Poems 24.31–24.891

For when, setting out from the coasts of the mainland, he advanced into the deep straits, now in dense night, but bright with a serene sky, the sea smiling with calm, when the stars alone ordered the course, the moon being then absent from the sky, suddenly the ship, rotten with long time, fails in its service of carrying, and, its sides' joints loosened, comes apart and takes in the waves through its cracks. The calm had persuaded all to sleep; only the helmsman, wakeful, secure as the vessel glided on smooth waters, was cutting his foamy way and with whistling calling up stronger breezes to carry the course forward. Meanwhile the ship sank lower, as its filling grew, and, the planks gaping wider, a larger wave ran in; and for those who had no waves from the open sea, a wave is born in the ship and, now washing beneath the limbs of the sleepers, wakes them with wet chill. As one felt it, then another, dread shakes off sleep from all. They fear with terror of death and still do not know the causes of their fear. By what way can the wretched flee the hostile sea? They are sinking in their own ship. If the seas boiled, stirred by winds, safety would be kept in the ship;

with the sea poured within the bowels of the hull, in what place will life be found? What harbour have they, for whom the sea is inside the ship, killing them, overwhelmed within? But God stretches out his fatherly hand to all, even to harbour and salvation, and between the high backs of the mid-flood spreads the bosom of kindness, by which he catches those falling into the abyss of death and sets them in the shallows of life. He had prepared for this help a skiff following the four-banked craft, so that those whom God had chosen to save from that crowd of sailors it might take up, swimming close beside the ship gaping in the sea. The master of the ship himself, when he first set loose from the shore into the deep, that Novatianist, carrying a split faith in his shipwrecked heart, a man of death, and so thinking things fit for death, as was his habit, did not want this skiff to be part of the load. Now he hastens at once to climb into this boat of his, and when he was pressed by the final danger, he strove to push it off, so that, the rope by which it was attached to the ship broken, it might be let go on the sea. But, overcome by the voices of many opposing him from both sides, he stayed, frustrated, because the opinion of all prevailed, stronger with Christ as its author, so that soon the boat might be a saving refuge, surviving the overwhelmed stern.

Unusual was the appearance of the shipwreck: death for the sailors, peace for the sea. Outside, calm was silent on the strait; in the ship there was a storm. No rocks, no gale had broken the vessel; but old age, stronger than these, had loosened the firm timbers, fixed with iron nails, with age wearing them away. The sky shone with serene clouds, the sea gleamed with stars. But what good did the glad quiet of winds and sea together offer those whom the carriage of a broken ship was deserting in the depth of the sea? The wave drinks the ship, the ship drinks up the wave; the waters are swallowed and swallow. The sailors, drunk with a draught of salt, are killed by a sad drunkenness. The gentle wave smiled on other ships, and raged against one ship alone. But in the danger of very many one may see the working of heavenly judgment. The common danger of death awaits all whom one ship carries; and behold, they are divided by various fortunes, given over to death and to life. And lest this perhaps be thought allotted indiscriminately to good and bad alike, it is established that no Christian perished, and that the faithless died. For either a Jew of malicious heart perished, or one guilty of proud schism.

Whomever right faith in Christ had marked, him life recognized as its own. Yet there were added to the Christians some not yet consecrated by this name, whom flight, joined with theirs, saved from the deep, because they had clung to the Christians. For with the faithless crowd of sailors no faithful man was drowned, so that God showed in a few the clear truth of a great mystery: that at the end of the world, when the nations are to be divided, there will be a distinction among all, when the avenging angel will pass over those marked beforehand on the face with the standard of the cross. So in that ship no one was handed over to death who was endowed with the truth. The impious joined to Christians lived, as light conquered night. For death had no power to add Christians to the dead, because the sign shines on the forehead of Christians, by which death, subdued, collapsed. The captain himself, head of the lost ship, was first among those who perished. For before he perished shipwrecked in the sea, he had already made shipwreck in mind; twice drowned was he: the hull drowned him in the waves, his error in hell. He could have broken himself away from the danger, but his captive mind, in the fitting chains of avarice, bound fast his head, owed to death, tying it to the end.

