Letters 58.1–60.4

'A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things,' and 'the tree is known by its fruit.' You measure us by your own virtues, and, great as you are, you exalt us little ones; you take the lowest place at the feast, so as to be promoted by the judgment of the master of the house. For what is there in us, or how little, that we should deserve the praise of a learned voice, that we, humble and small, should be praised by the mouth that defends a most religious emperor? Do not, then, dearest brother, value us by the number of our years, nor reckon wisdom by grey hairs, but grey hairs by wisdom, as Solomon testifies: 'A man's understanding is his grey hairs.' For Moses too is commanded to choose seventy elders whom he himself knew to be elders, to be judged, that is, not by age but by prudence; and Daniel, still a boy, judges the aged, and a youthful age condemns the unchaste old men. Do not, I say, weigh faith by time, nor think me better because I began to serve in Christ's army first. The apostle Paul, changed from a persecutor into a chosen vessel, last in order, is first in merit, because, though the last, he labored more than all. Judas, who once heard, 'But you, a man my equal, my guide and my familiar friend; we walked in the house of God in harmony,' is convicted as the betrayer of his friend, his master, his Savior, and 'from a lofty beam ties the knot of an ugly death.' But the thief, on the other hand, exchanges the cross for paradise and makes the penalty of murder a martyrdom. How many today, living long, carry their own corpses, and like whitewashed tombs are full of dead men's bones! Sudden heat overcomes long lukewarmness.

And you too, having heard the Savior's saying, 'If you wish to be perfect, go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and come, follow me,' turn words into deeds, and, following the naked cross naked, you climb Jacob's ladder more readily and lightly. You change your tunic along with your mind; you do not seek glorious squalor with a full purse, but with clean hands and a pure heart you glory in being poor both in spirit and in means. For it is no great thing, with a sad and sallow face, to feign or display fasting, to abound in the revenues of estates and to make a show of a cheap cloak. That Crates of Thebes, once a very rich man, when he went to Athens to study philosophy, threw away a great weight of gold, and did not think he could possess virtues and riches at the same time. We, stuffed with gold, follow a poor Christ, and, brooding over our former wealth under the pretext of almsgiving, how can we faithfully distribute what belongs to others, when we timidly keep back our own? A full stomach easily discusses fasting. It is not having been at Jerusalem but having lived well at Jerusalem that is praiseworthy. That, that is the city to be sought: not the one that killed the prophets and shed the blood of Christ, but the one that the force of the river makes glad, which, set on a mountain, cannot be hidden, which the apostle proclaims as the mother of the saints, in which he rejoices to have citizenship with the righteous.

In saying this I do not accuse myself of inconsistency or condemn what I am doing, as though I seemed to have left my people and my country in vain, after Abraham's example; but I do not dare to confine the omnipotence of God within narrow bounds and restrict to a small place on earth him whom heaven does not contain. Each believer is weighed not by differences of place but by the merit of faith; and the true worshippers worship the Father neither at Jerusalem nor on Mount Gerizim, because God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship him in spirit and in truth. 'The spirit blows where it wills.' 'The earth is the Lord's and its fullness.' After the fleece of Judea was dried and the whole world was drenched with the heavenly dew, and many coming from the east and the west reclined in the bosom of Abraham, God ceased to be known only in Judea and his name to be great only in Israel; but the sound of the apostles went out into all the earth and their words to the ends of the world. The Savior, speaking to the disciples when he was in the temple, said, 'Arise, let us go hence,' and to the Jews: 'Your house will be left to you desolate.' If heaven and earth will pass away, surely all earthly things will pass away. So the places of the cross and the resurrection profit those who carry their cross and rise daily with Christ, who show themselves worthy of so great a dwelling. But let those who say, 'The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord,' hear from the apostle: 'You are the temple of God, and the Holy Spirit dwells in you.' The court of heaven is equally open from Jerusalem and from Britain, for 'the kingdom of God is within us.' Antony and all the swarms of monks of Egypt and Mesopotamia, Pontus, Cappadocia, and Armenia did not see Jerusalem, and the gate of paradise is open to them without this city. The blessed Hilarion, though a Palestinian living in Palestine, saw Jerusalem only for one day, so as neither to despise the holy places because they were near nor, on the other hand, to seem to confine God to a place. From the time of Hadrian to the reign of Constantine, for about a hundred and eighty years, an image of Jupiter was worshipped by the pagans on the site of the resurrection, and a marble statue of Venus on the rock of the cross, the authors of the persecution supposing that they would take away from us faith in the resurrection and the cross if they polluted the holy places with idols. Our own Bethlehem, now the most sacred place in the world, of which the psalmist sings, 'Truth has sprung from the earth,' was overshadowed by a grove of Tammuz, that is, of Adonis; and in the cave where the infant Christ once cried, the lover of Venus was lamented.

