And so to our brother and fellow-presbyter, Possessor by name — which is worse rather than in actual means, since what he had he poured out for the ransom of a brother, and was made a possessor of paradise while he ceased to be a possessor of worldly property — to him asking a letter of commendation to your apostolate I have freely granted it. And if your holiness deigns to learn his case more fully, let it think it worthwhile to read over the letter which our brother bishop Eumerius sent through this very man to my humble self, and there it will recognize how it ought both to take counsel for him according to custom and to grieve with him out of mutual charity.
He who, in order to set a brother free from enemies, chose rather to be a captive of his creditors, and, that the other might not be deprived of life by a most cruel death, himself was made an exile from his fatherland. ..................... IX. .... Considering the saying of the holy apostle Paul, where, writing to the Romans, he says: I would not have you ignorant, brothers, that I have often purposed to come to you, but have been hindered until now — we too, urged on by shame, are compelled to say: we have very often wished to direct our writings to your most sincere piety, but we have been hindered until now, hindered indeed by him who is wont always to oppose a good will, envying, namely, our progress and your affection, our affection and your progress.
Our progress and your affection — because your teaching is our instruction, and our letter is a contribution to your longing; and again, your progress and our affection — because our instruction is your reward, and the temporary contribution to your longing is the affection of our discourse.
For thus, in the few days — which your affection truly made for me both few and very short — while our gaze cannot be satisfied by the contemplation of you, but rather, the more it sees, the more it is set afire, when we both longed for you present and still sought you set before our face, you watered our senses with the purest fountain of your kindly heart; so that, however I may henceforth receive no precious gifts of your holy lips, I yet possess your presence within the secret places of my mind, and behold your likeness in the mirror of my heart — a likeness which charity has there painted so perfect that it can be effaced by the forgetfulness of no age, since by constant remembrance it is renewed at every moment.
For there I converse with you more secretly according to the wont of your piety; there too I treat fully of the rule of a better life; there I kiss you with the lips of my mind and embrace you with the hands of my heart. Whence it comes about that true love — which is nourished in my inmost being by the living figuration of your countenance and is kindled by the little fire of charity — promises me in turn the requital of your love, and my spirit stands surety to me for your spirit, while I question my heart, conscious of our mutual love, as to how much I ought to presume of you.
Wherefore, the access of writing to you having at last and finally been opened by your prayers, I offer in these lines my greeting and seek your intercession for a sinner, asking this with a special prayer: that you so beseech the mercy of our God with unceasing petitions that — all my ** being blotted out, and all my faults being relieved through your help by his accustomed clemency and abundant goodness — even if not to the same reward, yet at least to the same harbor of rest he may bid us come; so that, inasmuch as here, on account of the stretches of land that lie between, we often cannot see one another with the eyes of the body, we may at least there rejoice in mutual presence — so that, when a crown of merits shall be rendered to you by the just Judge, pardon for my offenses may not be denied to me by the most merciful Redeemer and most perfect Advocate.
May he himself deign to plead the cause of the sinner before judgment, that he may not punish the fault in judgment; for the Almighty surely knows how neither in the goodness of his clemency to lose the truth of judgment, nor in the severity of judgment to forfeit the goodness of clemency. And therefore by the ineffable working of his mercy and power may he deign to grant you that those whom here he has joined in truth, there he may not separate in dwelling. Recalling your promise, I ask in a special way that your holiness not only not detain brother Pomerius, but even compel him to come to us, and transmit his portion to us undivided through us both.
Nor judge that he departs from you, if he comes to me; for you too will find yourselves here in me, and with him, while you remain in body, you will come, as we trust, in heart. But thence too you will be able to have no small fruit, if our rusticity profits something in the fear of God through his teaching. X. To the lord of his own soul, to be cherished with his inmost being in Christ the Lord, the abbot Pomerius — Ruricius the bishop. The wise men of this world said that two friends have one soul, which I also affirm to be true by ecclesiastical testimony, where it says: and of the believers there was one soul and heart — one indeed in charity, not in number, and in simplicity of faith, not in singularity of person. This therefore I preach and approve.
