Pastoral Rule, Dialogues & Letters 830

Gregory to Eulogius, patriarch of Alexandria. We render great thanks to almighty God, because in the mouth of the heart, by experience, the taste of charity becomes sweet, when that is fulfilled which is written: As cold water to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country (Prov. xxv, 25). For before this time the letters of Boniface the chartulary, my responsal, who dwells in the royal city, had vehemently troubled me, which said that your Holiness, most sweet and most delightful to me, had suffered a failing of the bodily sight. By which letters I was struck with grave sorrow.

But suddenly, by the prospering grace of our Creator and Redeemer, I received a letter of your Beatitude, and, learning that you were sound concerning that bodily ailment which I had heard of, I exulted vehemently, because there followed as great a gladness of heart as there had before preceded a bitterness of sadness. For we know that, in the help of almighty God, your life is the salvation of many. For then do sailors sail secure amid the waves, when a skilled and expert steersman sits at the helm's governance. But in the joy of your salvation this exultation too has been added to me, because I have learned both that the enemies of the Church have been diminished by your mouth, and that the Lord's flocks have been multiplied.

For daily through the ploughshare of your tongue the heavenly grains grow, and are multiplied in the granaries above; so that we rejoice that this is fulfilled in you which is written: Where there are very many crops, there is manifest the strength of oxen (Prov. xiv, 4). Whence we openly gather that, the more you bring back His fugitives to the service of almighty God, the greater merit you have with Him. And the greater merit you receive, the more you are able to obtain the things you ask. I ask therefore that you pray more earnestly for me a sinner, because both the pain of the body, and the bitterness of the heart, and the immense devastation of mortality amid so many swords of the barbarians vehemently afflict me.

Amid all which I seek not temporal but eternal consolation, which I am not able to obtain through myself, but trust to obtain by the intercession of your Beatitude. In the second year, however, I received no writings of your Holiness, and I was altogether saddened. And indeed your benediction, which you sent without a letter, was both given and received. But because your tongue gladdens me more than your gift, I judged the things that were given to be of lesser grace. I have caused our common son Epiphanius the deacon to write to Alexander and Isidore, deacons of your most holy Church, that it might be established that I had received the things which were sent. And I wrote that I had prepared great timbers for making beams and shafts;

but the small ship which had come could not carry these, and about it you wrote nothing back to me. Whence, if they are needed, write to our common son Boniface the deacon, whom we now send to the royal city for making the responses, that he himself may write back to me in what manner they should be prepared, so that when your Beatitude shall have sent word, they may be found ready. Moreover, we have sent a little cross, in which a benediction from the chains of your beloved saints Peter and Paul the apostles has been inserted, which is to be constantly placed over your eyes, because many miracles have been wont to be wrought through that same benediction.

May almighty God inspire the heart of your Beatitude, that you may be diligent to pray for me continually, and may He protect you and all yours with His right hand, and after long courses of years lead you to the heavenly kingdom. But the eulogiae of Saint Mark, sent by your most blessed Fraternity, we have received according to the notice of them, with that charity with which they were dispatched, and we render thanks to your affection, because from these outward things we recognize what manner of men you are inwardly toward us (John the Deacon, book IV, chapter 52).