Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 55

One day, weighed down by the excessive tumults of certain secular affairs — in which, in our business, we are for the most part compelled to discharge even what we are certain we ought not to do — I sought out a secret place, a friend to my sorrow, where whatever displeased me about my occupation might show itself openly, and where all the things that were wont to inflict grief might come freely, heaped up before my eyes. There, then, as I sat greatly afflicted and long silent, my most beloved son Peter the deacon came to me — a man bound to me in intimate friendship from the very first flower of my youth, and my companion in the searching out of the sacred word. Seeing me consumed with a heavy languor of heart, he said: «Has anything new befallen you, that a greater grief than usual holds you?»

To him I said: «The grief, Peter, which I daily suffer is to me always old through familiarity, and always new through increase. For my unhappy soul, struck by the wound of its own occupation, remembers what it once was in the monastery: how all fleeting things lay beneath it; how far it towered above all things that revolve; how it was accustomed to think of nothing but heavenly things; how, even while held in the body, it already passed beyond the very barriers of the flesh by contemplation; how it loved even death — which is to nearly all a punishment — namely as the entrance to life and the reward of its labour.»

But now, on occasion of the pastoral care, it endures the affairs of secular men, and after so fair a semblance of its own repose, it is fouled with the dust of earthly action. And when, out of condescension to the many, it has scattered itself upon outward things, then, even when it seeks inward things, it returns to them without doubt the lesser. I weigh therefore what I endure, I weigh what I have lost; and when I gaze upon that which I have lost, what I carry becomes the heavier. Behold, for even now I am shaken by the surges of a great sea, and in the ship of my mind I am dashed by the storms of a mighty tempest. And when I recall my former life, I sigh as one who, with eyes turned backward, has caught sight of the shore behind him.

And what is yet more grievous: while I am borne, tossed by immense waves, I can scarcely any longer see the harbour which I have left; for such are the falls of the mind, that first indeed it loses the good which it holds — if, that is, it remembers that it has lost it; and when it has withdrawn further off, it forgets even that very good which it had lost; and so it comes to pass that afterward it does not even see through memory what it once held through action. Whence there comes about what I set forth before: that as we sail further, we no longer even see the harbour of repose which we have left. And sometimes, to the increase of my grief, there is added the recollection of the life of certain men who forsook the present age with their whole mind. When I look upon their summit, I recognize how deep I myself lie in the lowest depths;

most of whom pleased their Creator in a more hidden life, whom, lest through human actions they should grow old and lose the newness of mind, Almighty God was unwilling to have occupied with the labours of this world. But now I better convey what has been set forth, if I distinguish the things spoken by way of question and answer only by the prefixing of names. PETER: I have not learned that the life of any men in Italy shone with virtues; in comparison with whom, therefore, you may be kindled, I do not know. And indeed I do not doubt that there were good men in this land, yet I suppose either that signs and virtues were by no means wrought by them, or that these have hitherto been so suppressed in silence that we do not know whether they were wrought at all. GREGORY:

If I were to relate only those things, Peter, which I, one poor little man, have come to know concerning perfect and approved men — whether by the attestation of good and faithful men, or have learned through my own self — the day, I think, would fail before the discourse did. PETER: I could wish that you would narrate to me some things about them as I inquire. Nor let it seem burdensome to interrupt the pursuit of exposition for this cause, since no unlike edification arises from the remembrance of virtues. For in exposition it is recognized how virtue is to be found and held; but in the narration of signs we know how virtue found and retained is made manifest. And there are some whom examples, more than precepts, kindle to the love of the heavenly homeland.

And there arises for the most part a twofold help to the mind of the hearer in the examples of the Fathers: for if by comparison with those who went before he is kindled to the love of the life to come, then also, even if he supposes himself to be something, when he has learned better things of others, he is humbled. GREGORY: Those things which have come to my knowledge by the narration of venerable men, I narrate without hesitation, on the example of sacred authority, since it stands clearer to me than light that Mark and Luke learned the Gospel which they wrote not by sight but by hearing. But that I may remove from my readers the occasion of doubt, in each thing that I describe I make plain by what authors these things have come to my knowledge.

But this I desire you to know: that in some cases I hold the sense only, in others both the words together with the sense. For if I had wished, in the case of all persons, to hold the very words specifically, these, uttered in rustic usage, the pen of the writer would not fitly receive. What I narrate I have learned by the report of most venerable elders.