For from the time I departed from your oneness of mind, I feel myself divided, and I perceive that my portion has remained with you, nor do I believe myself to be whole while you are absent; and, since I do not find myself in myself, I seek myself with you, having returned to you, and there I behold that I have left as much of myself with you as I have carried off of yours with me.
And I render thanks to almighty God for so admirable a deed of his, that he deigned to grant it by a general dispensation, so that among those whom the intervals of places set apart, the mind might pass to and fro free and shut in by no laws of absence, and nothing might be so impenetrable that it should not lie open to the gazings of the mind, but through the heart's beholding they might behold one another there, with the dearness of grace running between, where charity itself abides.
And therefore, offering greeting to your most full piety toward me — as far as I conjecture by my own mind — I beg with every entreaty of prayers: if you repay me an equal affection, if you love us with a like charity, if our love works anything in your inmost being, if our affection has penetrated to the very marrow of your heart, if it has so subdued you with the sweetness of its power for my sake, as it has me for yours, that you can neither resist its command nor wish to — then to a longing brother hasten, you yourself longing, to come as quickly as may be, by a kindly favor, both to discharge a promised debt and to assuage a mutual affection; for, set before one another, we shall bestow upon each other equal grace from our contemplation and conversation, and so much, if (as you are loved) you love, shall be repaid by me to your charity, as you yourself shall have rendered to mine.
Nor indeed will you be able to dread the weariness in coming, since, as he said, piety overcame the hard journey, and, according to our Apostle, charity bears all things, which neither seeks the things that are its own, nor ever knows how to fail. The mildness of the autumn season too suits opportunely a longing traveler, together with charity, if only the heat of the past summer kindle it, and the cold of approaching winter not extinguish it. XI. Likewise a letter of the lord Ruricius. On rereading my letter you will perhaps wonder that I wrote to your reverence as to a brother, since this befits neither our age nor your honor, for, as you are greater than I in years, so you are lesser in rank.
And therefore, if I had regarded either your long life (God being favorable) or our office, I ought either to have written to a father or to a son. But because the holy apostle John too in his epistle writes to one and the same persons, both as fathers and as young men and as children, saying: I write to you, fathers, because you have known him who is from the beginning; I write to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one;
I write to you, little children, because you have known the Father — by which distinction of words he assigns not the age of the outer man, but the quality of the inner; for, insofar as we make progress in the knowledge and love of God, we are without doubt called fathers; insofar as we manfully contend against the adversary, who like a lion goes about seeking whom he may devour, we are recognized as young men; but insofar as we give ourselves to sloth and idleness, and through weakness of faith fail to walk the way of the commandments, and rise up too sluggishly, as if from sleep, from the intent pursuit of worldly affairs to the contemplating and performing of the divine precepts, we are most rightly judged by the levity of children. Whence too the apostle Paul thus admonishes the negligent:
Rise, you who sleep, and arise from the dead, and you shall touch Christ, or, Christ shall enlighten you. For the Lord too in the Gospel, when it was said to him by the bystanders, Behold, your mother and your brothers seek you, wishing to see you, thus answered: Who is my mother, or who are my brothers? And, pointing out the apostles following him: Are they not those who do the will of my Father? For we can be called the mother of Christ when we carry Christ in our heart. For holy Mary too, who both conceived a virgin, bore a virgin, and remained a virgin, conceived our Lord not by the embrace of a man, but by faith espousing her.
And we become his brothers when we so order, sustain, and adorn our life with every kind of virtue that we can be heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. For who can doubt that, if we become heirs of God the Father, we can most rightly also be called brothers of Christ, he himself adopting us — he who fashioned us as his own, redeemed us as strangers, chose us as servants, took us to himself as sons? For he fashions us by power, redeems us by his Passion, chooses us in foreknowledge, takes us to himself by grace.
Yet we are sons by adoption, he alone the Son by nature; who, in order to recall us to that same blessedness from which we had fallen, although he in no way ceased to be what he was, yet willed to be what he was not — that the Word might become flesh, and, while the Creator descended into the lowliness of the creature, the creature might ascend to the sublimity of the Creator. Whence it comes about that things divine are shared with humanity and things human have part in divinity, according to that saying of the Apostle: who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, made in the likeness of men and found in habit as a man. He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
For which cause God highly exalted him and gave him a name which is above every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father. Whence also the same teacher, writing to the Corinthians, says: Therefore from now on we know no man according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him so no longer — because, the bodily weakness ceasing in him, he is believed to be wholly in divine power. And therefore, according to the same Apostle, since we are all one in Christ, we are most rightly called brothers, since both one womb of the sacred font has poured us forth and the same breasts of mother Church have nursed us with the life-giving Spirit.