For, lest he outlive the ship and the cargo, he preferred death to safety. Martinianus, already at the last thread, mingled among the men going under, the sound of the tumultuous crowd rouses and wakes from the sleep of death. He was then, weary, in a remote nook of the prow, and secure in his innocence, like Jonah once hidden in the belly of the ship, breathing heavily in sleep. But, roused by the mournful cries of the perishing on all sides, and all his limbs shaken by the feet of the crowd, he leaps from his hard bed. With most drowned within, in the belly of the ship, along the edges of the sides, where sailors are wont to run, ready, to raise the sails or prop them with poles, the ship, covered by the flood, was still floating by its outermost planks; Martinianus joins those searching out the way of salvation by this way, and, Christ driving him, a fugitive from the mass of death, he becomes the companion of those escaping, and with a leap throws himself far into the boat, which was a harbour for very many. And he would almost have stayed, left to death, to be sunk in the sea with the vessel, had not Christ, as if seizing him with his own hand, snatched him from the lake of death.

As Joseph once fled the raging woman, his garment thrown back, so this man, everything left behind, naked, escaped the faithless ship by flight. And as once the beast, at command, received Jonah in its mouth as it met him and sent him, slippery, through its wide-gaping throat into its belly, swallowing his body unharmed, its teeth held back, and not eating the one it devoured: so the skiff, coming to meet him, received him headlong from the high ship into the waves, and carried him through the night in its faithful, safe bosom, until it brought him back to harbour. But since mention has been made of the great prophet, in whom the image of a godly mystery foreshowed death in a three-day burial with returning salvation, it pleases me, turning back the track of the song a little, to run back to Jonah. Wondrous devices of the Lord: sunk in the sea, he floats untouched by the waves. Devoured, he lives, and the one who swallowed him remains fasting while its food lives, and though he is its booty, he is not food for the beast, and he uses its belly as a house. O cloister worthy of God's holy fugitive! He is caught by the sea, by which he had fled, and, sent deep into the belly of the vast beast, is held in a living prison. Thrown from the ship, he perishes and sails on the waves, an exile from land, a guest of the sea;

he walks about in the cave of the beast's body, a captive and a free defendant. For, free from the waves, within the sea and outside the sea, he swims in the swimming beast, and though shut in his body, the prophet goes out to God, flying in spirit. His body is held by a body, but the flight of the mind earthly bonds do not hold. Shut in the belly, he breaks his prison by prayer and reaches God's ears; free for prayer and bound against flight, he convicts himself by his own faith. For he who had thought God could be escaped through the sea and that he could hide from God in a ship must now believe that, even within a beast sunk in the sea, the judge is present. Now I must bring back the foot of my pliant words to my own Jonah, whom the capacious boat received in the manner of the whale and, shut in its belly, carried, trembling with cold and fear, and returned safe to land. He tells a wonder: that during that time, when, leaping headlong from the high stern, he had fallen into that little boat and had come to that part of it where the boat had taken in much water through its cracks, with a stinking pool of bilge, at once, God warming his cold limbs, he was lulled by sacred rest, and, naked and wet, conditions which sleep usually flees, slept more softly than in a bed, and through the whole space of time in which he was brought back to shore he was given over to sleep, nor was he wakened by the water with which he was soaked, nor by the cold he had caught from his nakedness;

Although the season of the year was mild autumn, yet for the shipwrecked it was winter, whom the hard loss of their lost clothing and icy trembling were shaking. Hear another marvel, from which you may gather the faithful grace shown to Martinianus, beloved brother, and praise God and embrace our holy brother: as he felt the boat gliding into harbour with the sand of the shore grating, as sleep left him, he at last came to himself and recovered himself; he wakes and touches, lying against his breast, the epistles of the apostle. This book he had taken up in his fear, but unknowing, leaving all his things behind, or else that book, living by the Holy Spirit, had clung to him without his feeling it. Consider, I pray, who but Christ gave this protector to his minister? He testifies that it did not even occur to him at that time of danger to remember to take from there the little parchment wrapped up in his packs. And even if it had come into his mind in his fear, he would not have had time to look for it. But in the body of his letters Paul the teacher was present, and, loving his reader with pure heart, led him away from the hand of death; again God granted Paul men to be rescued from the bottom of the sea.

