Letters 5.1–6.3

And did you think you had to excuse yourself, dearest brother, for not coming to us in person as you had promised and we expected? But you came to us with the better part of yourself rather than with the part by which you stayed: remaining at home in body alone, you came to us in will, in spirit, and in word. And yet you were not wholly absent even in body, since in your servants, joined to you in holy service in the Lord, the members of your body came to us. Therefore, truly holy brother, deservedly most beloved and one in heart with us in Christ, the crown of godliness is already laid up for you in heaven, which the righteous judge will give on that day to you and to all who, like you, with perfect love love their neighbor in Christ, or Christ in their neighbor. For, looking at spiritual things through bodily ones, we readily infer from the plain love you show to the brother you see that heavenly, faithful, and perfect love with which you love God whom you do not see. We prove it by the obedience of faith, if, that is, by loving one another we prove, as you prove, that we are disciples of that Master who loved his own to the end and laid down his life for his friends with the same power by which he also took it up again.

Therefore, truly most holy brother, deservedly blessed, you will have a place and a reward in the land of the living above the Queen of the South. For she, a sinner, being still a companion of the nations not yet visited, though already a forerunner of those who would be, did not have the law of the letter but had the faith of the law engraved on the fleshly tablets of the heart by the spirit of counsel and godliness. For her own benefit and from zeal for great and saving gain, she was roused from so far away at the end of the earth and longed to hear divine wisdom, so as to receive what she did not have and drink in the light of knowledge that she lacked. Even then, as a queen who was to come from the nations, she longed for her Bridegroom; she ran in the fragrance of Christ, which his prophet breathed out far and wide, “clothed in a robe of gold, surrounded with variety,” forgetting her people and her father’s house; barbarian by race, not in mind, a foreigner openly but a Jew in secret, she desired to become a fellow citizen of the saints. Hence by the mouth of the Judge himself she is judged worthy not only of the heavenly prize of the blessed resurrection but also of the apostles’ power to judge the adulterous Jews, because, admiring Christ in Solomon, she had fulfilled the true love of the heavenly queen, the church, foreseen in a mystical image. If, then, a divine reward awaits her in the future, although she too received a large part of her reward here at that time by obtaining the hearing of heavenly wisdom she desired, what rewards will be paid at last to you, who desired me with equal grace and greater effort, since with less hope of present benefit to yourself? For what, I ask, did you have to desire in me? What did you hope to take from me that you did not have? What good could you get from conversing with an unskilled man? What profit would there be in the sight of a sinner? What could the wise get from the foolish, the upright from the crooked, the blessed from the wretched, the strong from the weak, one rich in the Lord from the poor?

Truly you seek not your own things but the things of Christ, because you had no merit or gain of your own from me in mind, but only that love which is the fullness of the Gospel, both when you thought of your journey and when you troubled your servants. You are blessed, because I have nothing with which to repay you; but you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous by him who testifies that he is loved and received even in his least ones. Hence he also said this, making himself by his words a debtor for any servant of his name, even a false or useless one: “He who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward.” For me, of course, my burden will not be lessened by this, even though, a sinner, I receive from a righteous man the honor due to the righteous; but to you the very righteousness of your opinion will be credited for a reward of good, because by a holy mistake but with a true affection of godliness you have honored the good Lord even in a bad servant.