'To what end,' you will say, 'all this, brought up from so far back?' Namely, so that you may not think anything is lacking to your faith because you have not seen Jerusalem, nor think us better because we enjoy living in this place; but that, whether here or elsewhere, you have an equal reward with our God according to your works. Indeed, to confess simply the movement of my mind, considering both your resolve and the ardor with which you renounced the world, I think the difference of places matters if, leaving cities and the crowds of cities, you live on a small farm, seek Christ in solitude, pray alone on the mountain with Jesus, and enjoy only the nearness of holy places; that is, so that you may both be without a city and not lose the calling of a monk. What I say, I say not of bishops, not of presbyters, not of clerics, whose duty is different, but of a monk, and a monk once noble in the world, who laid the price of his possessions at the apostles' feet, teaching that money is to be trampled underfoot, so that, living humbly and in retirement, he may always despise what he once despised. If the places of the cross and resurrection were not in a very crowded city, in which there is a court, a garrison of soldiers, prostitutes, mimes, buffoons, and everything that is usually found in other cities; or if it were frequented only by crowds of monks, then such a dwelling would truly be desirable for all monks. But as it is, it is the height of folly to renounce the world, leave one's country, forsake cities, profess oneself a monk, and then live abroad among greater crowds than you would have lived among in your own country. People flock here from the whole world; the city is full of every kind of person, and there is such a crush of both sexes that what you partly fled elsewhere you are compelled to endure wholly here.

Since, then, you ask me as a brother by what way you should walk, I will speak to you with unveiled face. If you wish to exercise the office of a presbyter, if perhaps the work or honor of the episcopate delights you, live in cities and towns, and make the salvation of others the gain of your soul. But if you desire to be what you are called, a monk, that is, 'alone,' what are you doing in cities, which are certainly the dwellings not of the solitary but of the many? Each calling has its leaders. Let Roman generals imitate the Camilli, Fabricii, Reguli, and Scipios; let philosophers set before themselves Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle; let poets emulate Homer, Virgil, Menander, Terence; historians Thucydides, Sallust, Herodotus, Livy; orators Lysias, the Gracchi, Demosthenes, Tully. And to come to our own: let bishops and presbyters have as their example the apostles and apostolic men, and, possessing their honor, let them strive to have their merit too. But we have as the leaders of our calling the Pauls, Antonys, Julians, Hilarions, and Macarii; and, to return to the authority of the Scriptures, our leader is Elijah, ours Elisha, our guides the sons of the prophets, who lived in the fields and in solitude and made themselves huts by the streams of the Jordan. Of these too are those sons of Rechab, who drank neither wine nor strong drink, who lived in tents, who are praised by the voice of God through Jeremiah, and to whom it is promised that a man standing before the Lord shall not fail from their stock. This, I think, is also what the title of the seventieth psalm means: 'Of the sons of Jonadab and of those who were first led into captivity.' This is Jonadab son of Rechab, of whom it is written in the book of Kingdoms that he mounted the chariot with Jehu; and his sons are those who, always living in tents, were at last compelled by the invasion of the Chaldean army to enter Jerusalem, and are said to have suffered this first captivity, because after the freedom of the wilderness they were shut up in the city as in a prison.

I beg you, therefore, since you are bound by the tie of your holy sister and do not walk with a wholly unencumbered step, whether here or there, to flee crowds of people, duties, morning calls, and banquets as chains of pleasure. Let your food be cheap and taken in the evening, vegetables and pulses, and sometimes count small fish as the height of luxury. He who longs for Christ and feeds on that bread does not greatly care from what costly foods he makes dung. Whatever is not tasted after the throat, let it be the same to you as bread and pulse. You have my books against Jovinian, which discuss more fully contempt of the belly and the throat. Let the sacred reading be always in your hand; pray often, and with body bowed raise your mind to the Lord. Keep frequent vigils, and sleep often on an empty stomach. Flee rumors, petty glories, and fawning flatterers as enemies. Distribute relief to the poor and the brothers with your own hand; good faith is rare among men. Do you not believe what I say? Think of Judas's purse. Do not seek humble dress with a swelling mind; avoid the company of worldly men, and especially of the powerful. What need have you to see often the things by despising which you began to be a monk? Let your sister above all avoid the conversation of matrons, and among the silk garments and jewels of the women sitting around her let her neither grieve at being shabbily dressed nor admire herself; for the one is repentance of her calling, the other a seedbed of vanity. Beware of receiving other people's money to distribute, as though you were a faithful and famous steward of your own property. You understand what I mean, for the Lord has given you understanding in all things. Have the simplicity of the dove, so as to plot against no one, and the cunning of the serpent, so as not to be tripped up by the plots of others. It is not much different in fault for a Christian to be able to deceive or to be deceived. Whoever you find talking always or often about money, except for almsgiving, which is open to all without distinction, consider him a peddler rather than a monk. Apart from food and clothing and evident necessities, give nothing to anyone, lest the dogs eat the children's bread.

