教牧守則·對話錄與書信 第 110 章

But neither will I be silent about what the venerable man Abbot Stephen—who died not long before this time in this city, and whom you yourself knew well—used to relate as having happened in that same province of Nursia. For he said that there a certain priest governed the church committed to him with great fear of the Lord (Dist. 32, canon 'Presbyter'). From the time he received his ordination, loving his wife-of-the-priesthood as a sister, yet shunning her as an enemy, he never allowed her to come near to him, and permitting her on no occasion to approach him, he had utterly cut off from himself the fellowship of familiarity with her. For holy men have this as their own property; that they may always be far from things unlawful, they for the most part cut off from themselves even things lawful.

Whence this same man, lest through her he should fall into any fault, refused to have even his necessities ministered to him through her. This venerable priest, then, when he had fulfilled a long span of life, in the fortieth year of his ordination, being gravely seized by a burning fever, was brought to his extremity. But when his wife-of-the-priesthood beheld him with his limbs now loosed, as if stretched out in death, if any vital breath were yet in him she took care to discern by placing her ear to his nostrils. Perceiving this, he in whom the faintest breath remained, with what little effort he could, that he might be able to speak, with kindling spirit gathered his voice and burst out, saying: 'Depart from me, woman; a little spark yet lives—take away the straw.'

As she therefore withdrew, his bodily strength increasing, he began with great joy to cry out, saying: 'Welcome, my lords; welcome, my lords; why have you deigned to come to so small a little servant of yours? I come, I come; I give thanks, I give thanks.' And when he repeated this with often-reiterated voice, his acquaintances who stood around him asked to whom he was saying this. To whom he, in wonder, replied, saying: 'Do you not see that the holy apostles have come here? Do you not behold blessed Peter and Paul, the chief of the apostles?' And turning again to them, he said: 'Behold, I come; behold, I come'; and amid these words he rendered up his soul. And that he had truly seen the holy apostles, he testified also by following them.

This most often befalls the just, that in their death they behold the visions of the saints who have gone before, lest they dread that very penal sentence of their death; but while the society of the citizens on high is shown to their mind, they are loosed from the bond of their flesh without the weariness of grief and fear.