Letters 44.1–46.3

Who would give me the fountain of your letters, so that I could answer your letter, woven with the varied flower of spiritual graces, eloquent now no longer with the schoolman’s speech but with divine speech, and flowing, as from the land of the divine promise, with the milk of devotion and the honey of wisdom, whose honey and oil you have sucked from the firm rock, that is, from Christ the Lord, who is the foundation of the eternal house? On it you have begun to build the edifice of salvation with living works, and you are striving to build upon it not wood or hay and stubble, but gold, silver, and precious stones, because, laying aside with the old man the hardness, dryness, and lightness of your former heart, you have become a well-watered tree, which, green beside the streams of water, will give its fruit in its season and will never be deprived of the honor of its leaves. Your understanding is gold tried in the fire, and your speech is silver refined sevenfold, which, shining with spiritual grace, brings out the chaste words of the Lord from a pure heart and a tongue that shows the heart. You keep a good and firm treasure in an earthen vessel with no fragile faith, because the vessel of the grace entrusted to you is your mind, which, strengthened within bodily frailty by the princely Spirit, offers a solid guard for the divine gift. Poor and in pain, how shall I obey Wisdom, who has bidden me put my hand to the table of the mighty on this condition, that I know I become a debtor of a like banquet? For see, you have become for me the table of the mighty; you have set before me rich food, which easily carried me off, hungry as I was, into all your words, as into delicacies varied in taste and sight of choice dishes, so that, mindful of my gullet rather than of my poverty, I dared to take what I cannot match. What then shall I do? From whom shall I ask to be given or lent either furniture, with which I might rival the rich man’s dining room with fitting display, or means, by which, poor as I am, I might feast the rich man in turn? Who will help me in the obligation of this debt but you, Lord Jesus, who always bind yourself to every poor man of yours as one who lends, and pledge that you will be the repayer for those who now have no means of repaying? Help me now, and, for my poverty, pay my debt to your Aper out of your riches; water his furrows abundantly and multiply your generations in him, so that he may be in your house like a fruitful olive, flourish like the palm, and grow like the cedar of Lebanon.

But I will return to your letter, in which I rejoice like one who has found great spoil; and although I can bring back nothing like it from my own words, yet, as hungry men do when, having digested the dishes of a rich banquet, they begin to hunger again from their want, comforting their hunger with the memory of past fullness and feeding their empty soul by present thought of the absent feast, so I will weave this letter by going back over your words and will relate my own delight, bestowing nothing on you, and will speak not so much my wish for you as my experience of you. For your letter expressed to me the face of your heart: that letter of good hope, letter of faith unfeigned, letter of pure love. What most holy love it breathes! How sweet and how great a fragrance of Christ is fragrant in it! What wealth of a sincere heart boils up in it! How it pants to us your thirst, and the longing and fainting of your soul for the courts of the Lord! What thanks it gives to God, what it obtains from God, what spectacles it offers me as I read of the graces of God flowering in you and the virtues already at work!

There the little ones, or rather the grown children, of Babylon are dashed against the rock, that is, the vices of confusion and worldly pride, which faith will more readily overcome in combat if, forestalling their weakness as they grow, it takes care to dash them against Christ at their beginnings. There too the cedars of Lebanon, brought down to the ground and raised up into the building of the ark by the joining of love, cut the waves of this world with incorruptible strength. There likewise Christ, roused so as to lead the course of your steering to his own stability, is seen calming winds and seas for you, he who now has passage in the ship of your body and a pillow in your heart, because the sparrow has found a house there, and has in you where to lay his head. There too your wife, not leading her husband to softness or avarice, but brought back to continence and fortitude into the bones of her husband, is wonderful in imitating that great marriage of God with the church; your unity, brought back and restored to you by spiritual bonds as much stronger as they are chaster, the love of Christ couples, into whose body you have both passed from your own.

