled everything commanded in the law; and the Lord said to him in the Gospel: "One thing you lack: if you wish to be perfect, go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and come, follow me." He who said he had done everything cannot overcome riches in the first contest. Hence the rich enter with difficulty into the kingdom of heaven, which desires inhabitants unencumbered and borne up on light wings. "Go," he says, "and sell"—not part of your substance, but all that you possess—"and give"—not to friends, not to blood relations, not to kinsmen, not to your wife, not to your children; I will add something more: keep nothing back for yourself out of fear of want, lest you be condemned with Ananias and Sapphira—but give everything "to the poor," and "make friends for yourself by means of the mammon of unrighteousness, so that they may receive you into the eternal dwellings," so that you may follow me, have the Lord of the world as your possession, and be able to sing with the prophet, "The Lord is my portion," so that, like a true Levite, you may possess nothing of the inheritance of the land. And this I urge if you wish to be perfect, if you wish to attain apostolic dignity, if you wish to take up the cross and follow Christ, if, having taken hold of the plow, you wish not to look back, if, set on the very top of the house, you despise your former garments, and, to escape your Egyptian mistress, you leave behind the cloak of the world. So Elijah too, hastening to the kingdom of heaven, cannot go with his cloak, but leaves the world's garments in the world. "But this," you say, "belongs to apostolic dignity, and to one who wishes to be perfect." But why do you not wish to be perfect too? Why should you, who are first in the world, not be first in Christ's household too? Is it because you have a wife? Peter too had one, and yet he left her with his net and his boat. The most provident Lord, who desires the salvation of all and prefers the repentance of a sinner to his death, has taken away from you even this excuse, so that she does not drag you down to earth, but you follow her as she makes for the kingdom of paradise. Gladly prepare good things for those who have gone before you to the Lord, so that their shares may not go to swell their sister's wealth but to the redemption of your soul and the feeding of the wretched. These are the necklaces your daughters ask of you; with these gems they wish their heads adorned. What would have perished in silk, let it be kept in the cheap tunics of the poor. They ask you for their shares; joined to their Bridegroom, they do not wish to seem poor and undistinguished; they desire their own ornaments.

Nor can you excuse yourself by your nobility and the weight of your riches. Look at the holy man Pammachius and at the presbyter Paulinus, of most fervent faith, who offered to the Lord not only their riches but themselves; who, against the devil's shifts, consecrated to the Lord not skin for skin, but their flesh and bones and souls; who can lead you on to greater things by example and by eloquence, that is, by deed and by tongue. You are noble: so are they, but nobler in Christ. You are rich and honored: so were they; rather, from rich (and famous they became poor and) obscure, and therefore richer and more famous, because poor and unhonored for Christ. And you do well, indeed, in being said to minister to the needs of the saints, to support monks, to give very much to churches; but these are the first lessons of your military service. You despise gold: so did many philosophers, of whom one—to say nothing of the rest—threw the price of many possessions into the sea, saying: "Away into the deep, evil desires! I will drown you, lest I be drowned by you." A philosopher, a creature of glory and a cheap slave of popular favor, laid down his whole burden at once; and do you think yourself set on the summit of virtue if you offer a part out of the whole? The Lord wants you yourself as "a living sacrifice, pleasing to God"—you, I say, not what is yours. And so he admonishes you by various trials, because Israel is instructed by many blows and griefs, and "whom the Lord loves he reproves, and he scourges every son whom he receives." The poor widow put two coins into the treasury, and because she offered all that she had, she is said to have surpassed all the rich in offering gifts to God; for gifts are weighed not by their own weight but by the will of those who offer them. Though you have spent your wealth on many, though some rejoice in your generosity, yet far more are those to whom you have given nothing; for not even the wealth of Darius and Croesus could satisfy the poor of the world. But if you give yourself to the Lord and, perfect in apostolic virtue, begin to follow the Savior, then you will understand where you were and how far back a place you held in the army of Christ. Did you not mourn your dead daughters, and were a father's tears dried on your cheeks by the fear of Christ? How much greater was Abraham, who in will slew his only son, and did not despair that the one whom he had heard would be heir of the world would live even after death! Jephthah offered his virgin daughter, and for this he is placed by the apostle in the list of the saints. I do not want you to offer the Lord only the things that a thief can steal, an enemy seize, or a proscription take away; things that can come and go, and like waves and billows are seized by the masters who succeed one another; and—to sum up everything in a word—which, willing or not, you will leave behind at death. Offer that which no enemy can take from you and no tyranny snatch away, which will go with you to the underworld, or rather to the kingdom of heaven and the delights of paradise. You build monasteries; a large number of saints are supported by you throughout the islands of Dalmatia; but you would do better if you yourself lived as a saint among saints. "Be holy, for I am holy," says the Lord. The apostles boast that they left everything and followed the Savior; and certainly we do not read that they left anything but their nets and boat, and yet they are crowned by the testimony of the future judge, because in offering themselves they had left all that they had.