The power of grace which was once in the apostle himself when he sailed has now, by the support of his letters, for Martinianus and the others who then clung to the Christians in their flight, prepared a safe outcome from the danger, as it had distinguished the faithful from the impious among the shipwrecked. So when the two-oared boat, brought to the shore, put out the wet men, holding on to life and at the same time seeking it, they beg help for their survival, lest, given back to the land, more savage than the waves, they should perish of cold and hunger. But nearby, set on the soil of the Gauls, Massilia, daughter of the Greeks, a city, nursling of the holy church, opened its humane bosom. Seeking this city, the shipwrecked tell of their misfortune and ask to be fed and clothed. The brotherhood receives Martinianus and warms him with roof and food. But the poor, with copious love, lend a tiny alms. Generous affection makes up for the slight things given; they enrich their guest by praying, and send him off with their peace, rich with spiritual provision for the road. Yet he was given cheap boots, so that he would not wander with a sailor's bare foot, he who would rather have been kept warm unshod than be shod and cold.

But though he would have endured going by land after the sea, he refused out of shame at his nakedness, reckoning this too: lest he be thought to feign nakedness for love of gain, if, covered with a ragged garment, he should go through forts, villages, towns, like the greedy beggars who are wont to wander through sea and lands, who, swearing falsely that they are monks or shipwrecked, sell the name and the misfortune. But this Christian of ours, though he was truly shipwrecked, taking care not to be thought like deceivers, and refusing to deceive others himself, does not want to be a traveller, lest he acquire the new name of impostor for himself, and prefers to bear the tossing of life by sailing than the blushing of his face by walking. So, shabby in rags, shining in his shoes, he chooses to float again, and seeks the port again, and prefers the unsafety of the sea to the safety of the land road, so that, sheltered by the ship as far as the shores of his vow, like an unencumbered sailor in the company of sailors' nakedness, he might escape the shame of nakedness. God the King, favouring faithful constancy, attends his bold faith, and, changing turns, makes up for hard adversities with prosperities that follow, and prepares a ship planked with solid timber to carry him across;

he commands peace to the storms, puts clouds to flight, and directs the course in the breeze, tempering sky and sea with such quiet that the course does not stall in calm, nor does dangerous speed press the ship with heavy blast. So this man, Christ gently soothing, having crossed the rough sea, glides into a harbour farther from the city, whose name is Centum Cellae, since from there the ship was to be brought on further to enter the harbour of the lighthouse. Scarcely believing he had reached the shore of the land he longed for, leaving the ship, he gladly leaps on the ground and hastens on foot to Rome; there he finds, a longed-for guest, the friendly roofs of brother citizens. He breathes again in mind, rests in body, gives and receives joys; enjoying their homeland, they restore it to each other, and confess thanks to God. Martinianus, rejoicing, tells sad things, relating to the brothers what he had endured. They mingle tears in the very congratulations, with overflowing hearts. Theridius, my man, was then away from there with me, a gift to me from Christ, a man of peace, a man of law, a man of grace, my rest, my delight, my mind; his fellow guest, Paulinus, with godly mind, was keeping the house in the city.

He strips Martinianus here of his shipwrecked clothing and covers him with his own clothing, and doubles the gift of the tunic with which he had clothed his companion with the gift of a hooded cloak. The giver himself then in turn, like one shipwrecked, remained in a single garment. After this Martinianus begins to make his way to us too, where flint paves the highway to which its builder Appius gave his name. He treads the much-trodden track; he who had come as a sailor in worn clothing treads it on foot as a traveller. But lest even this road be wholly free and empty of the usual mishaps, he did not escape unpunished the lazy decision by which walking irks him. From the city of Capua, which is twenty miles from the place of my dwelling, having found a mule empty of burden, as pack animals are usually sent back home, he sits on it, hired for a short way for a small sum; and soon in the middle of the road, the rider, thrown far off by the mule's fright, falls as his carrier is taken from under him. Falling on his face, he does not hurt his face; thrown on stones and brambles, he bruised neither face with thorn nor limbs with stone, caught by the hand of Felix;

