Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 148

Among these things, however, it must be weighed that it is a safer way for each one himself, while he lives, to do through himself the good which he hopes will be done for him by others after his death. For it is more blessed to go forth free than after bonds to seek liberty. We ought therefore to despise the present world with the whole mind, since we already behold that it has fallen away, and to immolate to God the daily sacrifices of tears, the daily victims of his flesh and blood. For this victim singularly saves the soul from eternal ruin, which repairs for us by a mystery that death of the Only-begotten, who, though rising from the dead now dies no more, and death shall no longer have dominion over him (Romans 6).

yet living in Himself immortally and incorruptibly, He is for our sake immolated once again in this mystery of the sacred oblation. For there His body is received, His flesh is distributed for the salvation of the people, His blood is poured out no longer into the hands of unbelievers but into the mouths of the faithful. From this, therefore, let us weigh what this sacrifice is for us, which for our absolution ever imitates the Passion of the only-begotten Son. For what one of the faithful could doubt of the work you perform? 'Let not the pestilence cease, let not your hand cease; you shall come to me on the feast of the Apostles, and I will repay you your reward.' And after seven years, on that very natal day of the Apostles, when he had completed the solemnities of the Masses and the sacred mysteries,

and had received the communion, he departed from the body. This too we have heard: that a certain man, held captive among enemies and bound in chains, on whose behalf his wife was accustomed on fixed days to offer sacrifice, was after a long time restored to his wife; and he made known to her on which days his chains had been loosed, and his wife recognized that those were the very days on which she had offered the sacrifice for him. And this is most certainly confirmed to us by another matter which took place some seven years ago.

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 violence of a most severe storm, so that he despaired of being able to escape from so great a peril of the waves. But his sailor, Barachas by name, who now discharges the office of the clergy of that same Church, was steering the ship's boat behind the vessel; and when the rope broke, he suddenly disappeared among the mountains of the waves together with the very boat he was steering.

But the ship over which the bishop presided, at length after many perils and shaken by the waves, reached the island of Ustica. And when on the third day the bishop saw the sailor who had been snatched from him in the boat appearing in no part of the sea, he was grievously afflicted and believed him dead; yet, by an office of charity, he paid the one thing he owed to the dead, and ordered that the sacrifice of the saving Victim be offered to almighty God for the absolution of his soul. When this had been offered, and the ship repaired, he proceeded to Italy. And when he had come to the port of Rome, there he found the sailor whom he had thought dead. Then he rejoiced with unlooked-for exultation, and inquired how the man could have lived so many days amid so great a peril of the sea.

And the man related how many times he had been tossed amid the waves of that storm with the very boat he was steering; how it had swum with him though full of water, and how often, when it had turned over from above downwards, he had sat upon its keel; adding that, when he did this incessantly by day and night, and his strength had at last utterly failed him from hunger together with toil, he related in what order the divine mercy had preserved him. For this indeed he even now still testifies, saying: 'Toiling in the waves and fainting, I was suddenly weighed down by a heaviness of mind, so that I neither believed myself awake nor was I overcome by sleep; and behold, while I was set in the very midst of the sea, someone appeared who brought me bread for refreshment.'

'As soon as I had eaten it, I recovered my strength; and not long after a passing ship drew near, which rescued me from that peril of the waves and brought me to land.' Now the bishop, hearing this, inquired about the day, and found that it was that very day on which, on his behalf, the priest on the island of Ustica had immolated the victim of the sacred oblation to almighty God. PETER: The things you relate I myself also came to know while stationed in Sicily. GREGORY: Therefore I believe that this is so openly wrought among the living and the unknowing, in order that it may be shown to all who act and know it not, that the victim of the sacred oblation can avail even the dead for absolution, if their faults are not such as cannot be loosed.

But it must be known that these sacred victims profit those dead who, while living here, obtained that even after death the good deeds which others perform here on their behalf should aid them.