What then shall we wretches do, who will owe an account and a penalty even for this, that we receive honors we do not deserve and, being only hearers of the law, are proclaimed as doers? So much the more is the sluggishness of a damnable idleness held against us, the hunger of barren souls, and hands withered for good works, when, hearing through your words what is true praise for worthy servants of Christ such as you, and therefore false praise for us, we recognize how great a debt binds us, since, comparing your judgment with our actions, we do not find in ourselves what we hear said of us. For what similar thing can we boast of? Though one must boast in the Lord, since we have nothing that we have not received by his gift, yet in my case a more advanced age and a personality honored from my early years could ripen me into greater seriousness; besides, a weaker body and a wasted flesh could wear down the pursuit of pleasures; moreover, this mortal life itself, often exercised in labors and hardships, could produce hatred of disturbing things and, out of the necessity of hope and the fear of uncertainties, increase devotion to religion. Then, when I seemed at last to have found rest from false charges and travels, neither occupied with public affairs and far from the noise of the forum, I celebrated the leisure of the countryside and the worship of the church in a pleasing tranquility in domestic retirement; and so, my mind having been gradually withdrawn from worldly crowds and fitted to the heavenly precepts, I fought my way more easily to contempt for the world and to the company of Christ, as if by a road bordering on this way of life.

You, dearest brother, turned to the Lord by a greater miracle, since you were in the bloom of youth, richer in praise, lighter in the burdens of inheritance, not poorer in the substance of means, and still moving in the very theater of the world, that is, the throng of the forum, holding the palm of an eloquent name, when with a sudden rush you shook off the slavish yoke of sin and broke the deadly chains of flesh and blood. Neither the riches heaped up from your marriage into a consular family, nor, after your marriage ended, the freedom to sin and an unmarried youth, could call you back from the narrow entrance of salvation and the steep road of virtue to that soft and spacious road of the many. Blessed are you, who fled from the counsel of the ungodly and refused to stand in the way of sinners and disdained to sit in the seat of pestilence, so that by a lofty humility you might lie at the feet of the Crucified.

You, then, a true doer of the law and the Gospel and no deaf hearer, nailing body and world to the cross, turned away from the delights of youth and the evil joys of the present life as from poisons and griefs, spurning the burdens of inheritances as dung. Deservedly you obtained a holy mother-in-law, more generous than any parent, as an eternal mother, because you had put the heavenly Father before your earthly parent: following the example of the apostles, you left your father in the tossing boat, that is, in the uncertainty of this life, with the nets of his affairs and the entanglement of the inheritance, and followed Christ. And, no less rich in the household wealth of talent, not receiving praise from men and loftily disregarding vain glory, you preferred the preaching of fishermen to all of Cicero’s writings and to your own. You fled to the silence of godliness to escape the uproar of iniquity. You chose to fall silent to mortals, so that with a pure mouth you might speak of divine things, and expiate a tongue polluted by doglike eloquence with the praises of Christ and the very remembrance of the holy name.

O true Israelite, who have seen the God of Jacob with so faithful a mind and, as though strengthened by wrestling with the Lord himself, have prevailed against the prince of this world and conquered the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places with the shield of faith and the weapons of righteousness, choosing to please Christ rather than men, and to be foolish to men rather than to God! You have preferred the scandal of the cross to all the eloquence and all the wisdom of this world, so that what is foolishness to those who perish you, admitted to the portion of salvation, might know to be the power and wisdom of God, as it is made plain to all who are to be saved. Blessed are you, brother, because flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but the Father who is in heaven, through our Lord Jesus Christ, who turned their wisdom and made it foolish and chose the weak and foolish things of the world, so as to confound this world by the very things for which it disdains to know God. Remember us, then, all the more, since you rely on richer merits for power in prayer. For though our lamp is already lit in the light of Christ, we still lie hidden under the bushel of our sins, and we long to be brought out by the hand of you who, conspicuous by the light of faith and grace as much as of works, shine through the seven lampstands of the Lord, and to have our head anointed with your oil, so that we may not burn dimly like a smoking wick (which nevertheless the merciful Lord does not quench), but may shine with a pure light of faithful example, worthy to be preferred even to others; although, by the grace of the Lord shining in the darkness, we live not obscurely, through the brightness of his name, even if, as you have heard, we live in retirement. For in our upper room we keep silent in seclusion, because “it is good for a man,” as the prophet says, “to sit alone and keep silence.” Hence the Lord himself taught us to be silent even in causes that cry out, he who “like a lamb before the shearer did not open his mouth,” and who nevertheless said, “I have kept silence; shall I always keep silence?” So we silently await his will and judgment, who is able both to be silent now in us and, when he wills, to intercede for us.