I say these things not to disparage your works or to belittle your generosity and alms, but because I would not have you a monk among worldly men and a worldly man among monks, and I ask the whole of you, since I hear that your mind is devoted to the worship of God. If a friend, or a follower, or a kinsman resists this counsel of ours and calls you back to the delights of a splendid table, understand that he is thinking not of your soul but of his own belly, and that all wealth and sumptuous banquets are ended by sudden death. You lost two daughters, of eight and six years, within twenty days; and do you think an old man can live long? Even if his age is stretched out long, he will hear David: "The days of our life are seventy years; and if more, eighty; and whatever is beyond is toil and sorrow." Happy and worthy of all blessedness is he whom old age finds serving Christ, whom the last day finds soldiering for the Savior; who "will not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate"; to whom it will be said at the entrance of paradise: "You received your evil things in your life; but now rejoice here." For the Lord will not punish twice for the same thing. The flame of Gehenna received the rich man clothed in purple; Lazarus, poor and full of sores, whose rotting flesh the dogs licked, and who barely kept his wretched soul alive with the crumbs from the rich man's table, is received into Abraham's bosom and rejoices to have so great a patriarch as his father. It is difficult, or rather impossible, for anyone to enjoy both present and future goods, to fill the belly here and the mind there, to pass from delights to delights, to be first in both worlds, and to appear glorious both on earth and in heaven.

But if a silent thought raises a scruple in you—why I, who give this advice, am not myself such as I wish you to be, and you see that some have fallen midway on the road—I will answer briefly: the words I speak are not mine but the Lord Savior's; I advise not what I myself can do, but what one who means to be Christ's servant ought to wish and to do. Athletes too are stronger than their trainers, and yet the weaker gives advice and the stronger fights. Do not look at Judas denying, but look at Paul confessing. Jacob, the son of a very rich father, goes alone and stripped, with his staff, to Mesopotamia; worn out by the journey he lies down, and he who had been most delicately brought up by his mother Rebekah uses a stone for a pillow under his head. He saw a ladder from earth to heaven, angels going up and down on it, and the Lord leaning on it from above, to stretch out his hand to the weary and to spur on those ascending to their labor by his gaze. Hence the place itself is called Bethel, that is, house of God, in which people go up and down every day. For even saints fall if they are negligent, and sinners recover their former rank if they wash away their filth with tears. I say this so that those descending may not frighten you, but those ascending may spur you on. An example is never taken from the bad; even in the affairs of the world the incentives to virtue always come from the better part. Forgetting my purpose and the brevity proper to a letter, I wanted to dictate more—for everything said is too little for the dignity of the subject and for your merit—and behold, our Ausonius began to demand the sheets, to urge the secretaries, and, with the neighing of his eager horse, hastily to reproach the slowness of my poor wits. Remember us, then, and take care to fare well in Christ; and, to say nothing of the rest, follow the example of holy Vera in your own household, who, truly following Christ, endures the hardship of pilgrimage: "and let a woman be your leader in so great a deed."

At the very moment of the departure of our brother Sisinnius, who had brought me your letter, I am compelled to dictate these words, such as they are. I cannot hide it from your wisdom, and I beg you to take what I say not as a boast but rather as a sign of full intimacy, since I speak to you as to myself: he brought me many questions from holy brothers and sisters of your province, which I thought I would answer at great leisure, up to the day of the Epiphany. And while I was dictating answers to most of them in stolen hours of work by night, and, having finished the others, was keeping yours in reserve as the most difficult, he suddenly arrived and declared that he was leaving at once. When I asked him to put off his journey, he began to plead the famine in Libya, the needs of the monasteries of Egypt, the Nile's failure to rise to its full waters, the hunger of many, so that it seemed almost an offense against the Lord to wish to keep him longer. So I have sent you the weft and the warp, the heddles and the webs that I had prepared for your tunic, so that whatever is wanting in me may be woven out of your own eloquence. You are wise and learned, and you have passed over from "dog-like eloquence," as Appius says, to the eloquence of Christ. Nor do I need much labor with you; it is as the stories tell of a certain philosopher's experience in persuading a countryman: "I had scarcely said half, and he had already understood." So I too, pressed for time, have set out for you the opinions of each of those who have left brief commentaries on sacred Scripture, and I have translated most of them word for word, both to free myself from the question and to send you the authority of the ancient interpreters, so that in reading and weighing each of them you may rest not on my will but on your own judgment.

