On the Good of Widowhood 19–29

I would not be discussing in this work these matters of the different merits of married women and of different widows, if I were writing what I write to you for you alone. But since there are some very difficult questions in this kind of discourse, I wanted to say something more than what properly concerns you, because of certain people who do not think themselves learned unless they try to pull apart the labours of others, not by judging them but by tearing them to pieces; and also so that you yourself may not only keep what you have vowed and make progress in that good, but may also know more carefully and firmly that this good of yours is not distinguished from an evil of marriage but ranked above a good of marriage. For those who condemn the marriages of widowed women, even if they practise their own continence wonderfully and fervently by abstaining from many things that you use, should not on that account lead you astray to think what they think, even if you cannot do what they do. For no one wants to be a madman, even if he sees that a madman's strength is greater than the strength of the sane. Above all, therefore, let sound doctrine both adorn and defend the goodness of your resolve. That is why catholic women, even those married more than once, are by just judgement preferred not only to widows of one husband but even to the virgins of the heretics. There are indeed many recesses of questions and many perplexities about these three things, marriage, widowhood, and virginity; to penetrate or resolve them by discussion needs both greater care and a fuller discourse, so that either we may be rightly wise in all of them or, if we are otherwise minded in anything, God may reveal that also to us. Nevertheless, as the apostle goes on to say in that passage, “Where we have arrived, in that let us walk.” And as far as the matter we are speaking of is concerned, we have arrived at this: that we rank continence above marriage, and holy virginity above widowed continence as well, and that we condemn no marriages—those, at least, that are not adulteries but marriages—by praise of any resolve of ours or of our people. Many other things on these matters we have said in the book On the Good of Marriage, in another book, On Holy Virginity, and in the work that we wrote with all the labour we could against Faustus the Manichaean, since by most bitingly censuring in his writings the chaste marriages of the patriarchs and prophets he turned the minds of certain unlearned people away from the soundness of the faith.

Accordingly, since at the beginning of this little work I had set out two necessary things and promised to carry them out, one belonging to teaching, the other to exhortation, and since I have not failed in the first part as far as I could for the task undertaken, let us come to exhortation, so that the good that is wisely known may also be ardently loved. In this matter I first advise you to attribute to God's kindness whatever love of devout continence you feel to be in you, and to give thanks to him who has bestowed on you so much of his Spirit that, since his love has been poured out in your heart, the love of a better good has taken from you the freedom to do what is lawful. For he gave you not to wish to marry when it was lawful, so that now it is not lawful even if you wished; and so you the more firmly do not wish it, lest what is not lawful be done, which was not done even when it was lawful. And he gave you to merit so much as a widow of Christ that you should see your daughter too a virgin of Christ; for while you pray like Anna, she has become what Mary was. The more you know that these are gifts of God, the more blessed you are by his gifts; indeed you are not blessed otherwise than by knowing from whom you have what you have. For notice what the apostle has said on this matter: “But we have not received the spirit of this world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we may know the things that have been given us by God.” For many have many gifts of God and, not knowing from whom they have them, are puffed up with ungodly vanity. But no one is blessed by the gifts of God who is ungrateful to the giver. For even that which we are bidden among the sacred mysteries, to have our hearts lifted up, we are able to do by his help at whose bidding we are admonished. And therefore it follows that for this great good of the heart lifted up we should not give ourselves the glory as though it were of our own strength, but give thanks to the Lord our God. For we are at once reminded of this, because it is meet, it is right. You remember where these words come from, and you recognize with what sanction and what holiness they are commended. Hold, then, and keep what you have received, and give thanks to the giver. For though receiving and having are yours, still you have what you have received; since to one who was proud and ungodly boasting of what he had as though he had it from himself, the Truth says through the apostle: “For what do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?”