Meanwhile, however, we have felt that our sins have harmed us in this, that we have not deserved to see you; and we think this has been added to our ills, that we have also been the cause of trials for you, since, as you told us, you suffered illness twice over, struck down as often as you tried to come to us. But since, as it is written, the Lord our God himself often tests us to prove our love, with which we love one another in his peace, we hope from your faith rather than from ours that, if the trial that came first has worked approval in you, it may no longer be able to frustrate the wishes of a love thus proved. For we know the spirit in you is so willing that we do not fear that the ever-weak flesh will prevail to hinder our common desire; strengthening it by faith, you will subdue it to the mind, so that it is forced to be able in Christ to do what of itself it cannot, if you say to it: “Do not fight against the spirit; agree with your adversary on the way, and there will be peace for your bones,” and, “When my heart has exulted in the living God, then my flesh too will rest in hope.”

Hold fast, then, brother, what you hold, lest another take your crown. It is like this: do not cease to will what you have willed, and keep your resolve to come to us unchanged. He in whose power and favor it lies that we may prosperously do what we piously will will bring your devout efforts to the fruit of your vow. For we know that for one who desires the good all things work together for good. And we too, which was indeed a most welcome sign of our agreement in all things, received your letter telling of your illnesses while we were ill ourselves, and we proved in ourselves the apostle’s saying, that the members of one body suffer with one another in feeling. For we felt ourselves restored by the very fact that you had written that you had recovered, so that, though placed in different lands, we experienced the unity of the Spirit working in us, as we shared equally both troubles and remedies by a silent connection between separated bodies.

So you too, brother one in heart with me and the better portion of ourselves in Christ, put away any sadness that you may have felt in your devout mind at the news of our chastisement, for “the Lord has chastened us sorely, but he has not given us over to death.” Visited by the healing hand of the Almighty, we were being nursed from our present illness toward the hope of health, softening our scourgings by mutual consolations. For the very fellowship of suffering gave us great and sweet comfort, since the very likeness of our blows seemed to have met in us not without the will of the Lord, without whose command not even a sparrow falls to the ground. So also recovery had begun to come to both of us together, whether because each breathed more easily with the other’s relief, or because the Lord, the author of unity, binding all his own with an undivided Spirit, would not allow even our bodily substance to disagree.

Yet this was not the only reason that delayed our servants. For our Vigilantius too, both before he reached us and after he arrived in Campania, suffered from violent fevers, and, being himself a fellow member, he suffered with our illness by a shared labor. In short, that catechumen, who was not yet a member of our body, did not feel our wounds and remained healthy and free of our sickness, because flesh still foreign could not feel the pain of a frame not its own. So when our Vigilantius began to be able to travel, only then did I decide that a reply should be sent. For we admit that both wanted to hurry long before; but since, before regaining his strength, the one who could not would have hurried rashly, and the one who could would have done so undutifully, we held back both against their will, since they were willing but we could not consent, by keeping silent.

Therefore, as we wrote above, after an illness borne in common labor, restored by the prayers of saints and dear ones, and in great part, we believe, by yours, as the Lord looked on us more mercifully, yet still weak in our exhausted bodies (in which indeed the apostle teaches us to boast, whom weakness, as he proclaims, made strong, because, of course, the flesh, which wars against the spirit, when it is broken by ill health, its strength likewise broken, cannot overcome spiritual power): weak, then, in the flesh, to the advantage of the spirit, which exults at the loss of the flesh, rejoices as it were in the tribulation of a hostile matter, and grows strong through the weakening of the tamed body, but sound and strong in the love we have for you through the Lord Jesus, we have sent this letter for your comfort, just as we meanwhile keep yours, until we see you yourself, as you have promised and as we never cease to hope from the Lord.

