Orations (other than the Theological Orations) 7.18–7.21

What remains? To offer the healing of words to those who grieve. Great for mourners is the medicine that comes from those who share their grief; those who have an equal share in the suffering have more to give in consolation to those who suffer. My word, then, is above all to such people; for whom I would be ashamed if, as in every other good thing, they did not carry off the first prize in endurance too. For if they are the most child-loving of all, they are also the most philosophical and Christ-loving of all, having long practised departure from here themselves and taught it to their children; or rather having made their whole life a practice of dying. But if grief still darkens your reasonings, and, like a film creeping over the eye, does not let you see clearly what is right, come, receive comfort, you elders from a young man, you fathers from your son, who ought rather to be admonished by those of your age, you who have admonished many and gathered experience over a long time. And do not wonder if a young man admonishes the old; this too is your doing, if I can see anything better than grey hairs. How much longer shall we live, O precious grey hairs, drawing near to God? How long shall we suffer here? Not even the whole life of men is long, if compared with the divine and endless nature, much less the remnant of life and the dissolution, as we might call it, of human breath, the last moments of this temporary life. How far ahead of us has Caesarius gone? How long shall we still mourn the departed? Are we not hastening to the same dwelling? Shall we not soon go under the same stone? Shall we not shortly be the same dust? And what do we gain in these few days, except that, having seen more evils, suffered some and perhaps done some, we pay to the law of nature the common and unalterable contribution: to follow some and go before others, to weep for some and be lamented by others, and to receive back from others the contribution of tears that we first made to others?

Such is our life, brothers, the life of us who live for a time; such is the game on earth: not to be, and to come into being, and having come into being, to be dissolved. We are a dream that does not stand, an apparition that cannot be held, the flight of a passing bird, a ship on the sea leaving no track, dust, vapour, morning dew, a flower that grows in its season and perishes in its season. “Man, his days are like grass; like a flower of the field, so he will flourish”: so the divine David philosophized well about our weakness; and again in those words: “Declare to me the fewness of my days”; and he defines the days of man by the measure of handbreadths. And what would you say to Jeremiah, who even reproaches his mother for his birth in his pain, and that for the sins of others? “I have seen all things,” says the Preacher; I have gone over in thought all human things: wealth, luxury, power, unstable glory, wisdom that escapes more than it is held; luxury again, wisdom again, coming round often to the same things: pleasures of the belly, gardens, a multitude of servants, a multitude of possessions, men and women cupbearers, men and women singers, weapons, guards, nations falling down before me, tributes collected, royal pride, all that is superfluous in life and all that is necessary, in which I surpassed all the kings before me. And what after all these? “All is vanity of vanities, all is vanity, and a choice of the wind,” that is, an unreasoning impulse of the soul and a distraction of man, condemned to this perhaps from the ancient fall. “But the end of the word,” he says, “hear the whole: fear God”; here he stops his perplexity; and this is the only gain for you of the life here: to be guided through the confusion of things seen and shaken toward the things that stand and are not shaken.