What compels me to give these warnings is the need to guard against and avoid the little talk of certain people which has begun to creep through the ears into the souls of many—enemies of the grace of Christ, it must be said with tears—by whom people are persuaded that not even prayer to the Lord seems necessary for us, that we may not enter into temptation. For they try to defend man's free will in such a way that by it alone, even unhelped by God's grace, we are able to fulfil what is divinely commanded. From this it follows that the Lord said in vain, “Watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation,” and that we say in vain every day in the Lord's Prayer itself, “Lead us not into temptation.” For if it is solely in our own power not to be overcome by temptation, why do we pray not to enter or be led into it? Let us rather do what belongs to our free will and our most absolute power, and laugh at the apostle when he says, “God is faithful, who will not let you be tempted beyond what you are able,” and resist him, saying, “Why do I ask of the Lord what he has put in my power?” But far be it that anyone who is sound in mind should think this. Let us therefore ask him to give what he commands us to have. For he commands what we do not yet have for this purpose, that we may have it: that he may remind us what to ask; and that when we have found that we can do what he has commanded, we may understand from whom we have received this too, lest, puffed up and elated by the spirit of this world, we should not know the things that have been given us by God. Therefore we in no way destroy the choice of the human will when we do not deny with ungrateful pride the grace of God by which that choice is helped, but rather proclaim it with grateful devotion. For to will is ours; but the will itself is admonished that it may rise, healed that it may be strong, enlarged that it may receive, and filled that it may have. For if we did not will, we would certainly neither receive the things that are given nor have them. For who would have continence—to speak of it in preference to the other gifts of God, since it is of this that I am speaking to you—who, I say, would have continence unless willing? For no one would receive it either unless willing. But if you ask by whom it is given, so that it can be received and had by our will, listen to Scripture—or rather, since you know it, recall what you have read: “When I knew,” it says, “that no one can be continent unless God gives it, and this itself was a mark of wisdom, to know whose gift this was.” These are two great gifts, wisdom and continence: wisdom, by which we are formed in the knowledge of God, and continence, by which we are not conformed to this age. God commands us to be both wise and continent, and without these goods we cannot be righteous and perfect. But let us pray that he who has admonished us by precept and calling what we ought to will may give what he commands by helping and inspiring. Whatever of this he has given, let us pray that he may keep; what he has not yet given, let us pray that he may supply. Yet let us pray and give thanks for what we have received, and trust that we shall receive what we have not yet received by the very fact that we are not ungrateful for what we have received. For he who gave to believing married people to refrain from adulteries and sexual immorality is the same who gave to holy virgins and widows to refrain from all intercourse; and in this virtue it is now properly called either integrity or continence. Or have we perhaps received continence from him but have wisdom from ourselves? What then is it that the apostle James says: “But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all abundantly and does not reproach; and it will be given him”? But on this question we have said much in other little works of ours, as the Lord helped, and elsewhere, as far as we can through him, we shall speak when the opportunity is given.

I have wanted to say something on this now because of certain brothers of ours, very friendly and very dear to us, who are entangled in this error—not maliciously, indeed, but entangled nonetheless. They think that when they exhort people to righteousness and piety, their exhortation will have no force unless they place the whole of what they urge a person to do within that person's power, not helped by God's gift but put forth by the choice of free will alone—as though there could be a will free to accomplish a good work unless it were freed by God's gift. They do not notice that they themselves have this too by God's gift, that they exhort with such power as to rouse the sluggish wills of people to take up a good life, to kindle the cold, correct the perverse, turn back those turned away, and pacify the resisting. For only so can they persuade what they urge. Or if they do not do these things in people's wills, what are they doing? Why do they speak? Let them rather leave those wills to their own choice. But if they do these things in them, does a man really do so much in a man's will by speaking, and God do nothing there by helping? On the contrary, however great the power of speech in which a man excels, so that by skill in argument and sweetness in speaking he plants truth in a man's will, nourishes love, removes error by teaching and sluggishness by exhortation, “neither he who plants is anything nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase.” For in vain would the workman labour at everything outside, unless the Creator worked secretly within. I hope, then, that this letter of mine, by the merit of your excellency, will soon come into the hands of such people too. That is why I thought I should say some things on this; and also so that you yourself, and any other widows who read these things or hear them read, may know that you make more progress in loving and holding the good of continence by your prayers than by our exhortations; since, if it helps you at all that our addresses too are ministered to you, all of it is to be attributed to his grace in whose hand, as it is written, are both we and our words.