And at the same time I wrote 'brother' for this reason, because (God being favorable) I learned that you had turned your soul from the doings of the world to eternal blessedness, and had become an imitator of that gospel merchant who, having sold all his goods, purchased the most precious pearl, or of that man who, having found a treasure in a field and having sold off all that he had, bought that very field with a praiseworthy covetousness — not a troublesome grasper at another's possession, but a provident distributor of his own resources, retaining a most sincere charity with a perfect heart, not that he might sell the more sparingly, but that he might lend out the more abundantly.
Over which deed I rejoice and give thanks to God, that, according to the riches of his goodness and power, through his inestimable mercy he deigns, so to speak, almost to come against his own sentence; for, although he himself has said that those who have money can with difficulty attain the kingdom of heaven, behold, he has deemed you worthy both of these things in the world and hastens to advance you in his kingdom. Yet the same Lord straightway tempered the rigor of the former sentence of this kind — which the apostles dreaded the more vehemently — by the moderation of his mercy, saying that what was impossible of itself for men through nature was possible for God in them through grace.
And this in you — that you may bend yourself wholly and with all your resources eagerly to that work — out of the affection of mutual charity I admonish; and so may you press on as a strenuous builder of the fabric of that tower which the Lord in the Gospel commanded to be built, that your adversaries may have rather cause to grieve at its completion than to laugh at its interruption. XII. To the lofty and ever-magnificent lord and brother Praesidius — Ruricius the bishop.
Very many, while they are confident that I can avail much with your loftiness — which is undivided from me — not by merit of life but by the privilege of friendship, seek from us letters of commendation by which they may be excused before you; and these, by reason of the necessity of our office, we cannot refuse them, not by the boldness of presumption, but by the discipline of ministry, since we desire both to provide for them the solaces of the present life and for you those of the eternal — so that they through your patience may be reserved unto repentance, and you through mercy may attain unto pardon, as Scripture says: For judgment will be without mercy to him who has not shown mercy; for he who said:
'Forgive, and it shall be forgiven you' — without doubt, whomever he shall see do here what he commanded, to him in the future he will restore what he promised. For his truth is at hand for us, if our faith is not lacking to him. Whence you can most plainly perceive that the absolution of your wretched ones is the pardon of your own sins, and that this is to be conferred upon your prayers — namely, what you shall have bestowed upon others — according to his sentence in the Gospel: With what judgment you shall have judged, it shall be adjudged concerning you.
And therefore on behalf of Ursus and Lupicinus — who came to me, as one bound to us in a more special way (as I said above) by the right of charity, for intercession on account of their crimes — I approach as a pleader, that you may deign to grant them, first to God, then to us, this which they have committed, and that you confound us not in their condemnation, who believed themselves to be absolved when they were brought to my humble self. XIII. Likewise another.
I rejoice together with you that the Lord, steering, has at last brought your bark, tossed on the surge of this world by adverse and various tempests, to the harbor of salvation; established in his faithful and tranquil anchorage, you will henceforth laugh at the swelling of that faithless and wicked and bitter sea, and not fear it — concerning which you can now have as little dread as much joy, in that you either look back upon them left behind, or, set on a loftier watchtower, look down upon them, and marvel that you have escaped. It remains that, putting your hand to the helm, you ever gaze intent upon the stars, and so spread your sail to the voyage begun that neither may a too-violent gust dash you out into the deep, nor the rocks neighboring the shores wreck you.
Nor, according to the saying of the Lord and Savior, while now holding the plow-handle, may you, looking back as Lot perhaps did, startled by the cries of collapsing Sodom, imitate Lot's wife; or, having now set out from Egypt and crossed the waves of the Red Sea hanging on right and left, bringing you only aid and preparing destruction for those pursuing you — the Lord both preparing and lighting your way — and, taking up the steep journey of the wilderness, may you remember the flesh-pots or the leeks, which, after the manner of bodily pleasures, are known to be corrupt in their very quality, and foul, neither pleasant in use, nor sweet in odor, nor enduring in stability.