[20] Let us not, then, mourn Caesarius, knowing from what evils he has been released, but ourselves, for what evils we have been left to and what we shall store up, unless, truly attaching ourselves to God and running past the things that run past, we hasten to the life above, while still on earth having left the earth, and truly following the Spirit who bears us upward. These things are painful to the faint-hearted and light to the manly of mind. Let us consider it this way. Caesarius will not rule? But neither will he be ruled by others. He will not be feared by anyone? But neither will he fear a harsh master, often not even worthy to be ruled. He will not gather wealth? But neither will he incur envy, nor lose his soul by gathering wickedly, always seeking to add as much again as he has acquired. For such is the disease of riches: it has no limit to needing more, but always makes drink the remedy for further thirst. He will not display his learning in speeches? But he will be admired in speeches. He will not philosophize about the doctrines of Hippocrates and Galen and their opponents? But neither will he suffer with diseases, reaping griefs of his own from others’ misfortunes. He will not demonstrate the theorems of Euclid and Ptolemy and Heron? But neither will he be pained by the uneducated who puff themselves up. He will not pride himself on the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle and Pyrrho, and of certain Democrituses and Heraclituses and Anaxagorases, Cleantheses and Epicuruses, and I know not whom of the august Stoa and the Academy? But neither will he take thought how to refute their plausibilities. Why need I mention the rest? But the things precious and eagerly sought by all: will he not have a wife? Children? But neither will he lament them or be lamented by them, either leaving them to others or being left behind as a memorial of misfortune. Will he not inherit property? But he will be inherited by those who are most useful, and whom he himself wished, so that he departs from here rich, carrying everything with him. O the generosity! O the new consolation! O the magnanimity of his heirs! A proclamation worthy of every ear has been heard, and a mother’s grief is emptied by a good and holy promise: to give all her son’s wealth to her son, as a funeral gift on his behalf, and to leave nothing to those who had expected it. [21] … the earth, in the way that God who bound and loosed these things knows, makes it co-heir of the glory there; and just as it shared in the body’s hardships because of their union, so it shares its own delights with the body, having consumed it wholly into itself, and having become with it one spirit and mind and god, the mortal and fleeting being swallowed up by life. Hear, then, what is philosophized by the divine Ezekiel about the joining of bones and sinews, and after him by the divine Paul about the earthly tent and the house not made with hands, the one to be dissolved and the other laid up in heaven; who says that to be away from the body is to be at home with the Lord, and laments life in the body as exile, and for this reason longs and hastens for his departure. Why am I faint-hearted about my hopes? Why do I think only of this present time? I await the voice of the archangel, the last trumpet, the transformation of heaven, the remaking of the earth, the freedom of the elements, the renewal of the whole world. Then I shall see Caesarius himself, no longer exiled, no longer carried to burial, no longer mourned, no longer pitied, but bright, glorious, exalted, as you often appeared to me in dreams, O dearest of brothers to me and most loving of brothers, whether it was my wish that shaped the picture or the truth. [22] But now, leaving laments, I will look to myself, lest I unknowingly carry about something worthy of lament, and I will examine my own state. “Sons of men” (for my discourse now passes to you), “how long will you be heavy of heart” and dull of mind? “Why do you love vanity and seek falsehood?”, thinking the life here something great, and these few days many, and turning away from this separation, so desirable and sweet, as if it were something heavy and dreadful? Shall we not know ourselves? Shall we not cast off what is seen? Shall we not look to what is perceived by the mind? Shall we not, if we must grieve at all, rather be distressed at the lengthening of our sojourning, like the divine David, who calls the things here tents of darkness, a place of affliction, the mire of the deep, and the shadow of death; because we linger in the tombs we carry about, because, having become gods, we die like men the death of sin? This is the fear I fear; with this I live night and day; and the glory there and the tribunals there do not let me breathe: the one I long for, so far as to be able to say, “My soul faints for your salvation,” the others I shudder at and turn from. And I do not fear that this body of mine, flowing away and decaying, will wholly perish; but that the glorious creature of God (for it is glorious when it does right, as it is dishonoured when it sins), in which there is reason, law, hope, may be condemned to the same dishonour as the irrational animals, and be nothing more after the separation, as I could wish for the wicked and for those worthy of the fire there. [23] Would that I might put to death my members that are on earth! Would that I might spend everything on the Spirit, walking the narrow way trodden by few, not the broad and easy one! For what comes after this is bright and great, and the hope is greater than our worth. “What is man, that you are mindful of him?” What is this new mystery concerning me? I am small and great, lowly and lofty, mortal and immortal, earthly and heavenly: the one with the world below, the other with God; the one with the flesh, the other with the Spirit. I must be buried with Christ, rise with Christ, be co-heir with Christ, become a son of God, God himself. See where our discourse has brought us as it advanced. I almost confess gratitude to the suffering by which I have philosophized such things and become more a lover of departure from here. This is what the great mystery means for us; this is the purpose of God, who for us became man and became poor: to raise up the flesh, to restore the image, and to refashion man, so that we may all become one in Christ, who has become perfectly in all of us all that he himself is; so that we may no longer be male and female, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free (the marks of the flesh), but bear in ourselves only the divine stamp, by which and for which we came into being, so shaped and moulded by it as to be known by it alone.

And may what we hope for come to pass, according to the great love for mankind of God, the giver of great gifts, who asks for little and bestows great things, both now and in the time to come, on those who truly love him, bearing all things and enduring all things for love of him and hope in him; giving thanks in all things, on the right hand and on the left alike, I mean the pleasant and the painful, since reason knows that these too are often weapons of salvation; and entrusting to him our own souls and the souls of those who, being readier, have gone to rest before us on the common road. Having done this ourselves, let us end our discourse here, and you your tears, hastening now to your tomb, which Caesarius has as your gift, sorrowful and lasting: prepared in good time for parents and for old age, but given, beyond all expectation, to a son and to youth, though not without reason in the eyes of the One who orders our affairs. O Master and Maker of all things, and especially of this creature of yours! O God of your people, their Father and Pilot! O Lord of life and death! O Steward and Benefactor of our souls! O you who make all things and transform them in due season by your artist Word, as you yourself know in the depth of your wisdom and governance: receive now Caesarius, the first-fruits of our departure; and if the last goes first, we yield to your reasons, by which the universe is borne along; and receive us too afterward, in the acceptable time, having ordered our life in the flesh for as long as is profitable; and receive us prepared by your fear, not troubled, nor shrinking back on the last day, nor torn by force from the things here, which is the experience of souls that love the world and the flesh, but going eagerly to the long and blessed life there, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory for ever. Amen.