If, then, you had not yet vowed widowed continence to God, we would certainly exhort you to vow it; but since you have already vowed it, we exhort you to persevere. Yet I see that I must say such things as will lead those women also to love it and take hold of it who were still thinking of marrying. Let us incline our ear, then, to the apostle. “She who is unmarried,” he says, “is anxious about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit; but she who is married is anxious about the things of the world, how she may please her husband.” He does not say, “is anxious about the things of the world, so that she is not holy”; but certainly divine holiness is less by that share of cares in which worldly pleasure is thought of. Whatever intention of mind, therefore, would be spent even on those things by which a husband had to be pleased, the unmarried Christian woman ought in some way to gather up and bring back into that intention by which the Lord is to be pleased. And see whom she pleases who pleases the Lord; and certainly she is the more blessed, the more she pleases him; but the more she thinks of the things of the world, the less she pleases. Please him, then, with your whole intention, who is “fair in form beyond the sons of men.” For you please him by his grace, which “is poured out on his lips.” Please him also with that part of your thought which would be occupied with the world in order to please a husband. Please him who displeased the world, so that those who please him might be freed from the world. For men saw him who is fair in form beyond the sons of men on the cross of his passion, and “he had no form or comeliness, but his face was cast down and his posture misshapen.” Yet from this misshapenness of your Redeemer flowed the price of your comeliness—but of an inner comeliness; for “all the beauty of the king's daughter is within.” With this beauty please him; this beauty arrange with zealous care and anxious thought. He does not love the paints of deceit; the Truth delights in true things; and he, if you recognize what you have read, is called the Truth: “I am,” he says, “the way and the truth and the life.” Run to him through him; please him from him; live in him, with him, on him. With true affections and most holy chastity love to be loved by such a husband.

Let the inner ear of your holy virgin daughter also hear these things. How far she goes before you in that king's kingdom I shall see; that is another question. Still, you, mother and daughter, have found one whom, having spurned marriage—she all marriage, you a second—you ought to please together by the beauty of chastity. Certainly, if there were husbands to be pleased, you might perhaps be ashamed to adorn yourself together with your daughter; now let it not shame you to do those things by which you may be adorned together, since it is no fault but rather a glory to be loved together by that One. But you would not use a counterfeit whiteness and redness smeared on with paints even if you had husbands, not thinking them worth deceiving, nor yourselves such as ought to deceive. Now, then, please that king together, truly, who has desired the beauty of his only bride, whose members you are. Cleave to him together, she with virginal integrity, you with widowed continence, both with spiritual beauty. In that beauty her grandmother too, your mother-in-law, who is certainly now old, is beautiful with you. For while love stretches the vigour of this beauty forward to what lies ahead, age makes no wrinkle in it. You have with you a holy old woman, both in the house and in Christ, whom you may consult about perseverance: how one must fight against this or that temptation, what must be done that it may be easily overcome, what defence must be taken lest it easily lie in wait again; and whatever else is of this kind, she teaches you, sure from long experience, kind in love, anxious in devotion, secure in age. You especially, you consult her in such things, for she has experienced what you have experienced. For your daughter sings that song which in the Apocalypse none but virgins can sing. Yet the grandmother prays for both of you more anxiously than for herself; but she is more anxious for her granddaughter, for whom a longer span of years remains for conquering temptations; while you she sees nearer to her own age, and the mother of that daughter—whom, had you seen her married (which is no longer lawful, and far be it), I think you would have blushed to be bearing children at the same time as she. How much, then, remains to you of the dangerous age—you, who are for this reason not called a grandmother, so that you may be fruitful together with your daughter in the offspring of holy thoughts and works? Not without reason, then, is the grandmother more anxious for her, for whom you too as mother are anxious, since what she has vowed is greater, and the whole of what she has just begun still lies ahead of her. May the Lord hear her prayers, and may you devoutly follow her merits, she who bore your husband's flesh in youth and has travailed for your daughter's heart in old age. All of you together, then, and in harmony, please by your conduct the husband of one wife, in whose body you live by one Spirit, and be urgent in prayer.