Whatever in this world soothes the hearing, grows soft to the touch, allures the sight, flatters in order to catch, ministers in order to hold, entices in order to slay. For whatever pleasure you may wish to seize, that which punishes remains, that which delights passes away; the fleeting sweetness passes by, the conscience that will condemn, or is to be condemned, abides. Hence too Solomon says: The tongue of a harlot drips honey, but in the latter days you will find her more bitter than gall — which nevertheless he himself, when he had foretold it, none the less incurred. And therefore see, dearest brother, what an evil it is, which, while it is detested, is admitted, and, while it is fled from, is scarcely avoided.
Whence you too, as Scripture says, with all watchfulness guard your heart, and examine your conscience, lest where you seem to have departed in sight, you cling in affection; but rather say with the prophet to the Lord: My soul has cleaved after you; your right hand has upheld me — or that also: But for me it is good to cleave to God, to put my hope in God; so that, with as great labor and as great earnestness as you served the world, you may serve God, the Apostle saying or admonishing: I speak after the manner of men because of the weakness of your flesh. For as you yielded your members to serve uncleanness and iniquity, so now yield your members to serve righteousness unto sanctification. For when you were the servants of sin, you were free from righteousness.
What fruit then had you at that time, in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now, freed from sin and made servants to God, you have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end, life everlasting. Penance, thus, dearest brother, is to be undertaken not in name but in deed, to be performed not with the mouth only but with the heart. For it is true that, just as we sin by both — that is, by the inner man and the outer — so we ought to repent by both; that, as the same Apostle says: with the heart it is believed unto righteousness, but with the mouth confession is made unto salvation, so may our heart conceive groaning, the conscience pricking it, that our mouth may pour them forth through the confession of our shame.
And the fiftieth psalm, which is given alike to penitence and to remission, let it be sung day and night with roaring and weeping, that it may be said truly and wholesomely: I roared from the groaning of my heart, and: I acknowledge my iniquities, and my sin is ever against me, or that also: For I will declare my iniquity, and I will think upon my sin. For here our sins ought to be before us, that in eternity they may not be able to be against us, since thus it is read in the prophets: Tell first your iniquities, that you may be justified. By whom are we, who are to tell our iniquities before the Lord first, or to bring them forth — if not before the devil, who is both the instigator and the accuser of our offenses?
For he himself instigates us to sin; he himself, when we have sinned, accuses us; and therefore let him be forestalled by us in this world in the confession of our crimes, that he may have nothing in the world to come to bring against us. XIV. To the most blessed and in Christ venerable brothers Foedamius and Vilicus, presbyters — Ruricius the bishop. Although I did not receive a letter of your fraternity through the subdeacon Contemptus, yet I have directed these lines to you through him, urged on by affection, that I might both satisfy desire and open the access of writing first — being, as it were, the prior one — lest in time to come a place be left for excuse, and a matter of good will be said to be one of diffidence and bashfulness.
And so I give most hearty greeting in Christ the Lord to your blessedness, and hope that you love me, as befits men of the Church, not with the lips but with the heart, and that you presume to speak of me with a charity sincere rather than former; for, if that former one had been true, it would have endured, and, if it had been mutual, it would not have been changed. Yet on whose part it may have been changed, both our consciences know, and the Knower of consciences knows without an informer — whom I call as witness to my profession, that I am neither culpable of the beginning of the quarrel, nor that anything done or said about you has lodged in my heart; for I know that it has been said to us by the eternal and true Judge, that unless we forgive our brothers from the heart, it ought not to be forgiven us.
You have, therefore, my pledge; render back to me your own fidelity, for in my letter you will assuredly hold a bond such as you yourselves shall choose: either a bond of charity, which binds and guards you to your good, or a bond of treachery, which entangles and destroys you to your blame. And impute nothing to me from the judgment of an earlier time, for it is part of my settled resolve to preserve concord in friendships and to maintain strict judgment in trials. This too I rejoice in more especially, that I have learned you have returned into the full intimacy of my lord and brother. It remains that what his grace bestowed for good, your own constancy may guard in the Lord. XV. To the venerable lady, and a daughter to be magnified in Christ the Lord, Ceraunia, Ruricius the bishop.
