Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 407

Gregory to Dominicus, bishop in Africa. The utterance of your letters, full of priestly charity, so causes your Holiness to cleave to our minds in memory, that we do not believe you to be absent in body, since through affection you ever remain in the heart. That, therefore, this love which we have toward one another may acquire for us the profit of heavenly joys, let us be helpers of one another in turn, and let us extend to one another the aid of mutual prayer; so that the divine mercy may grant us the gift of its clemency, both to preach what it loves, and to follow that which through us it has granted to be preached.

And so may He dispose the ministry of our office by the protection of His mercy, that we may bring back fruit from the things entrusted to us when the Lord comes, and, with the gain of others, by the aid of His grace, be led to the future rewards of equity. And because it is written: Pray for one another, that you may be saved (James 5:16), that we may be worthy to attain these things, it behoves both me to devote myself in prayers for you at the most sacred body of the blessed Peter, prince of the apostles, and you for me at the holy martyr Cyprian. For our prayers are the more swiftly raised to the ear of the Lord's compassion, the more the ardour of charity sharpens them, poured forth in turn on one another's behalf.

But because your Holiness refuses to address me with bare words, you have joined to your letters also gifts; which we have received with thanksgiving; yet nevertheless we are more delighted by the affection of your mind than by the abundance of goods.