The past day does not return in the future; after yesterday today goes on, and after today tomorrow will go on; and behold, all times and temporal things pass, so that the promise which will abide may come, and “he who perseveres to the end will be saved.” If the world is already perishing, for whom does a married woman bear children? Or why does she marry who is to bear in the heart and not in the flesh? But if the world is still to last, why is he not rather loved through whom the world was made? If the enticements of the age are already failing, there is nothing for the Christian mind to seek out with desire; but if they will still remain, there is something for it to despise in holiness. Of these two, in the one there is no hope for lust, in the other there is greater glory for love. How many or how long are the very years in which the flower of fleshly youth seems to thrive? Some women, thinking of marriage and ardently longing for it, while they were spurned or put off, suddenly grew old, so that they were now more ashamed to marry than eager. And many married women, whose husbands set out for distant lands soon after the wedding, grew old waiting for their return, and, as if widowed early, sometimes did not even live to welcome them back, old women their old men. If, then, when betrothed men spurned or delayed, or husbands were abroad, carnal concupiscence could be restrained, so that neither sexual immorality nor adultery was committed, why can it not be restrained so that sacrilege is not committed? If it was held down when it burned from being put off, why is it not suppressed when it has grown cold from being cut off? For those endure a more burning lust who do not despair of the pleasure of that lust. But women who vow to God the chastity of the unmarried take away the very hope that is the kindling of love. Hence concupiscence is more easily reined in when it is not set alight by any expectation; yet unless prayer is made against it, that it may be overcome, the unlawful thing itself is longed for more ardently.

Let spiritual delights, then, take the place of carnal delights in holy chastity: reading, prayer, psalm, good thought, frequent good works, hope of the world to come and the heart lifted up, and for all these thanksgiving to the Father of lights, from whom, without any doubt, as Scripture testifies, every best gift and every perfect gift comes down. For when, in place of the delights that married women have in the flesh of their husbands, the use of other carnal delights is taken up as a kind of consolation, why should I speak of the evils that follow, when the apostle has said briefly that the widow who lives in pleasures is dead while she lives? But far be it from you to be seized by desire for riches in place of desire for marriage, and that money should take the place of love for a husband in your hearts. For observing people's way of life we have often found that in some, when wantonness was suppressed, avarice grew. For just as in the very senses of the body those who do not see hear more sharply and distinguish many things by touch, while those who use their eyes do not touch with such liveliness—whereby it is understood that when the effort of sensing is suppressed at one entrance, namely that of the eyes, it puts itself forth more readily in the other senses with keener discernment, as though trying to make up in one what is denied in another—so too carnal desire, often restrained from the pleasure of intercourse, stretches itself out with greater force toward the appetite for money, and, turned away from there, turns hither with a more ardent impulse. But in you let love of riches grow cold together with love of marriage, and let devout use of the things you possess be applied to spiritual delights, and let your generosity be more fervent in helping the needy than in enriching the greedy. For into the heavenly treasury are put not gifts to the greedy but alms to the poor, which help the prayers of widows beyond measure. Fasts too, and vigils, so far as they do not upset health, if they are spent in praying, singing psalms, reading, and meditating on the law of God—even those things which seem laborious are turned into spiritual delights. For the labours of those who love are in no way burdensome but even delight them, like those of hunters, fowlers, fishermen, grape-gatherers, merchants, and those who amuse themselves with some game. What matters, then, is what is loved. For in what is loved either there is no labour or the labour too is loved. And see how shameful and sad it is if labour delights so that a wild beast may be caught, a cask and a purse filled, a ball thrown, and does not delight so that God may be gained.