who, not allowing the brother, already approaching his buildings, to meet danger in his own territory by the encounter with evil, removed the envious enemy; and the faithful confessor brought him, his vow fulfilled, into his places, and Felix the patron brought him in, a welcome guest, to our dwellings nearby. Asked about his homeland, he tells it, recounts his misfortunes, and gives blessed news of you. And relating a few words from your writings, as if he had sprinkled my lips with honey, so, offering me the sweetest taste from the little drops of your honeycombs, he made me long the more for the letters which he could not give me in my eagerness; but since he himself came as the reason for the letters, I saw your letters too, written not with the ink of a pen but with the stylus of the mind in a good brother. Unknown before, as soon as he began to be known, he became most dear as well. Grace shone out from within him, with speech as the messenger of the mind. “The good man,” it says, “brings forth all good things from the good,” and you know the tree by its fruit; so this man, sweet in word, chaste in faith, and shining with honest brow, flowed into our inmost being with a sweet stream of kindly love. Above all, boasting deservedly that he was your friend, he gave this reason to be loved the more.

For there is no harmony between night and light, nor does the wolf agree with the lamb. Hence also the prophet says: “As birds of a kind fly together into one, so justice always comes together with the good, fitting in quality with their ways.” So a kindred mind has woven Martinianus to you, equal to you though far away, and the love of such men is the mirror of your mind and the image of your faith. God, the blessed author and fountain of the saints, now chooses not only the foolish and the weak of the passing world, to destroy the lofty things of the world; but, as he himself said, now drawing all things upward, he claims also the lofty things of the world. Since he himself made both the small and the great, he joins both by grace, and those whom the Creator founded in one work he re-creates by one gift. Common unbelief has shut up all, that faith may mediate for all, so that the whole world may be subject to God, and every tongue and every rank may confess that Jesus, the one name above every name, reigns in the glory of the Father. To him now even the powerful of the world bend the knee and give their necks to God, and princes confess Christ as King and submit their sceptres to the cross. Purple and rags come together into one flock, in harmony under God as shepherd.

A common kingdom, one blood for all, highest and lowest, is Christ, who, though you were adorned among the glorious of the world in honour, letters and family, enriched you with a humble heart, so as to confer eternal height on you, and that you might be co-heir of the rich of heaven, here a lover of the poor. Blessed are you now, poor in mind, but rich in the hope in which the poor rejoice, who, cheated of the slippery goods of the world, will enjoy the joys of heaven. For them, in the deep bosom of father Abraham, the God of the living prepares a place set apart from the fire of the rich and refreshing with the dews of life. The sure token of so great a hope already shines for you with a great pledge, the offshoot of your stock planted for the Lord in the courts of Jerusalem. For, to make you like the faithful father, he asked a son of you, enrolling your seed in the seed of Isaac and asking for him as for Isaac, whom you, rival of Abraham's love, gave as a living victim, and, handing him over to God, you have now put him to death for yourself, that you might hold him safe more firmly. Now he remains a stranger to you and yours, without share in the earthly world.

Ready from his mother's womb, before he knew his father and his mother, or tasted good or could distinguish evil, blessed, he chose the good. And now the little one plays in the court of God and sings with milky mouth: “From my mother's womb and from the first day you, Christ, are my protector.” You too have heard what is said to the blessed: “Your seed will be mighty.” You have this too: “Of the fruit of your womb I will set on my throne.” This word of David, though it speaks of Christ, in Christ agrees also with those who in the fellowship of the Christian body will be set on God's throne. For you, fellowship with Hannah is laid open by the example of the sacred infant. This boy too, a Samuel, has grown in the temple of God, now a lamb and hereafter a shepherd. Let the hand of his diligent mother weave him an ephod suited to his stature, which spiritual teaching in God's word may cover with sacred threads. And let him be woven into the golden fringes of the queen's garment above, and as a Nazirite let him adorn his head, holy to Christ, with nourished hair, and let the beautiful head of his soul be armed with the hair of virtue, with active faith. And let no razor ever go up on it, cutting it, to the loss of his hair.