You ask in what sense it was said, and how one ought to read, in the first letter of the apostle Paul to the Corinthians: "We shall all sleep, but we shall not all be changed," or, as some copies have it, "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed"; for both are found in the Greek manuscripts. On this Theodore of Heraclea (the city once called Perinthus) spoke as follows in his short commentaries on the apostle: "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. For Enoch and Elijah, having overcome the necessity of death, were carried, just as they were in their bodies, from their earthly life to the heavenly kingdom. Hence also the saints who will be found in their bodies on the day of the consummation and judgment will be caught up in the clouds, together with the other saints who are to rise from the dead, to meet Christ in the air; they will not taste death, and will be forever with the Lord, the most grievous necessity of death trodden underfoot. Hence the apostle says: 'We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.' For those who have risen from the dead and those who, still living, have been caught up in the clouds will pass over into incorruption and exchange mortality for immortality, not over a period of time, not even in a short space, but 'in an atom,' in a point and moment of time in which an eyelid can move, 'at the last trumpet.' For the resurrection of the dead will take place with such speed that the living, whom the time of the consummation finds in their bodies, will not be able to go before the dead rising from the underworld. Paul, explaining this more plainly, says: 'For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will rise incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality,' so that they may remain forever on either side, whether in punishments or in the kingdom of heaven."

Diodore, bishop of Tarsus, passing over this section, briefly remarked in what follows, on the words "and the dead will rise incorruptible, and we shall be changed": "If," he says, "the dead will rise incorruptible, there is no doubt that they too have been changed for the better. What need was there to say 'and we shall be changed'? Or did he wish it to be understood that incorruption is common to all, but change belongs properly to the righteous, since they obtain not only incorruption and immortality but also glory?"

Apollinaris, though in other words, asserted the same as Theodore: that some will not die but will be caught up from the present life into the future one, so that, with bodies changed and glorified, they may be with Christ, as we now believe of Enoch and Elijah.