What caused me not to send the painter to you earlier was this: I believed that with the arrival of the new judge you were occupied and so dismayed that you could not give thought to such matters. But because, by God's favour, I have learned both from your letters and from the report of your people that you are faring and prospering according to your wish, having first sent my greeting I have dispatched the painter, busy here as he was, together with his pupil; for I chose rather to deprive my own need, that I might satisfy your request.
But since both your own resolve and our office demand it, I have ventured to admonish your reverence with these few words, that from his work you may take an example for doing penance and for putting on the new garments of the new man, whereby the old Adam may more easily perish in you and the Life-giver arise. Just as that painter adorns walls with the varied tints of colours by manifold art, so do you adorn your soul, which is the temple of God, with the diverse kinds of virtues, that you may truly, in a spiritual sense, say of your spiritual house together with the prophet:
'Lord, I have loved the beauty of thy house and the place where thy glory dwelleth'; for according to the very word of our Lord, God dwelleth not in things made by hands, nor is his good pleasure in the tents of men, but his good pleasure is upon them that fear him and upon him that hopeth in his mercy. And again he deigns to teach us through the prophet: 'Heaven is my throne, and the earth my footstool. What seat will you build for me, or what shall be the place of my rest? Has not my hand made all these things? Or upon whom else shall I look, save upon the humble and quiet, and him that trembleth at my words?' And in the Gospel the Lord himself cries out:
'Come unto me, all you that labour and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you,' and the rest that follows. And therefore, most beloved sister and daughter in Christ the Lord, laying aside the ambition of your former manner of life, you ought to put on humility of heart, to lend mercy to the needy, to procure chastity not only of body but of soul; and that you may, with the Lord's help, be able alike to acquire and to guard this, you must fast more frequently and pray always; for Adam was appointed both keeper and tiller of paradise, namely so that the freedom of his will might have matter for working, and that what the diligence of prayers had obtained, the abstinence of restraint might guard.
But because he neglected to keep the fast for himself, through forbidden desire he lost both life and immortality. Under Zerubbabel those who had returned from captivity were rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem; and since they had a struggle against the foreigners for the restoration of those same walls, they laboured and fought with the right hand and the left—namely holding out the shield of faith with the left hand against their adversaries, and with the right hand building up ramparts of good works, like walls of set stones. And those very men who were building together with their prophets laboured girt about their loins, even as the Lord also commanded us in the Gospel to observe, saying: 'Let your loins be girt and your lamps burning.'
He is girt about the loins whose flesh wars for chastity and not for lust, and his mind shines forth like a burning lamp, which Christ kindles by his precepts.
Since, according to the Apostle, all these things were done as a figure of us, it behoves us to know that, as long as we were occupied with the deeds of the world, we served as captives—like the Babylonians and their king—led forth from Judaea into the regions of the enemy; whence, returning through penance to our homeland, that is, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the mother of all the faithful, we ought by every kind of virtue to repair what has collapsed, to mend what has been torn, to blot out what is past, to beware of the present, to prepare for what is to come; so that, drawn away by the Lord's kindness from our former captivity to sins, we may serve not the king of the Babylonians, but the King of heaven, Christ, in that Jerusalem which is a city built up of the assembly of the saints.
And therefore we ought to bathe our face with tears rather than with washings, that we may say with the prophet: 'For I did eat ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping.' We ought to subdue our body with unwearied vigils and continual fastings, so that, exercising a true judgment between soul and flesh, the flesh may not lord it over the spirit, but the flesh, being conquered, may serve the spirit. Of this matter the Lord gave us an example, when through the angel he spoke to Hagar, Sarah's maidservant—who had preferred to abandon her mistress rather than to obey her—saying to her:
'Return and be subject to thy mistress,' that, devoted to all these labours and good works, you may be both of perfect conduct and of devout confession, and in the kingdom of that Father of yours of whom the Lord says in the Gospel, 'Call no man your father upon the earth, for one is your Father,' you may, according to your name, shine forth in that throng of the blessed as the true Ceraunia and stand as the author of your own appellation; concerning which splendour of works the Lord says: 'So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify—not you, but—your Father who is in heaven.'