And like that Samson, mighty by the strength of his hair, long-haired with sacred power, let him lay low the lion, strangled by the strong arms of prayer, and gather the sweet fruit of noble victory from the mouth of the dead beast. But after this triumph let him beware, by Samson's example, of approaching foreign unions. The foreign woman, for me, is the law of the flesh, deceitful with alluring nets. If this law should be stronger than the law of the mind, it will drag him into the rule of sin; evil-counselling, with sweet words by the art of fraud, it makes a manly mind effeminate; it blinds the eyes of the mind and shaves the head, despoiling and disarming faith. In this respect I do not want our boy to be a Samson, lest he be mingled in a union which is followed at once by captivity, weakness and blindness, although that strong man afterward recovered strength with his hair regrown, and, led by the hand from the mill to be the sport of enemy exultation, gazing with his mind in the blindness of his body, called on God the avenger. And soon, his strength restored with his hair, he laid low the enemy's house;

when his hand, stronger than stones, enclosed its columns in a heavy embrace, the roofs, their props removed, collapsed to the ground and fell on him; yet even in death itself the mighty hero of God mixed his enemies in the ruin, and by a glorious death made up for himself the disgrace of a subdued life. He who had lived a slave while the enemy gloried, falls a victor, with the enemy overwhelmed, and dying killed more thousands than he had slain living. I want our son to imitate this: death by death, so that, remaining in the flesh, he may conquer the flesh and live to God, crushing the sins of the flesh. But I do not want him, subdued by the wiles of a harmful woman, to give over his mind to the joys of the flesh, and afterward become the enemies' prey, stripped of the strength of grace. Let him be Samuel in this respect: that, always holy and with hair uncut, through all the times of his life he may weave his sacred age with unbroken thread, and repay to old age the infancy begun in service. Let him kill Amalek and, savage for God in godliness, sacrifice the sins of the flesh, by whose slaying the devil will have perished, eternally hateful to God. Let Saul fail in him, and David reign;

let the small destroy the lofty, so that he may not be lofty with the spirit of pride nor livid with the evil of jealousy, but, with humble heart doing lofty deeds of virtue, may ascend the throne of the kingdom; and let him follow those earlier deeds of Samson, so as to break new ropes like threads, and not betray his faith, lest, cowardly, he lose his hair. Long-haired with the strength of heavenly works, he will break the bonds stretched round him, pull up the stakes, lay low a thousand men subdued by one right hand, because our strength and head is Christ God, who is the right hand and the power of God; by his power we conquer the serpent of a thousand wiles who attacks us. Let the soul be strong, putting to death its ass, the beast of the sluggish body. Let moisture, boiled away by sober labours, make the face pale and livid, and let victorious chastity, the flesh afflicted, consume the fires of sins. For as our outer man is worn down by the wearing of continence, then he who is within is renewed, made strong by the weakness of the conquered body. Then a thousand will fall at your side, ten thousand at your right, by a dry jawbone, if our jaw is kept safe by idleness, the jaw which is mobile with the use of eating, because the licence of a juicy body is blunted by fasts.

And then a triumph and a fountain is born for us in dried-up bones. The jawbone that gave a weapon to the fighter gives a cup to him who burns with thirst: bones fasting from the juice of dead flesh, as the Holy Spirit waters them. But the things which were done before by the saints as a figure were written for us to put into action, so that what our fathers carried out in the body we may carry out in the spirit. The old things have flowed away, all things have been made new; truth has emptied the shadow. The day of salvation is already here, winter goes away, and the earth blossoms with flowers. The voice of the turtledove, now heard, sings that the time of pruning is at hand. Let us feast, then, without the old leaven, in the unleavened bread of truth, because Christ our Passover has been sacrificed, and the kingdom of God is within us. Therefore, released from the old laws, we no longer live in shadow, we whom Christ himself, the Son of God, made head for the redeemed, has relieved of the cloud of the law and the yoke of statutes, as of a burden of hair. With this head we walk free over the foul head, the dragon conquered. For them the hindrance of hair was fitting, and the shade of the head, whose hearts a veil covered, clouding the sacred mysteries.

