From the festival to which I had set out I returned indeed with the utmost haste. But because you had already, with Christ as your leader, gone forward — I who ought to have rejoiced, as we trust from God, at your return, am nonetheless beyond measure stunned by your departure: namely, that in that very return of coming prosperity I did not deserve to fall at the knees of my lord, to soothe his hands with kisses, and to adore in that holy breast the seat of our faith. Yet I would not dare to say that this befell me through defrauding sin, lest I be rendered ungrateful to the divine grace which in such a way makes your presence felt to me.
For while it is common and just to all that we should aspire, in the honoring of your glory, to what we owe, I rejoice to have received this in singular measure: that although impossibility does not allow the debt of service to be rendered — which the effect of your wishes keeps with you on my behalf — yet before you your Piety reckons it as paid. But I alone am struck with loss whenever I do not deserve to share in my own consolation: whenever the kindled heat of tribulations is shut up within me alone, excluded from the refreshment of your discourse: whenever the hand of that physician, which I have proved, does not soothe my inward pains. He who, striving in devotion to protect his servant amid such things, and persisting in virtue, though it would be enough if he wished to offer his favor, deigns to add his labor as well.
But I presume, by the divine Majesty, that from this regard for me he will cleave the more tenaciously to your affections, since the love of the Catholic law has poured him into us. Under the holy patronage of this occasion, then, it will be impossible for you to reject a servant whom you have taken up, whom you have known not to love his lord. For the rest, go forth in good fortune, march in safety, return as victors. Weave your faith into your weapons; by promising it, remind others of the divine provision; demand the aids of heaven by prayers; arm your darts with vows. God will grant that the trophies of wars, which He Himself shall bestow on you, I may heap up — by the homage of whatever discourse, under the theme of that man whom I have long been pursuing — into a triumph yet more precious.