There are many things that ought to invite you to us and call you away from your homeland for a little while, above all love of peace and flight from jealousy, which is kindled most of all by the sight or neighborhood of a rival way of life. Indeed, in our case the distance of the City quenches the fires of the jealous clergy at Rome, and there “all iniquity stops its mouth,” because through our absence the flame of hatred, as though its fuel were withdrawn, grows sluggish and cold and does not dare to break out into speech, though envy gnashes its teeth, while, conscious of its own iniquity, it blushes at itself and has nowhere ready to kindle the torches of a spiteful mind. Yet the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, abounds in the hearts of very many, and all Campania venerates the work of God our Savior in us. At Rome too only a few, even among the clergy itself, by whom alone we seem to be scandalized, are stirred by the bite of envy. But thanks be to the Lord, who has granted even to me, his most wretched sinner, to say, “For they have hated me without cause.” As far as I am concerned, however, with those also who hate my peace I am peaceable in mind. For if anyone wishes to be contentious, our custom does not admit it. Of these very men who are said to hate us and to separate us from the fellowship of their holiness, hardly a faint rumor slips through to us, and it is shut out from our ears, fenced with a hedge of thorns, like a cold breeze or the troublesome hum of an empty gnat.

But our fellow servants, your servants, will be able to tell you more fully how little harm the haughty aloofness of the pope of the City does to the Lord’s grace toward us. In the few days they were with us they saw how assiduous, how constant were the services of anxious brothers, monks, bishops, clerics, and often even laymen, throughout the whole time of our illness. I may boast of this to your oneness of heart, yet only of the Lord’s grace, whose work and gift this also is: there was hardly a bishop in all Campania who thought it right not to visit us, and those whom weakness or some necessity held back were present through clerics and letters sent in their place. African bishops, too, sent men to visit us at the beginning of summer. This being so, you see how much you ought to hasten to our lowliness, both to take away a little of the occasion from those who seek an occasion, and to go abroad from your homeland for the increase of grace or love, while as a guest in the body you are still abroad from Christ; for the Truth himself testifies that no prophet is accepted in his own country.

I confess, though nothing could be given me more welcome than your presence, that my desire for your presence has been kindled more fiercely because you have promised that many spiritual brothers will come with you to us. Will that time come, I ask, and will that day ever dawn on which I shall welcome your brotherhood, coming with a band of God’s elect as companions, in the lap of my lord Felix, now our common patron, and on which we may rejoice together in the Lord, in his very presence, over what I now ask to be obtained by his prayers, when, embracing you all together and in turn, I shall rightly say as we sing together: “This is plainly the day that the Lord has made; let us exult and rejoice in it,” for “it is good and pleasant for brothers to dwell together in unity”? Then I will settle you not only as a lodger in the monastery of the neighboring martyr, but also as a tenant in his garden, but rent-free, since you have already received your denarius from the householder, besides those which the same Lord has already generously given the innkeeper for your wounds, so that, healed with the oil of mercy and the wine of grace, you might be hired more usefully for the Lord’s vineyard with your body made whole.

I already seem to see my little garden better cultivated as the Lord’s hired laborers arrive with you and work with us. Nor is it hard to judge how easily they will finish the labor of light cultivation whom Christ chose for his vineyard and would not allow to stand idle to God in the empty marketplace of this world. Already in mind and thought I picture the joys of home after the holy kiss, when, under the inebriating spirit of love, we shall mingle a sober gladness in chaste cups, and celebrate holy feasts not in the leaven of wickedness but in the unleavened bread of sincerity, singing to the Lord in hymns and spiritual songs, singing to God with tongues and hearts, doing whatever we do in word or deed in the name of Jesus Christ, giving thanks to the Father through him. He who makes those of one way of life dwell in one house will, I hope, make us dwell among ourselves in himself. He who made both one and, when lifted up, drew all things to himself, who, humbled, had made peace for all things, reconciling the world to God, when he has filled our mouth with joy by the presence of your oneness of heart, we shall say: “The Lord has done great things for us,” and in the abundance of our gladness we shall bless you from the house of the Lord, because you are blessed by the Lord, you who have come in the name of the Lord. May you receive the cup of salvation and eat the bread of the blessed in the kingdom of God; for you are our fullness and joy before the Lord Jesus.