But we, the veil of the letter removed, in the light of his body see the truth unclouded, our face unveiled by faith. So let our boy be a nursling of law and grace, of both, fitted for spiritual glory, so that he may bring out things old and new. Strong with chaste acts, let him grow his hair and not know the iron of loss, so that he may keep his faith untouched by the sword of harmful doctrines. But again let the same boy, his mind uncovered from above by the light of the gospel, lay aside the hair of burden and veil, a servant of faith and free by faith. Let the law, as tutor, nourish him first with milk through the breasts of the prophets; let sweet grace feed him with the bread of angels and with honey from the rock. Let him be made drunk with the sobering cup from the fountain of the Holy Spirit. And you yourself soon, joined to your children, may you flourish for God like a palm. And see, your wife in the yoke of Christ overflows like a good vine, this strong rib for you at home and for God, on the sides of your house, bearing her husband's cares, caring for faith, the crown of her holy husband, nourishing your children in chastity, renewing their life for God.

For I believe this branch, spread from your vine, is to be strengthened by God thus, that the branch may himself become the root of his root and draw his stock with him. As that boy of old, by God's providence, sold away into slavery, was sent to the fields of grain, so that he might go before his father and his brothers, and soon, when famine followed through the world, be the feeder of his father and brothers, so this son has perhaps gone before you into the sacred house of bread, so that he may feed his parents and his brothers in the famine of this world, where the earth, more generous in bearing thistles for us, lacks the fruits of good things. And this one can be said to have been sold to a eunuch, because he is the slave of chastity, he who has been handed over to the authority and hand of Severus, a eunuch for the kingdom of God, by whose nurture, strengthened in faith and manly chastity, he will spit out with chaste, proud disdain the enticing pomp of the ensnaring world, like a shameless woman, and escape it by naked flight, and choose to suffer saving punishments rather than deadly joys. As that man once did, so now may this one endure prison for chastity, so that from youth, sitting alone and secluded in a silent house, he may love the roofs of quiet solitude and hedge his ears with thorns.

Let him prefer the house of mourning to houses of feasting, so as to sow joy by weeping, and let him bind himself willingly with hard laws, so as to loose the bonds of guilt, and put on himself the fetter of patience, wandering neither in place nor in sense. And then from lowliness he will earn lofty things, because he who casts down the proud raises up the humble and, giving grace to the small, resists the arrogant. So that Joseph was first made small, that he might be great; and unless he had been a slave, he would not have been mighty in the land of his slavery. Where he had endured slavery and prison, there he obtained a kingdom and wealth, and by enduring the chains of iniquity he received the rewards of justice. Let this one too be proved a guardian of his own body, so that he may hold the bars of the prison. If, from fear of Christ, he binds the vices of the flesh, he will be set over them as over prisoners, and over others still shut in the prison of the world and bound to the age he himself, free and now entrusted to himself, will be teacher and guardian. For he who has kept his own rightly has the custody of others, not that he should wish them to remain in the darkness of the prison, or the free to be bound, but to teach those received by his own example to be stripped of the chains of the world.

And, easily released from his own bonds, he will teach others to be released from crime, and, a good man, governor of his own mind, he will also steer the ship of the church. For how will he preside over his neighbours who does not know how to govern himself? But my speech has slipped and run too far; I shall return to my Joseph. Let him, chaste, flower with the bloom of blessed grace like the lily of paradise, and, modest, with pure heart drink the draught of heavenly prudence; let him, a secret interpreter of God, give answers to doubting mortals, and with the shining glory of good fame become known in the King's house, and, pleasing to the King by the spirit of prudence, be taken up as leader of the kingdom. Let him go as chief of the royal possession, set over a great house, but let him wear a robe of fine linen and a golden chain, insignia fit for Christ; let him put on the woven garment of heavenly grace, robed in innocence. The garment woven of fine linen signifies unbroken faith by its strong thread; for threads of fine linen are said to be stronger even than ropes of broom. Instead of a chain, let him put round his neck the very sweet yoke of golden love, which, sweet to Christ and not troublesome in weight, binds the neck but does not press it.