The true temple of Christ is the soul of the believer: adorn it, clothe it, offer gifts to it, receive Christ in it. What use is it for walls to glitter with jewels while Christ dies of hunger in the poor man? What you possess is no longer yours; a stewardship has been entrusted to you. Remember Ananias and Sapphira. They timidly kept back their own; you, take care not to squander Christ's substance imprudently, that is, not to give the property of the poor, with immoderate judgment, to those who are not poor, and so, as the wisest of men said, 'destroy liberality by liberality.' Do not look at trappings and 'the empty names of the Catos.' 'I know you,' he says, 'inside and in your skin.' To be a Christian is a great thing, not to seem one. And somehow the things that displease Christ please the world more. I have given this advice not, as they say, as a sow teaching Minerva, but as a friend to a friend entering the sea, preferring that you should find fault with my ability rather than my good will, so that where I slipped you might go on with a firm step.

I have read with pleasure your book on the Emperor Theodosius, which you sent, composed with prudence and elegance. I especially liked its arrangement; and while in the first parts you surpass others, in the last but one you surpass yourself. The style itself is concise and polished, and, while it shines with Ciceronian purity, it is full of thoughts. For, as someone says, a speech in which only the words are praised is dead. Besides, the sequence of matter is strong, and one thing hangs on another. Whatever you take up is either the end of what goes before or the beginning of what follows. Happy Theodosius, to be defended by such an orator of Christ! You have made his purple illustrious and consecrated the usefulness of his laws for future ages. Well done! If you have such first attempts, what a soldier you will be when trained! O, if I were allowed to lead such a mind, not through the Aonian mountains and the peaks of Helicon, as the poets sing, but through Zion and Tabor and Sinai and the heights of the Scriptures; if I could teach what I have learned and hand on, as it were from hand to hand, the mysteries of the prophets, something would be born to us that learned Greece did not have.

Hear, then, my fellow servant, friend, brother; listen a little to the path by which you should walk in the holy Scriptures. All that we read in the divine books shines and gleams even on the rind, but it is sweeter in the pith. 'He who wants to eat the kernel breaks the nut.' 'Open my eyes,' says David, 'and I will behold wonderful things out of your law.' If so great a prophet confesses the darkness of ignorance, by what night of ignorance do you think we little ones, almost still sucklings, are surrounded? This veil is placed not only on the face of Moses but also on the evangelists and apostles. The Savior spoke to the crowds in parables, and, testifying that what was said was mystical, he said: 'He who has ears to hear, let him hear.' Unless all that is written is opened by him who has the key of David, who opens and no one shuts, who shuts and no one opens, it will be laid open by no one else unlocking it. If you had this foundation, or rather, if the finishing touch, as it were, were put to your work, we would have nothing more beautiful, nothing more learned, nothing more Latin than your volumes.

Tertullian is full of thoughts but difficult in expression. The blessed Cyprian flows sweet and calm like a very pure spring, and, since he is wholly given to exhortation to virtue, being occupied with the straits of persecution he did not expound the divine Scriptures at all. Victorinus, crowned with a glorious martyrdom, cannot express what he understands. Lactantius, a kind of river of Ciceronian eloquence: would that he had been able to affirm our teaching as easily as he destroyed that of others! Arnobius is uneven and excessive, and confused through lack of arrangement of his work. The holy Hilary is raised up on the Gallic buskin, and, though he is adorned with the flowers of Greece, he is sometimes entangled in long periods and is far from being read by simpler brothers. I say nothing of the others, whether dead or still living, about whom others after us will judge one way or the other.