Didymus, going over to Origen's opinion not with his feet but with his words, takes the opposite road. "Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall all sleep, but we shall not all be changed." He discussed it thus: "If the resurrection needed no interpreter and had no obscurity in its meaning, the apostle Paul would never, after the many things he said about the resurrection, have added: 'Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall all sleep' (that is, we shall die), 'but not all' (only the saints) 'shall be changed.' I know that in some manuscripts it is written: 'Not all indeed, but we shall all be changed'; but one must consider whether what is put first, 'we shall all be changed,' can agree with what follows, 'the dead will rise incorruptible, and we shall be changed.' If all are to be changed, and this is shared with the rest, it was superfluous to say 'and we shall be changed.' Therefore it should be read thus: 'We shall all sleep, but we shall not all be changed.' For if all die in Adam, and in death there is sleep, then we shall all sleep, or die. According to the idiom of the Scriptures, he sleeps who has died in hope of a future resurrection. And everyone who sleeps will surely wake, unless the sudden force of death has overwhelmed him and death has been joined to his sleep. And when all have slept in this way by the law of nature, the saints alone will be changed for the better, in body and soul, so that incorruption belongs to all who rise, but glory and change to all the saints." And what follows according to the Greek, ἐν ἀτόμῳ, ἐν ῥιπῇ or ῥοπῇ ὀφθαλμοῦ (both are read, and our translators have rendered it "in a moment and in the blink," or "in the movement, of an eye"), he explained thus: "The present saying signifies a resurrection of all joined together at once. For when he says 'in a point of time, and in the movement of an eye, and in a moment,' by the future resurrection of all together he excludes the whole fable of a first and a second resurrection, by which some are believed to rise first and others last. An atom is a point of time that cannot be cut or divided; hence Epicurus too builds the world out of his atoms and forms all things. And the blink or movement of the eye, which in Greek is called ῥοπή, passes with such speed that it almost escapes the perception of the one who sees. But since in most manuscripts ῥιπή is read in place of ῥοπή, that is, 'blink' or 'movement,' we ought to understand that, just as a light feather or a straw or a thin, dry leaf is snatched by the wind and the blast and carried from the earth on high, so at the eye or movement of God the bodies of all the dead will be moved, ready for the coming of the judge. And what he adds and says, 'at the last trumpet; for it will sound, and the dead will rise incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality,' has a double meaning: the blast of the trumpet may indicate the greatness of the voice, according to what is written, 'Lift up your voice like a trumpet,' or the open resurrection of all, according to what we read in the gospel: 'But you, when you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you,' that is, show mercy hidden and in secret, lest you seem to glory in another's misery. We ask, however, why he wrote that the dead will rise at the last trumpet. For when it is called 'last,' others have surely gone before. In John's Apocalypse seven angels are described with trumpets, and as each one sounds, the first, the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, and the sixth, what is done through each is shown. But at the last, that is the seventh, when the trumpet resounds with a clear blast, the dead are raised, receiving incorruptible the bodies that they formerly had corruptible. Hence, after the last trumpet, the apostle explains what follows: 'For it will sound, and the dead will rise incorruptible, but we shall be changed.' When he says 'we,' he signifies that he himself and those who are with him are other than the dead. To understand this, some say that the dead who rise incorruptible are the bodies of the dead, but that those who are said to be changed are to be taken as souls, when they have been changed into greater glory and have attained to the perfect man, to the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ. Others assert that by 'the dead' we should understand sinners, who rise incorruptible so that they may endure eternal punishments, but that those who are changed are the saints, who are carried from strength to strength and from glory into glory. Hence to the incorruption of the dead he added: 'For this corruptible must put on incorruption'; but to what he had said, 'we shall be changed,' he joined: 'and this mortal put on immortality.' For immortality is one thing and incorruption another, just as mortal is one thing and corruptible another. Whatever is mortal is also corruptible, but not whatever is corruptible is thereby also mortal. For bodies that lack a soul are corruptible, and yet they are not mortal, because they never had life, which properly belongs to living beings. Hence the apostle pointedly joined incorruption to corruption and immortality to mortality at the time of the future resurrection."

Acacius, bishop of Caesarea (formerly called Strato's Tower) after Eusebius Pamphili, in the fourth book of his Miscellaneous Questions, set himself this same question and discussed it at greater length; taking up both readings, which seem contrary to each other, after an opening that we have omitted, he spoke as follows: "Let us speak first of the reading that is found in more manuscripts: 'Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall all sleep, but we shall not all be changed.' He said 'mystery' to make his hearers more attentive, since he was about to discuss the resurrection more fully. 'Sleep' signifies this death which is common to all. Hence he quite rightly said that we all sleep, that is, die, as he had said above: 'As in Adam all die, so in Christ all are made alive.' Since, then, all are going to die, hear the mysteries I tell you: we shall all die, but not all shall be changed. For the trumpet will sound (no doubt that of the seventh angel), and the dead will rise incorruptible. But if the dead will be incorruptible, how will they not be changed, since incorruption is itself a change? But here the change by which Paul and the saints are to be changed is understood as glorification. Incorruption is common to all because in it sinners will be the more wretched: they will last forever for their torments and will not be dissolved in a mortal and corruptible body. We read in the same letter, where the apostle discusses it, of a sacred difference in the resurrection, not in the nature of bodies but in the variety of glory, since some rise to perpetual punishments and others to everlasting glory: 'One is the flesh of birds, another of fish, another of beasts; and there are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies. So,' he says, 'will it be with the resurrection of the dead.' The church rather accepts this opinion, that we all die a common death but are not all changed into glory, according to what Daniel writes: 'Many who sleep in the dust of the earth shall rise, some to eternal life, others to shame and everlasting reproach.' For those who rise to shame and everlasting reproach will not rise to the eternal glory into which Paul and those who are with him will be changed. Since these things are so, let us understand them thus: only those who rise into glory undergo the change, whereas for sinners and unbelievers, who are called 'the dead' and will rise incorruptible, one must speak not of change at all but of perpetual punishments."