Blessed are you by the Lord, who has made both one, creating the two in himself, who alone does wonders, who converts not only souls but also affections, temporal into eternal. See, you remain the same spouses as you were, but not spouses as you were; you are yourselves and not yourselves; and as you no longer know Christ according to the flesh, so you no longer know yourselves. This is the change of the right hand of the Most High, which, abiding in itself, renews all things and turns the sea into dry land, drying the streams of vices into the dryness of continence. Blessed is she among women, and faithful and most acceptable to the Lord by this devotion too, by which she has set herself against the necessities of the world for you, like a tower founded on an immovable rock against storms. Truly, founded with the solid footing of a strenuous mind on that rock on which a house built will not fall, she has become for you a tower of protection before the face of the enemy, breaking the waves and whirlwinds of the world by the barrier of her devout service, so that you, shut off from the open sea, may ply the safe boat of an unshaken mind in the harbor of the church, in continual meditation of heavenly studies and works, as with the oars of salvation. ‘For bodily exercise,’ it says, ‘is of little profit; but godliness is profitable for all things,’ which has made you subject to Christ, preferring to lie in the house of the Lord rather than to stand high in the tents of sinners, and has pledged your fellow servant to bodily labors out of spiritual affection for your soul, so that she made her servitude the price of your freedom, serving not the world in worldly affairs but Christ, for whose sake she suffers the world so that you may not. Truly, according to the divine work and word, made as a help for you and having her turning toward you, she hangs on your nod and stands in your stance, walks in your footsteps, lives in your soul, fails for your life so as to be restored in your life. She cares for the cares of the world so that you need not; she cares that you may care for heaven. She seems to possess, so that you may not be possessed by the world and may be possessed by Christ. No discordant will separates her from your purpose; rather, what is more wonderful, a harmonious faith divides by work her who is joined by will. For administering, without captivity of mind, the material of captivity in freedom of spirit, she has strengthened her hands for works of virtue; she has stretched out her arms to useful things, having girded her loins with strength, and, not eating the bread of idleness, she has become for you like a ship that trades from afar, by a necessary division rendering through herself to Caesar what is Caesar’s, so that through you she may minister to God what is God’s. For when she has paid tribute, as it is written, to whom tribute is due, then too, opening her hands to the poor and holding out the fruit of her labor to the needy, she pays a spiritual tax and supplies the revenue of the property for the pay of your warfare, more greedy for saving loss than for deadly gain. ‘When she is such, the heart of her husband trusts in her.’ ‘For she does,’ as it is written, ‘good to her husband all her life, and not evil,’ and therefore you do not anxiously manage what is done in your earthly house; what is done in the heavenly house you strenuously pursue as a free man. Nor are you put to shame when you speak with your enemies in the gate, because a wise woman, such as has been given you, more precious than precious stones, makes you circumspect at the doors of the church. ‘And she has made double cloaks for her husband.’ Does it not seem to you that she is weaving these double cloaks for you and purple or fine linen garments for herself, since her faith doubles your grace, because ‘a good woman is a crown to her husband,’ and in turn your honor is purple to her, because, by the grace of the Lord tempering it, clothed simply in the unity of faith, you clothe each other over with the working of spiritual virtues? You are her head in Christ, and she your foundation, by whose work your foot stands in the way of the Lord, and whom the joining of faith, as fellow members in the Lord’s body, will make a sharer of her head; because even in a difference of tasks, yet with the consent of a harmonious mind kept, she is joined to the resolve of your purpose. While you, faithful and skillful, exercise the stewardship entrusted to you as a multiplier of the master’s talents, she does not treasure up on earth what she works out of earthly fruits, but lends it at interest rather to your works than to the ruinous gains of avarice. And therefore she will be given the fruit of her hands, and her husband will be praised in the Lord in the gates of the daughter of Zion, who for you both prepares, by a different labor of the same work but equal zeal, a crop sown for a common harvest, so that on that day you may come together in exultation bringing your sheaves, she the servant of the seed and you the sower of the ministry. For she will not be cheated of a share in your reward by the merit of this exchange, in which, obeying not her own will but your salvation, she proves by the evidence of this very work the judgment of her faith, showing clearly how much better she too judges contempt of the world than its use, since she has preferred spiritual things for you, not putting this world before Christ but putting you before herself.