I come to you yourself, my fellow initiate, my companion and friend, my friend, I say, before I knew you; and I pray you not to suspect flattery in our friendship, but rather think that I err or slip through love than that I deceive a friend by flattery. You have a great mind and an infinite store of language; you speak both easily and purely, and the ease and purity themselves are mingled with prudence. For when the head is sound, all the senses are vigorous. If study or understanding of the Scriptures were added to this prudence and eloquence, I would soon see you holding the citadel of our writers, and, climbing with Joab the roofs of Zion, proclaiming on the housetops what you had learned in the inner rooms. Gird yourself, I beg you, gird yourself. 'Life has given nothing to mortals without great labor.' Let the church have you noble, as the senate had you before. Prepare for yourself riches which you may spend daily and which will never fail, while your age is vigorous, while your head is only sprinkled with grey, 'before diseases come on, and sad old age, and toil, and the harshness of hard death carries you off.' I am not content with anything mediocre in you: I want everything supreme, everything perfect. With what eagerness I received the holy presbyter Vigilantius, you had better learn from his own words than from my letter. Why he left so soon and forsook us I cannot say, lest I seem to wound anyone. Still, I held him back a little, as he was passing by in a hurry, and gave him a taste of our friendship, so that through him you may learn what you need not miss in us. I wish your holy fellow servant, who fights with you in the Lord, to be greeted through you.

You challenge us with great questions, and by asking you teach a mind grown sluggish with idleness. Your first inquiry was what are those things which 'eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor have they entered into the heart of man, which God has prepared for those who love him,' and how the same apostle then adds, 'But God has revealed them to us through his Spirit'; and, if they were revealed to the apostle, how we are to understand that he too revealed them to others. The short answer to this is that we ought not to ask what it is that eye has not seen nor ear heard nor has entered into the heart of man. For if it is unknown, how can it be known? What is promised in the future is not seen in the present. For hope that is seen is not hope but already a certain possession; as if someone were to say: 'Show me what is invisible; speak what cannot be heard; explain what human thought does not comprehend!' So the apostle must be believed to have said this in the sense that spiritual things cannot be comprehended by fleshly eyes, fleshly ears, and mortal thought. For though we once knew Jesus according to the flesh, now we no longer know him so. And in the epistle of John it is written: 'Beloved, we are now children of God, and it has not yet been made manifest what we shall be, for we shall see him as he is.' And from his testimony that it was revealed to himself and to the saints through the Spirit, it does not immediately follow that he revealed it to others. Otherwise, he also heard in paradise unspeakable words which he could not tell to others; or if he told them, they are by no means unspeakable.

The second question was one in which you say you read in passing in my little works that the lambs who stand on the right and the goats who stand on the left are Christians and pagans, and not rather the good and the bad. I do not remember ever having said this, and if I had said it, I would not persist in the error. But as far as occurs to me suddenly while dictating, I know that in the second book against Jovinian I discussed this passage, and not only this, but also what falls under the same question, where the bad fish are separated from the good. What was said fully there, then, seems best omitted now.

Third, you had asked about the apostle's saying that at the coming of the Lord and Savior some who are living will be caught up to meet him in the clouds, so that they will not precede those who have fallen asleep in Christ; and you wish to know whether they will meet him in their bodies without first dying, since both our Lord died and Enoch and Elijah, according to John's Apocalypse, are said to be going to die, so that there may be no one who has not tasted death. This can be known from the context of the passage itself: the saints who are found in the body at the Savior's coming will meet him in the same bodies, but in such a way that the inglorious, corruptible, and mortal will be changed into glory, incorruption, and immortality, so that the bodies of the living too will be transformed into the same substance as the bodies that are to rise. Hence the apostle says in another place: 'For this reason we do not wish to be stripped but to be clothed over, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life'; that is, so that the body may not be deserted by the soul, but, the soul dwelling in the body, what was inglorious before may become glorious. As for Enoch and Elijah, whom the Apocalypse reports will come and die, this is not the time to discuss it, since that whole book must either be understood spiritually, as we think, or, if we follow a fleshly interpretation, we must acquiesce in Jewish fables, that Jerusalem will be rebuilt again, and sacrifices offered in the temple, and, the spiritual worship being diminished, fleshly ceremonies will prevail.

The fourth thing you asked is how in John's Gospel, after the resurrection, it is said to Mary Magdalene, 'Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father,' while in Matthew it is written that the women fell at the Savior's feet; since to touch his feet after the resurrection and not to touch them are certainly not the same. Mary Magdalene is the one from whom he had cast out seven demons, so that where sin abounded grace might superabound. Because she thought the Lord was the gardener, and spoke as if with a man, and sought the living among the dead, she rightly hears, 'Do not touch me.' The sense is: 'You do not deserve to cling to my feet, or to worship me as Lord and hold the feet of one whom you do not believe has risen. For to you I have not yet ascended to my Father.' But the other women, who touch his feet, confess him as Lord and deserve to cling to the feet of him whom they are confident has ascended to the Father. And yet, even if the same woman is reported in different Gospels both to have held his feet and not to have held them, the solution is easy, since she could first be rebuked as unbelieving and afterwards not be repelled as one who had changed her error by confession. This can also be understood of the thieves, since one evangelist relates that both blasphemed, another that one of them confessed.