Among these let him also receive the ring, the sign of royal authority, and, adorned with the threefold gift of the Trinity, let him be carried in the royal chariot. For the royal chariot of Christ is his flesh and his holy body, the church, in which he himself, God, the charioteer of Israel, is carried by thousands of rejoicing ones. Imitate Christ; do good, avoid evil, live the life of heaven on earth. And the King himself will set you in his chariot and make you sharer of his kingdom, and will entrust to you the highest rights of his kingdom and open his treasures. But first he will bestow worthy pledges, so that, adorned with royal insignia, you may ascend the lofty throne of the King and unlock the royal storehouses, wearing the necklace of wisdom, the robe of glory, and the ring of faith. But as that man, mighty through all Egypt, was a foreigner to the soil of Egypt, so let this one too, mightier than the powers of the world, be strong over Egypt, but a pilgrim from the house of the Egyptians, so mingled as not to be mingled, and let the holy race, though in a common dwelling, stand apart from the unholy nation; for now, placed in this world as in Egypt, let him so linger in it as to be a stranger to the business of the world, an inhabitant of the heavenly city.

Living in the flesh, let him be an exile from the life of the flesh, walking in the law of the mind, and let him travel through the whole land of the kingdom entrusted to him in the sacred books. And as that godly man of God, Joseph, went round the borders of Memphis and, gathering the glad riches of fertility in enlarged granaries, rich with the goods of the overflowing years, fed the hungry times, so let this boy of ours walk through the kingdom of God in the sacred writings. For Scripture, breathed by the Holy Spirit, is the mother of the everlasting kingdom, and let him, providing with spiritual care, build ample granaries of the mind, so that he may store abundant food of eternal life in an enlarged breast; and when he has made his land rich with life-giving substance, then you, to enjoy the power of your son, will go like Israel as an old man, and will enter gladly, summoned together with the company of your kindred. And your son will feed your old age in the King's house with the bread he has gained, as the eagle's chick is said to feed its parents in return by mutual care, when the force of old age makes them featherless again, and to bring them back to the nest to be fed, until they are clothed in a body feathered anew and blossom with new feathers.

The old, turned by a new way of nature, have become chicks to their children in turn. But when youth, purged of old age, has made them swift fliers anew, they begin again the forgotten oarage of wings with their children as teachers, and, mingled with the chicks who fed them, they fly together with gentle impulse through the air; it delights them to cut a liquid path through the serene sky in slow sweeps on high, and, calmly fanning the clear air, equal with motionless wings, while they follow one another and in turn go before, they crown it with a garland circle. And of their own accord the dumb birds speak the mysteries of the heavenly kingdom: their bodies, hung on their wings, unfold the sacred likeness of the mighty cross, and their flight, driven round in a circle, promises the reward of labour. So let this chick, son of graces, forerunner of your salvation, be the spiritual rival of the birds that travel through the high clouds, and, supported by the horns and wings of the lofty cross, let him fly to the crown of glory, he who is drawn from his own fountain, so that the whole fountain may flow into its vein; and you, bending down, follow your little stream, so that a river may go forth from all, blessed root of a holy offspring, as fruitful branches of a good tree.

You gave your son to God to be nourished, and he so nourishes you, that in turn the boy may nourish the grey-haired, a little teacher of the old, made, by a wondrous mystery of piety, parent to his parents. Then all, the whole company of the saints, to that body of the head to which the godly will be gathered like eagles, you too will go flying, which they will not be able to do whom the weight of their patrimonies forbids to be lifted from the ground. When first the trumpet thunders from heaven the signal for the raising of the dead, those who are now fat with the spirit of pride and puffed up with grey-haired riches will remain shackled on the ground, nor will they free themselves from their bonds, by which the faithless are now bound, as they wish, and will then be held fast, so that they cannot fly, because the tender clouds will not be able to carry the rich of the falling world, packed and heavy with their goods, to meet God the King; but the sudden ruin of death will overwhelm them, stuck in the mud of their own dregs and pressed down by the masses of their wealth, in the noonday burning of the world. May God the Lord not admit, I pray, the rod of such men into his lot, nor allow us to stretch out wicked hands to the fruits of these rich men.