Now we steer the ship of our discourse to harbour, and, the sea of words having been traversed, we cast the anchor of resting on the shore, yet by the breath of your charity I am borne back again upon the waves of words. I beg you, sister Florentina, and by the blessed Trinity of the one Godhead I adjure you; that you who have gone out from your land and from your kindred with Abraham, do not look back with Lot's wife (Genesis 19); lest you be made by an evil example a lesson to others toward good, and lest others see in you what they should beware in themselves. She indeed became to others a seasoning of wisdom, but to herself an image of folly; for to herself her misdeed did harm, but to others the contrary example was of profit. Let no thought ever urge you to return to your native soil;
where, if God had willed you to dwell, He would not have led you out from there. But because He foresaw it would be useful to your purpose, He drew you well, like Abraham from the Chaldeans, and like Lot from the Sodomites. Indeed I myself confess my own error, that I often addressed our common mother, desiring to know whether she would wish to return to her homeland; but she, who knew that she had gone out from there by God's will for the sake of salvation, said under a divine adjuration that she neither wished to see, nor would ever see, that homeland, and with great weeping she said: 'My pilgrimage made me come to know God; I shall die a pilgrim; and there let me have my sepulchre, where I received the knowledge of God.' With Jesus as witness, I am mindful that I have experienced this in her longings, that even if she lived long, she would not revisit that homeland.
Do you, I pray, take heed, sister Florentina, of what our mother feared, and the evil which she experienced, do you prudently avoid. Wretched, I grieve, who sent there our common brother Fulgentius, whose perils I dread with continual dread. Yet he will be safer, if you, more secure and absent, pray for him. You were taken away from there at such an age that even if you had been born there, you would not remember it. There is no recollection that may move your soul with longings; and you are blessed, who do not know what you would grieve over. Yet I speak from experience, that homeland has so lost its standing and beauty, that not even any free person survives in it, nor is the land itself, as usual, fertile with abundance, and that not without the judgment of God.
For the land whose citizens have been snatched away, and given over to a stranger, as soon as it lost its dignity, lost also its fruitfulness. See, sister Florentina, that I meet you fearing and grieving, lest the serpent snatch you away from paradise, and place you in that land which sprouts thorns and thistles, from which, if you should again wish to stretch out your hand and take of the tree of life to eat, you may not be permitted to touch it. For I call you to witness with the Prophet, and with Jesus Christ as conscious witness I take you to witness, saying: 'Hear, O daughter, and see; and incline your ear, and forget your people, and your father's house; for the King has desired your beauty, and He is the Lord your God' (Psalm 44). 'No one putting his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God' (Luke 9).
Do not fly away from that nest which the turtledove has found, where she may lay her young (Psalm 84). You are a daughter of simplicity, who were born of a turtledove for mother. In one and the same person you enjoy the office of many relationships. Look upon the turtledove as your mother. Attend to the turtledove as your teacher, and her who daily begets you to Christ in affection, reckon a dearer mother than she of whom you were born: from every storm, from every worldly whirlwind, hide yourself in her bosom. Let it be sweet to you to cling to her side. Let her bosom be dear to you, now grown up, which was most pleasing to you as an infant. Lastly, dearest sister, I beg that you remember me in your prayers, nor forget your younger brother Isidore:
whom, because our common parents left under God's protection, with three surviving siblings, joyful and fearing nothing for his infancy, departed to the Lord. Since I hold him as truly a son, and set no temporal thing before his love, and recline prone in love of him, love him so much the more dearly, and so much the more entreat Jesus for him, by how much you know him to have been beloved by his earthly parents. I am certain that your virginal prayer binds the divine ears on our behalf. And if you keep the covenant which you have made with Christ, a crown is owed to you for doing well, and pardon will be granted to Leander for exhorting; and if you persevere to the end, you shall be saved. Amen.