Dare, then, to break out, relying not on your own means and strength but leaning and resting on Christ, because his rod and his staff comfort, sustain, and guide us. He who bears our sorrows and took up our infirmities, who gives strength to the weary and strengthens feeble knees, will himself make your way spotless and without stumbling; he will gird you with strength and make your feet like a deer’s, so that you may exult like a giant to run your course, and the weakness of fearful flesh cannot hinder you, who walk not by the flesh but by the Spirit. For in serving Christ we use the body’s service, but rather the mind’s command. And so the flesh, commanded, accompanies our will, directed by Christ’s authority; the body draws firmness from the strength of the mind and, as a servant, shapes its obedience to its master’s bearing. And thus strength is made perfect in weakness, when the soul, serving God with the consent of a tamed flesh, fulfills the duties of virtue through the ministry of weakness.

Set out, then, and proceed prosperously, and the right hand of God will lead you wonderfully. His mercy and grace will go before your face, and even if you leave home weak, you will gain strength by going. For those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles. If, then, you have a heart burning on the way, your youth will be renewed like the eagle’s; you will run and not be weary, you will walk and not faint. No staff, no wallet, no purse will weigh you down, nor shoes nor two tunics hinder you; but, stripped of fleshly bonds as one allowed to stand barefoot on holy ground, with loins girt with a belt weighed down by no money, you will run your way in haste, as the Lord’s Passover and the work of Christ must be done in the time that is short: “the God of our salvation will make your journey prosperous”; every valley will be filled for you and every hill brought low, so that the rough places of iniquity become level ways, lest you strike your foot anywhere on the journey, “for he has given his angels charge over you to keep you in all your ways.” And the Lord himself, your protection, will surround you with the shield of his peace, shining before you in the light of his countenance and spreading over you the shadow of his wings, so that “the sun shall not burn you by day nor the moon by night.” In every place he will keep and bless your going in and coming out, so that everywhere you may find a son of peace and your peace may come upon every host.

But if perhaps, as you set out, you weep at the thought of being torn from dear people or familiar places, your temporary sadness will be turned into eternal joy. “Going they went and wept,” it says, “casting their seeds; but coming they will come with exultation, carrying their sheaves.” So you, even if you weep in coming, will rejoice in returning and reap in joy what you have sown in tears. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with your whole house, not made with hands, for you are the living temple of God, built on the foundations of the apostles in Christ God, my brother one in heart, venerable, most beloved and most longed for. I ask you to greet our holy parent, your mother in Christ and fellow heir, with the veneration she deserves. My partner in the Lord greets your brotherhood with the affection with which she venerates you. And greet from us with much respect all the holy brotherhood that we are sure lives with you. All who are with us in the Lord greet you, such as Proforus, from among the Hebrews, and Restitutus, who loves the Lord and loves you, whom he has come to know in Christ, and greatly longs for you.

In the heading of the letter I was afraid to imitate your brotherhood, which surpasses me in all things, because I believed it safer to write truthfully. So take care hereafter, servant of Christ called to freedom, not to write yourself the servant of a man, a brother, and a lesser fellow servant; for it is the sin of flattery rather than the justification of humility to give to any man, not to say a most wretched sinner, the honor due to the one Lord, the one Master on earth, the one God. Love from a pure heart and unfeigned faith is enough; whatever is more than this comes from evil. I beseech you, brother, by the Lord, to look upon my presumption toward you with the spirit of revelation; otherwise I may fear offending you by so talkative a letter. But with love, which bears all things, grace ought to be increased by the very thing that usually produces disgust where no love tempers weariness. For while dictating, as I think of you and am wholly in you, I speak as though to one present after a long separation and forget to bring my words to an end.