In all the spiritual delights that the unmarried enjoy, their holy way of life must also be cautious, lest perhaps, while their life is not bad through wantonness, their reputation be bad through carelessness. Nor are holy men or women to be listened to when, rebuked for some carelessness of theirs through which they come under an evil suspicion (from which they know their life to be far removed), they say that their conscience before God is enough for them, despising people's opinion not only imprudently but even cruelly, since they kill the souls of others: whether of those who blaspheme the way of God, who, following their suspicion, are displeased by the life of the saints as though it were shameful when it is chaste, or of those who imitate, with an excuse, not what they see but what they suppose. Accordingly, whoever guards his life from crimes of vice and wickedness does well for himself; but whoever guards his reputation as well is also merciful toward others. For our life is necessary for us, our reputation for others. And certainly what we mercifully minister to others for their salvation redounds also to our own benefit. Hence not in vain does the apostle say, “We provide good things not only before God but also before men.” He also says, “Please all in all things, as I also please all in all things, not seeking what is profitable to myself but what is profitable to many, that they may be saved.” And in a certain exhortation he says: “Finally, brothers, whatever things are true, whatever holy, whatever just, whatever chaste, whatever most dear, whatever of good repute, if there is any virtue, if any praise, think on these things, which you have learned and received and heard and seen in me.” You see how among the many things he urged in his exhortation he did not neglect to put “whatever things are of good repute,” and how he summed up everything in two words when he said, “if there is any virtue, if any praise.” For the goods I mentioned before belong to virtue, reputation to praise. I think that the apostle did not take the praise of men for a great thing, saying in another place, “But to me it is a very small thing to be judged by you or by human day,” and elsewhere, “If I were pleasing men, I would not be a servant of Christ,” and again, “For this is our glory, the testimony of our conscience.” But of those two, good life and good reputation—or, to say it more briefly, virtue and praise—the one he kept most wisely for its own sake, the other he provided most mercifully for others' sake. But since no human caution, however great, can wholly avoid the most malevolent suspicions, when we have done whatever we rightly can for our good name, if some try to discolour our reputation either by inventing evil of us or by believing evil, let the consolation of conscience be present, and indeed joy, that our reward is great in heaven, even when people say many evil things of us while we live devoutly and justly. For that reward is like the pay of those who fight with the weapons of righteousness, not only on the right but also on the left, that is, through glory and dishonour, through ill repute and good repute.

Run your course, then, and run with perseverance, that you may lay hold of the prize; and by the example of your life and the word of exhortation carry off into this same course of yours as many women as you can. Do not let yourselves be broken in this zeal, by which you rouse many to imitate you, by the complaint of the foolish who say, “How will the human race survive if all are continent?”—as though this age were delayed for anything else than that the predestined number of the saints may be filled up; and the sooner it is filled up, the less, surely, will the end of the age be put off. Nor let it hold you back from your zeal to persuade others of your good if it is said to you: “Since marriage too is good, how will all goods be in the body of Christ, both the greater and the lesser, if all are changed by the praise and love of continence?” First, because even by trying to make all continent, there will then be only a few; for “not all receive this word.” But since it is written, “Let him who can receive it receive it,” those who can receive it do so when it is not kept silent even from those who do not receive it. Next, we ought not to fear that perhaps all will receive it and something of the lesser goods, that is, of married life, will be lacking in the body of Christ. For if all hear and all receive it, we ought to understand that this very thing was predestined: that married goods are already sufficient in the number of those members, so many of whom have passed from this life. For now, even if all should be continent, they are not going to give the honour of the continent to those who have already brought into the Lord's barns the thirtyfold fruit, if that is understood to be the good of marriage. So all these goods will have their place there, even if from now on no woman wishes to marry and no man to take a wife. Press on, then, confidently, with whomever you can, that they may become what you are; and pray watchfully and fervently that by the help of the right hand of the Most High and the abundance of the Lord's most merciful grace you may both persevere in what you are and advance to what you will be.

Next, I beseech you by him from whom you have received this gift and from whom you hope for the rewards of this gift, to remember to include me in your prayers, together with the whole church of your household. It happened most fittingly that I should write a letter on prayer to your mother, now far advanced in years—for it belongs above all to her to strive in prayer for you, since she is less anxious about herself than about you—and that I should compose this little work on widowed continence for you rather than for her, because for you there still remains to be overcome what her age has already overcome. But if the holy virgin, your daughter, wants anything from our labours concerning her profession, she has a large book, On Holy Virginity, to read. I had advised you too to read it, since it contains many things necessary for both kinds of chastity, that is, virginal and widowed, which I have here touched on lightly in part and in part passed over altogether, because I discussed them more fully there. May you persevere in the grace of Christ. Amen.