It appears clearly how great is the grace of God in your merit, or how great a heap of virtues ought to be inferred, where the error itself is so holy. For while a just accuser of himself strives to convict in himself what he could not sin, the humility of one confessing grows unto merit, not the truth of the confession unto guilt. You have exceeded custom, I confess: but by an increase of piety may you always deign to remember this day. A sweet solicitude has come from you; but forgetfulness has not incomparably outstripped it. For without doubt the effect appears less, the observance being safe: but you have shown with how great a spirituality it delights you to exercise yourself, in that you so grieved to have let it pass by. Truly the holy revelation is secure of the dignity of your fault:
and such a punishment was found in the sleeper as had been the sin in the waker. Behold, I speak the truth in Christ, I lie not: when with eyes bringing forth tears I had read the dream which you saw, all remembrance of the aforesaid obligations came upon my mind, by which, through your visitation, I understood that we were admonished to render honour. But moreover, what I have felt concerning the revelation itself, I set forth in simplicity. Thus therefore you say: 'For on that very holy night' — in which, namely, the burial of our common sister was being celebrated — 'I know not what had clung to my hands, which, sitting beside me, a most resplendent dove, but of an unwonted colour, ruddy, was plucking away.'
But indeed, when your piety, not flying far away, sat beside you with swift remembrance, [it was] the debt which you — most holy, most loving of your kinsfolk, you, I say — deservedly perceived: this dove, most resplendent, since you shine with such simplicity, ruddied with an unwonted colour, since, being singularly innocent, you blush as though pricked by your own goads. You have therefore indeed enlarged, as was said above, the accustomed debt: nor yet was that lacking to custom which you thought lacking. For to that very night which, with Christ rousing you, it was not permitted you to forget, your offering nonetheless played out of the abundance of the former year. Thus from a certain irrigating stream of blessing from on high, what you bestow every single year suffices for many.