Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 676

Gregory to Dominicus, bishop of Carthage. How great a pestilence has burst upon the parts of Africa, we have long since learned; and because Italy too is not free from such a stroke, the groans of our sorrows are redoubled in us. But amid these evils and countless other calamities, our despairing heart, dearest brother, would fail under tribulation, had not the Lord's voice fortified our frailty beforehand. For once, as the fine of the world drew near, the trumpet of the Gospel reading sounded in the ears of the faithful that pestilence, wars, and many other things which are still, as you know, in dread, would come to pass (Matthew 24; Luke 21). Therefore, since we suffer things we foreknew, we ought not to be too greatly afflicted by them as though by things unknown.

For very often even the kind of death is a relief when considered in comparison with another death. How great mutilations, then, and how great cruelties have we seen, for which death alone was the remedy, and life was a torment? Did not David, when the choice of death was offered him, refusing famine or the sword, choose that his people should fall into the hand of God (2 Samuel 24:14)? From which fact gather how great is the grace, in those who perish by the divine stroke, when they meet their end by that summons which is agreed to have been offered to the holy prophet as a gift. Therefore let us render thanks to our Creator in all adversities, and, trusting in his mercy, let us patiently endure all things, because assuredly we suffer less than we deserve.

Yet since we are thus temporally scourged, in such a way that we are by no means left without the consolation of eternal life, it is necessary that, the more we do not fail to know from these portents that announce it that the Judge who is to come is close at hand, the more we should fortify our accounts, which we are to render at his examination, with the zeal of good action and the weeping of penitence, so that such great blows may prove for us, his grace favouring, not the beginning of damnation, but the benefit of purgation. But because such is the nature of our infirmity that we cannot but grieve over those who die, let your Fraternity's teaching be a solace to the afflicted.

Let it instill into them the abiding goods which are promised, so that, strengthened by most certain hope, they may learn, in comparison with the future gift, not to grieve over the loss of temporal things. Let your tongue, as we indeed believe, more and more restrain them from the perpetration of wicked work, and set forth the rewards of the good and the punishments of the wicked, so that those who love good things less may at least dread evil things, and may hold themselves back from those things which are to be punished. For, being set amid scourges, to commit deeds worthy of scourges is in a special manner to be proud against the One who strikes, and to provoke more sharply the wrath of him who rages. And it is the first kind of madness to be unwilling for anyone justly to rest from his own evils, and to wish that God unjustly cease from his vengeance.

But since in these matters there is need of divine aid, let us, dear brother, with joined prayers, entreat the clemency of Almighty God, that he may both grant us worthily to display these things, and mercifully prick the hearts of the peoples to work them, so that, ordering our acts salutarily in fear of him, we may deserve both to be rescued from the evils that press upon us, and to come to the joys above, by the leading of his grace, without which we can do nothing. In the month of August, in the fifth indiction.