Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 682

Gregory to John, abbot of Mount Sinai. The epistle of your Humility bears witness to the sanctity of your life; wherefore we give great thanks to Almighty God, because we learn that there still exist those who can intercede for our sins. For we, under the appearance of ecclesiastical governance, are tossed about by the waves of this world, which frequently overwhelm us. But by the protecting hand of heavenly grace we are lifted up from the deep. You therefore, who in so great a serenity of your quiet teach a tranquil life, and stand as it were secure upon the shore, stretch out to us who are sailing—or rather being shipwrecked—the hand of your prayer, and with as many entreaties as you can help us who are striving to reach the land of the living;

so that you may be able to have a reward for ever not only for your own life, but also for our deliverance. May the Holy Trinity protect your Charity with the right hand of its protection, and grant you rightly to shepherd in its sight the flock committed to you—by praying, by admonishing, by showing forth examples of good work—so that you may be able to come to the pastures of eternal life together with the very flock you shepherd. For it is written: My sheep shall come, and shall find pastures (John x, 27). Which pastures indeed we then find, when, being free from the winter of this way, we are satisfied with the greenness, as of a new spring, of eternal life.

By the report of our son Simplicius we have learned that beds and bedding are lacking in the Gerontocomium (hospice for the aged) which was built there by a certain Isaurian; therefore we have sent fifteen cloaks, thirty coverlets, and four blankets. We have also given the price for buying mattresses, and the freight; which we ask your Charity to receive not unworthily, but to furnish in the place to which they have been sent. Given on the Kalends of September, in the fourth indiction. Gregory to Palladius the presbyter of Mount Sinai. Having received the letters of your Charity, I took care to seek out my son Simplicius, and I found by what temptation your Charity was pressed; concerning which, however, it does not need the consolation of my word, since it says of itself:

If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more them of his household? (Matt. x, 25). And it says again: If you were of this world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of this world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you (John xv, 19)—designating, of course, by the world the carnal hearts which love the world. Since, therefore, I hear that you know these things perfectly, I marvel that your Charity is saddened by the words of men. For amid the words of those who praise or of those who blame, one must always have recourse to the mind (Gratian, Part II, q. 3, c. 55); and if the good that is said of us is not found in it, a great sadness ought to be generated.

And again, if the evil which men speak of us is not found in it, we ought to leap up into great joy. For what does it profit if men praise, and conscience accuses? Or what sadness ought there to be, if all accuse and conscience alone shows us to be free? We have Paul saying: This is our glory, the testimony of our conscience (2 Cor. i, 12). Job too says: Behold, my witness is in heaven (Job xvi, 20). If, then, we have a witness in heaven, a witness in our heart, let the foolish outside speak what they will. What else do detractors do, but take up dust and stir up earth into their own eyes; so that from the very source whence they blow out more detraction, thence they the more see nothing of the truth?

Nevertheless they too must be called, gently admonished, and satisfaction should be made to them by every means, knowing what the Truth says concerning them: Lest perchance we scandalize them (Matt. xvii, 26). But if they refuse to be satisfied out of the truth, you have the consolation which you may behold in the holy Gospel: that when it had been said to the Lord, Knowest thou that the Pharisees, having heard this word, were scandalized? (Matt. xv, 12), He answered: Let them alone, they are blind, and leaders of the blind (Matt. xv, 14). Paul the apostle also admonishes, saying: If it be possible, as much as is in you, have peace with all men (Rom. xii, 18). For being about to say that we should have peace with all, since he foresaw this to be difficult, he prefixed: If it be possible.

Yet he added what can be done, when he said: as much as is in you. For if we desire to keep charity in our mind toward those who hate us, even though they have no peace with us, we nevertheless have it with them without doubt. In all things, therefore, most beloved son, guard your heart, as it is written: With all watchfulness keep your heart, for from it proceeds life (Prov. iv, 23). These things I have written back briefly in commemoration of charity. But I beg that you would pray for me, that Almighty God may deign to guard me both from evil spirits and from perverse men, because in this pilgrimage of my life many evils encompass me at once, so that with the Psalmist I may rightly say: Thy wraths have passed over me, and thy terrors have troubled me.

They surrounded me like water all the day long; they surrounded me together (Ps. lxxxvii, 18-19). May heavenly grace protect both us in the cities and you in the desert, because the ancient enemy is not shut out from temptation by the places of the earth; for if he laid man low in paradise, what place can there be outside of paradise into which the temptations of men he cannot penetrate? In the protection of our Creator alone, therefore, must we trust, to whom let us cry from our inmost heart: Be thou to me a God, a protector, and a place of strength, that thou mayest save me (Ps. lxx, 3). We have sent to you, from the blessing of the blessed Peter the apostle, a cowl and a tunic, which we ask to be received with the same charity with which they were sent by us.