May the Lord add to you and to your children. For the mercy of the Lord, earned by the parents, will raise up their children, as it is written, and they will be enriched with the good things of the Lord. And I hope that, as your wife is like an abundant vine on the sides of your house, overflowing for you with the fruits of godliness, so that a thousand fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand, so your children too will deserve to stand around the table of the Lord with you like young olive shoots. I think they are now being fed, like eaglets, on the food of divine wisdom and your good way of life, so that they may learn already now to eat the flesh laid waste by their parents’ prey, that is, the fleshly enmities which oppose the spirit, and to consume them with spiritual appetite, and to fly up into the heights of virtues with strengthened oars of wings. Let them be brought up like the sons of the prophets, who, avoiding the tumultuous dwelling of the city in order to compose their soul in the peace of silence, measured out secluded dwellings for themselves beside the bed of the Jordan. Let them be consecrated like the sons of Aaron, not, however, those who, kindling strange fire to the Lord, were burned up by the divine fire, which they lacked themselves, but like Eleazar and Ithamar, deservedly perpetual successors of their father’s dignity, as heirs not degenerate from his holiness.

And it seems to me that anyone kindles strange fire who, kindling in the sanctuary of his heart the fire of some bodily or worldly desire, dares to approach the altars of the Lord, which receive the kindling of no fire but that of which he says, ‘I have come to cast fire on the earth, and what do I wish, if it is already kindled?’ With this fire, Lord Jesus, kindle us always, so that we may be enlightened in our senses and burn up in our vices; for this fire alone, which is from you, will resist the eternal fire. Having a heart burning on the way of the Lord, we kindle to the Lord not a strange fire but his own, and, protected by this fire amid the fires of the world, like those boys in the furnace, we shall be bedewed with flames as the blast whistles among us, and we shall sing a hymn to the Lord amid the refreshing fires, with the Son of God singing with us. For he himself said that he would always be present in the agreement of two or three. Hence we trust that he dwells also in the midst of your house, where in you and your children one company of numerous souls is gathered. In it we pray that you, absent from us only in body, sharing in spiritual presence, may water the thirsty little garden of our soul not only with words but with prayer, which we can cultivate neither with our own hands, being weak, nor with hired ones, being poor; and we do not find by what way we may seek our living, because we are not strong enough to dig and are ashamed to beg. So we need all the more the help of your prayers, because who will hire useless workmen or give to those who do not ask? Yet sometimes those who have poor and uncultivated fields, despairing of fruits from their own help or hand, turn all their hopes to divine aid; and often, when the outcome is granted according to their faith, as religion makes up for diligence, devout prayers have helped those whom skillful cultivation has failed.

Pray, then, that the Lord almighty, who has set rivers in the desert, may turn our dry land into springs of water, strike and break the hardness of our heart, so as to turn this rock too into a pool of water. And would that he would sprinkle us with that dew with which he soaked that mystic fleece on the threshing floor. ‘For the dew that is from him is health to us.’ Pray, I say, that, deigning to enter our little garden, he may bid the north wind arise and the south wind come, so that, as they breathe life-giving breezes, our shoots may come alive. And if, entering his vineyard, he finds our tree without fruit, may he spare to cut it down, and, with mercy delaying, trust the farmer who intercedes and promises to wring fruit by his diligence from the barren fig tree. For the Lord himself, who intercedes for our sins and who calls the things that are not as though they were, is able to make even of us, needy and dry, a fruitful tree, and to fatten an empty soul with the fat of his word as with a basket of dung, because it is written: ‘From his grace the borders of the desert will grow fat.’ This basket of dung, which makes a fertile tree of a barren one, seems to me to be especially spiritual humility, by which, crushing our heart with repentance for past vanity, we empty out what is vain and receive the sap of virtue, by which we who were barren in works of righteousness are made fruitful. It is good for us, then, to enter into our recesses and to humble our soul in fasting, by which one fasts from the works of darkness, so that from the dung of this humility, which is cheap to the world but dear to God, it may be lifted up by him who raises the needy from the earth and lifts the poor from the dunghill. The grace of God be with you.