We have sent you a Campanian loaf from our cell as a blessing, relying so much on your merits in the Lord that we believed it would reach you full of its grace. Though you are already filled with richer crumbs from the Lord’s table, deign to turn into a blessing in the Lord’s name the bread received from sinners. And lest a loaf of fine wheat seem to you to exceed the measure of our lowliness, we have sent a boxwood dish as a witness to our riches; you will receive it as a parting gift of a spiritual vow, to keep as a model if you do not yet use similar silver. But if you have blackened silver, send it to us in the little vessels that we have entrusted to the servants, our sons. For we love vessels of clay, because they are akin to us according to Adam, and we have the Lord’s treasure entrusted to us in such vessels.

Further, since I trust that I have the fullest right over your heart, I ask that, if it becomes necessary for your care to be spent for us, because freedmen, servants, and brothers have failed me, you deign to arrange how the old wine, which we believe we still have at Narbonne, may be brought to us. Do not fear loss, holy brother, if you make us your debtors even for money. For all our people have turned away from us; together they have become unprofitable, and a man’s enemies are those of his own household.

Long since, my brother of one heart in Christ the Lord, as soon as I came to know you in your holy and devout labors without your knowing it, and saw you though you were absent, and embraced you with my whole mind, I hastened to approach you also with a familiar and brotherly address by letter. And I believe that my message was delivered to you by the hand and grace of the Lord; but since the servant whom we had sent before winter to greet you and others equally beloved of God is still delayed, we could no longer either put off our duty or restrain our most eager longing for word from you. So we have written now a second time, if our earlier letter was found worthy to reach you, or for the first time, if it did not have the good fortune to come into your hands.

But you, brother, who as a spiritual man judge all things, should not weigh our love for you by the duty or the timing of letters alone. For the Lord is witness, who, one and the same, works his love in his own everywhere, that from the time when, through the kindness of the venerable bishops Aurelius and Alypius, we came to know you by your works against the Manichees, love for you was so implanted in us that we seemed not to take up some new friendship but as it were to resume an old affection. So now, though we write as beginners in speech, we do not write as beginners in affection, and we in turn as it were recognize you in the spirit through the inner man. Nor is it surprising if, though absent, we are present to each other and, though unknown, we know each other, since we are members of one body, have one head, are steeped in one grace, live on one bread, walk one way, and dwell in the same house. In short, in all that we are, with the whole hope and faith by which we stand in the present, we strive toward the future; let us be one as much in the spirit as in the body of the Lord, lest we be nothing if we fall away from the one.

How small, then, is what bodily absence begrudges us of each other, except indeed that fruit by which the eyes of those who wait on temporal things are fed? And yet not even bodily grace should be called temporal among spiritual people, to whom the resurrection will grant even the eternity of their bodies, as we dare to presume, unworthy though we are, in the power of Christ and of the goodness of God the Father. Therefore would that the grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ would grant us this gift too, that we might see your face also in the flesh. Not only would great joy be brought to our longings, but light would grow in our minds, and our poverty would be enriched from your abundance. This indeed you can bestow even when absent, especially on this occasion, when our sons Romanus and Agilis, of one heart with us and very dear to us in the Lord, whom we commend to you as other selves, will return in the name of the Lord with their work of love completed; we ask that on this errand they may enjoy especially the affection of your love. For you know what lofty things the Most High promises to a brother who helps a brother. Through them, if you wish to repay me with any gift of the grace given to you, you may do so safely; for, please believe me, they are one heart and one soul with us in the Lord. May the grace of God remain with you forever, as it does, my venerable brother of one heart in Christ the Lord, most beloved and most longed for. Greet from us all the saints in Christ, such as no doubt cleave to you. Commend us to all the saints, that they may deign to pray for us with you.