Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 147

PETER. The things I hear are exceedingly wonderful, and not moderately joyful. GREGORY. Lest the words of the dead should come into doubt for us, the deeds of the living confirm these things. For Cassius, a man of venerable life, bishop of Narni, who was wont to offer to God the daily sacrifice, and immolated himself in tears amid the very mysteries of the sacrifices, received a command of the Lord through the vision of a certain priest of his, saying: 'Do what you do, work what you work; let not your foot cease, let not your hand cease; on the birthday of the Apostles you shall come to me, and I will render to you your reward.' He, after seven years, on that very birthday of the Apostles, when he had performed the solemnities of the Mass and received the mysteries of holy communion, went forth from the body.

We have also lately heard of a certain man placed in captivity among the enemy and bound in chains, for whom his wife on certain days was wont to offer sacrifice; who, returning after a long time to his wife, made known on what days his chains were loosed, and his wife recognized that those were the days on which she offered sacrifice for him. And by another matter which was done seven years ago, it is most certainly confirmed for us.

For Agatho, bishop of Palermo—as many faithful and religious men have testified and still testify to me—when in the time of my predecessor of blessed memory he had been ordered to come to Rome, endured the force of a very great tempest, so that he despaired of being able to escape from so great a peril of the waves. But his sailor, named Baraca, who now discharges the office of the clergy of that same church, was steering a skiff behind the ship; and when the rope was broken, he suddenly disappeared amid the heaps of waves together with the same skiff he was steering. But the ship over which the bishop presided at length, after many perils, shaken by the billows, reached the island of Ustica.

And when on the third day the bishop saw the sailor, who had been snatched from him in the skiff, appear in no part of the sea, being greatly afflicted he believed him dead; but, through the service of charity, he paid the one thing he owed to the dead: he ordered that a sacrifice of the saving victim be offered to almighty God for the absolution of his soul. This having been offered, and the ship restored, he proceeded to Italy. And when he had come to the Roman port, there he found the sailor whom he had thought dead. Then he rejoiced with unexpected exultation, and inquired how he had been able for so many days to live there amid so great a peril of the sea.

He indeed made known how often, amid the billows of that tempest, he had been tossed about with the same skiff he was steering; how he swam with it when it was full of the waves, and how often, when it was turned over from the upper part downward, he himself sat astride upon its keel; adding that, as he did this incessantly by days and by nights, and his strength had now utterly failed from hunger together with labour, he made known by what order the divine mercy had preserved him. For that which even now up to the present he testifies, saying: 'Labouring amid the billows and failing, suddenly I was weighed down by a heaviness of mind, so that I neither believed myself to be awake nor was I sunk in sleep; and behold, set as I was in the very midst of the sea, someone appeared who brought me bread for refreshment.'

'As soon as I ate it, I recovered my strength; and not long after a passing ship came near, which took me up from that peril of the waves and brought me to land.' Which the bishop, hearing, sought out the day, and found it to have been that day on which the priest immolated for him the victim of the sacred offering to almighty God on the island of Ustica. PETER. The things you narrate, I too, when set in Sicily, came to know. GREGORY. Therefore I believe that this is so openly done with the living and those unaware, in order that it may be shown to all who act and are unaware, that if faults have not been insoluble, the victim of the sacred offering can profit even the dead unto absolution.

But it must be known that those sacred victims profit those dead who, by living here, have obtained that even after death the good things which are done here by others for them may aid them.