‘Your word is always a lamp to my feet and a light to my paths.’ So whenever I receive a letter from your most blessed holiness, I feel the darkness of my folly scattered, and, as though the eye-salve of your explanation were poured on the eyes of my mind, I see more clearly, with the night of ignorance driven off and the mist of doubt wiped away. I have often felt this given me at other times through the gift of your letters, but especially by this little book of your recent letter, whose bearer, as welcome as he was worthy, was a man blessed by the Lord, our brother Quintus the deacon. He delivered to us the blessing of your mouth a long time after he had come to Rome, when I came there, according to my yearly custom, after the Lord’s Pasch, to venerate the apostles and martyrs. Nevertheless, wiping out the time he had spent in Rome without my knowing, he seemed to me to come most freshly from your presence, so that I believed he had come to me from you at that very moment when I first saw him and when he offered me the full fragrance of your sweetness in your words, fragrant with the chastity of heavenly ointment. I confess, however, to your venerable oneness of heart that I could not read the volume itself at Rome as soon as I had received it. For the crowds there were so great that I could not examine your gift carefully and enjoy it as I wished, namely by reading it straight through, once I had begun to read. So, as is usually done, in the secure expectation of a feast prepared, I restrained the hunger of my mind, eager though it was, and, in sure hope of being filled, since I held in my hand the loaves of my desire in the volume to be devoured, which afterward, as I devoured it, was very sweet both in my mouth and in my belly, I easily held back my gullet, gaping for the honeycombs of your letter, until I left the city and could devote wholly to this task the day to be spent at a halt on the journey, which we had in the town of Formiae, so that I might feast on the spiritual delights of your letter, free from all the dregs of cares and the stifling of crowds.

What then shall I, lowly and earthly, answer to this wisdom which has been given you from above, which this world does not grasp and which no one understands unless he is wise with the wisdom of God and eloquent with the word of God? So, because I have proof of Christ speaking in you, ‘in God I will praise your words,’ and I will not fear ‘the terror of the night,’ because you have taught me in the spirit of truth the wholesome temper of a mind moderating itself over perishing mortals, by which you saw that the blessed mother and grandmother Melania wept for the bodily death of her only son with a silent grief indeed, yet not with a sorrow dry of a mother’s tears. As a spirit nearer and more equal to her soul, you understood her restrained and grave tears more deeply, and, while keeping the manly fortitude of a woman perfect in Christ, you contemplated her mother’s heart better, from the likeness of your own heart, as from an equal standing. So you perceived that she wept, first moved by natural affection, then pricked by a weightier cause, not so much for that human loss, that she had lost in the present world her only son, who had paid the debt of mortal condition, as because he had been taken almost overtaken in worldly vanity, since the ambition of senatorial rank had not yet left him; and so she could not think of him as taken up according to the holy greed of her prayers, as having passed from the glory of a holy way of life to the glory of the resurrection, to receive a rest and crown in common with his mother, if in the life of this world he had, by his mother’s example, preferred sackcloth to the toga and the monastery to the senate.

Nevertheless, as I think I have told your holiness before, that same man departed enriched with such works that, if he did not wear his mother’s humble nobility in his dress, he displayed it in his mind; for, according to the Lord’s word, he was so meek in his ways and humble in heart that he is not undeservedly believed to have entered into the Lord’s rest, since there is a remnant for the peaceable man, and the meek shall possess the land, pleasing God in the land of the living. For surely he fulfilled that saying of the apostle too, not only with the silent affection of a meek man but also with conspicuous religious duties: though he was a colleague in the rank and honor of the high ones of this world, yet he did not, like the glorious of the earth, mind high things, but, as a perfect imitator of Christ, agreed with the lowly, and persisted all day long in showing mercy and lending. Hence his seed too has become mighty on the earth among those strong ones of God who have been greatly exalted on the earth, so that the holy merit of the man is revealed even by the most blessed visitation of his family and house. ‘The generation of the upright,’ it says, ‘will be blessed’; a glory that does not fall and riches that do not slip away are in his house, a house built in the heavens not by the labor of hands but by the holiness of works. But I cease to recount more of the memory of a man as dear to me as he was devoted to Christ, since I recall that I told not a little about him in an earlier letter, and I can proclaim nothing better or holier of the blessed mother of this son, Melania, a root like that of holy branches, than your holiness has deigned to speak and discuss about her. For since I, a sinner with unclean lips, could say nothing worthy, being far from the merits of her faith and the virtues of her soul, you, that man of Christ, the teacher of Israel in the church of truth, were made ready by the grace of God, providing for the better, as a worthier herald of so manly a soul in Christ, you who, as I said, beheld with a nearer spirit her mind strengthened by divine power and praised with worthier eloquence her devotion mingled with strength.

You have deigned to ask me what the activity of the blessed will be in that age after the resurrection of the flesh. But I consult you, as teacher and spiritual physician, about the present state of my life, that you may teach me to do the will of God, to walk after Christ in your footsteps, and first to die that gospel death by which we anticipate bodily dissolution by a voluntary departure, withdrawing from the life of this world not by dying but by decision, a life which is wholly full of temptations, or, as you once said to me, is wholly temptation. Would, then, that my ways might be so directed after your footsteps that, loosing by your example the old shoe from my feet, I may break my bonds and, free, exult to run the course, so that I may attain that death by which you have died to this world so as to live to God, with Christ living in you, whose death and life are known in your body and heart and mouth, because your heart does not mind earthly things nor does your mouth speak the works of men, but the word of Christ abounds in your breast, and the Spirit of truth is poured out on your tongue, gladdening the city of God with the rush of the heavenly river.

What power works this death in us but love, which is strong as death? For it so blots out and destroys this world for us as to fulfill the effect of death through the affection for Christ, turned to whom we are turned away from this world, and living to whom we die to the elements of this world. Nor do we decide matters in their sight and use as though still living, because our portion is the death of Christ, whose resurrection from the dead we do not lay hold of in glory unless we imitate his death on the cross by mortifying the members and senses of the flesh, so that we may live no longer by our own will but by his, whose will is our sanctification, and who died and rose for us for this reason, that we may live no longer to ourselves but to him who died and rose for us, and who gave us the pledge of his promise by his Spirit, as he placed the pledge of our life in heaven in his own body, which is of our body. Hence ‘now our expectation is the Lord, and our substance,’ which was made by him, is with him and in him and through him, who was conformed to the body of our lowliness, so as to conform us to the body of his glory and to set us with him in the heavenly places. Therefore, for those who will one day be counted worthy of eternal life in the glory of his kingdom, so as to be with him, as the apostle says, and to remain with him, as the Lord himself said to the Father, ‘I will that where I am they also may be with me,’ there is without doubt what you have in the psalms: ‘Blessed are those who dwell in your house; they will praise you for ever and ever.’

I think, however, that this praise is to be uttered with the voices of those singing together, even though the bodies of the risen saints will be changed, so as to be like the Lord’s body as it appeared after the resurrection, in which the living image of human resurrection shone forth, so that the Lord himself, in the very body in which he had suffered and risen, was as it were a mirror of contemplation for all. For when he had risen in the same flesh in which he had died and been buried, he often showed, when brought into the company of men, all the functions of all his members expressed to their eyes and ears. But if even the angels, whose created nature is simply spiritual, are said to have tongues, with which they sing praises to the Lord their Creator and never cease giving thanks, how much more will men, even with bodies now spiritual after the resurrection, yet with all the members of the glorified flesh remaining, and their shapes and proportions throughout all the members, have tongues in their mouths and give voice with speaking tongues, by which to utter the divine praises or the affections of their feelings and joys in words? Perhaps the Lord will even add this to the grace and glory of his saints in the ages of his kingdom, that they may sing with tongues and voices as much better as they have advanced by a blessed change to a more blessed nature of bodies, so that, set now in spiritual bodies, they may perhaps speak no longer in human words but in those angelic and heavenly words such as the apostle heard in paradise. And perhaps for this reason he testified that those words were unspeakable for man: because new tongues are already being prepared for the saints among the other kinds of rewards. Men of this age are therefore not yet permitted to use them, so that the immortals may speak with these now befitting their glory, of whom it is said, ‘For they will shout and sing a hymn,’ without doubt in heaven, where they will be with the Lord and delight in the abundance of peace, rejoicing in the sight of the throne, casting bowls and crowns before the feet of the Lamb, and singing to him a new song, gathered to the choirs of angels, powers, dominions, and thrones, so that they too, singing with unending voice with the Cherubim and Seraphim and those four living creatures, may say, ‘Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts,’ and the rest that you know.

This, then, is what I, needy and poor, that foolish one, your little one, whom as a truly wise man you are accustomed to bear with, ask: that you teach me your knowledge or opinion on this, because I know that you have been enlightened by the spirit of revelation from the very Leader and Fount of the wise, so that, as you have known the past and see the present, you may also judge about the future: what you think about these everlasting voices of heavenly creatures, or of those dwelling even above the heavens in the sight of the Most High, and by what organs, in the end, they are expressed. For although the apostle, by saying, ‘If I speak with the tongues of angels,’ showed that they have a speech proper to their nature, or, so to speak, their race, as much higher than human senses and words as the very creation and station of the angels excels mortal inhabitants and earthly dwellings, yet perhaps he spoke of ‘tongues of angels’ for kinds of voices and speech, just as, discussing the variety of charisms, he counts among the gifts of graces ‘kinds of tongues,’ meaning surely that it is for a sign that individuals were given to speak in the speech of many nations. But the voice of God, often sent forth to the saints from a cloud, also shows that there can be speech without a tongue, since the tongue is a little member of the body and a great one. But perhaps, because God placed the function of the voice in this member, he called the words and voices even of the incorporeal creation of angels a tongue, as Scripture is accustomed to assign the names of members to God too according to the kinds of his operations. Pray for us and teach us.

Our dearest and sweetest brother Quintus hastens to return from us to you as quickly as he came slowly back to us; and this letter, fuller of erasures than of lines, speaks of his urgency in demanding a reply; the page shows the excessive haste of the said exactor. For he came to us on the day before the Ides of May to ask for the reply, and obtained leave to be dismissed on the Ides before the sixth hour. Judge, then, whether I have commended or accused him with such testimony. Perhaps, or rather without doubt, he will be judged more praiseworthy than blameworthy, who most justly hastened back from darkness, which we are in comparison with your light, to his own light.

Even a short letter from your oneness of heart is a great refreshment to us, as a thirsty field is revived by dew in a dearth of rain. So we confess that we were refreshed by your letter, short as it was, yet yours, brought by the boy of our common sons; but we were also afflicted again, because you told us that you are still suffering at Rome in the heat of anxiety and in uncertainty about your stay. May the Lord grant us to be gladdened by the Lord as soon as possible about your affairs, so that, as we suffer with you in your anxiety, we may rejoice with you when you are cheered, and may begin to hope for the fruit of your presence, if you begin to be certain of your decision or of the Lord’s good pleasure concerning you.

Indeed, your advice, given with that affection by which you love us as yourself, that I should take up the study of Greek letters more attentively, I gladly accept; but I cannot carry it out, unless perhaps the Lord grants my wishes so that I may enjoy your company longer. For how shall I be able to make progress in an unknown language if there is no one from whom to learn what I do not know? For I believe that in my translation of holy Clement, besides the other failings of my talent, you noticed above all this want of skill: that some things, where I could not understand or express the words, I translated by grasping, or rather, to speak more truly, guessing the sense. All the more do I need the mercy of God, that he may grant me a fuller supply of you, because for a poor man it will be riches to gather with the eager mouth of a hungry heart even the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table.

At the very time when this was being written, there fell under my eyes, in the reading set out, that chapter of Genesis in which Judah is blessed by Jacob. And because the Lord had given this most fitting occasion, it pleased me after a time to knock at the doors of your heart. So, if you love me, or rather because you love me much, I ask you to write to me how you understand the blessings of the patriarchs themselves, and, if you know anything in them difficult in meaning and worth knowing, to let me know it; but especially about that chapter in which he says, ‘Binding his foal to the vine and his ass’s colt to the haircloth’: what is his foal, what the ass, or what the ass’s colt? And why is his own foal bound to the vine, but the ass’s colt to haircloth?