Your last slip of paper asked whether after the resurrection the Lord spent forty days with the disciples and was never anywhere else, or whether he secretly ascended to heaven and came down again and yet did not deny his presence to the apostles. If you consider the God and Son of God of whom we speak, and that he is the one who says, 'Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord,' and of whom another prophet testifies, 'Heaven is my throne, and the earth the footstool of my feet,' and again elsewhere, 'who holds the heaven in his palm and the earth in his fist,' of whom David sings, 'Where shall I go from your spirit, and where shall I flee from your face? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I descend to the underworld, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand will lead me and your right hand will hold me,' then you will surely not doubt that even before the resurrection God the Word so dwelt in the Lord's body that he was in the Father and enclosed the circle of heaven and was poured into and around all things, that is, penetrated all things within and contained them without. It is foolish, then, to limit his power by the smallness of one little body, him whom heaven does not contain. And yet he who was everywhere was also wholly in the Son of Man; for the divine nature and God the Word cannot be cut into parts or divided by places, but, being everywhere, he is wholly everywhere. So at one and the same time he was with the apostles for forty days, and with the angels, and in the Father, and in the uttermost parts of the sea. He was present in all places: with Thomas in India, with Peter at Rome, with Paul in Illyricum, with Titus in Crete, with Andrew in Achaea, with each of the apostles and apostolic men in each and every region. And when he is said to forsake some or not to forsake them, no limit is set to his nature, but the merits of those with whom he deigns to be are described.

Small minds cannot bear great subjects, and in the very attempt they fail, having dared beyond their strength; and the greater the thing to be said, the more is he overwhelmed who cannot unfold the greatness of the matter in words. My Nepotian, yours, ours, or rather Christ's, and because Christ's therefore all the more ours, has left us old men and has worn us out with unbearable grief, wounded by the dart of longing for him. Him whom we thought our heir we now hold as a corpse. For whom will my mind now labor? Whom will my little writings be eager to please? Where is that taskmaster of ours, whose voice was sweeter than the song of the swan? My mind is stunned, my hand trembles, my eyes grow dim, my tongue stammers. Whatever I say seems dumb, because he will not hear it. The pen itself, as if it felt it, and the wax, as if saddened, are covered with rust or mould. Whenever I try to break out into words and scatter the flowers of this epitaph on his tomb, my eyes fill, and with grief renewed I am wholly at the funeral. It was once the custom for children to speak the praises of the dead over their bodies before the assembly from the rostra, and, like mournful songs, to move the hearts of the hearers to tears and groans. See, the order of things has been reversed in us, and nature has lost her rights to our calamity: what the young man should have shown to the old, we old men show to the young.

What, then, shall I do? Shall I join my tears with yours? But the apostle forbids it, calling the dead of Christians 'sleepers,' and the Lord in the Gospel says, 'The girl is not dead but sleeps.' Lazarus too was raised because he had fallen asleep. Shall I rejoice and be glad that he was snatched away lest wickedness should change his mind, because his soul pleased God? But against my will and resistance tears flow down my cheeks, and amid the precepts of virtue and the hope of the resurrection the feeling of longing breaks the believing mind. O death, who divide brothers and cruelly and harshly separate those joined by love! 'The Lord has brought a burning wind coming up from the desert, which has dried your veins and made your fountain desolate.' You swallowed Jonah, but even in your belly he was alive. You carried him as if dead, so that the storm of the world might be calmed and our Nineveh saved by his preaching. He, he conquered you; he slaughtered you, the runaway prophet, who left his house, abandoned his inheritance, and gave his beloved soul into the hands of those who sought it. He who once threatened you sternly through Hosea, 'I will be your death, O death; I will be your bite, O underworld': by his death you died, by his death we live. You swallowed and were swallowed; and while you are enticed by the lure of the body he had taken, and think it prey for your greedy jaws, your inner parts have been pierced by the hooked tooth.

We give you thanks, O Christ the Savior, we your creatures, that in being slain you slew so powerful an adversary of ours. Before you, who was more wretched than man, who, laid low by the eternal terror of death, had received the sense of life only to perish? For death reigned from Adam to Moses even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of Adam's transgression. If Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were in the underworld, who was in the kingdom of heaven? If your friends were under the penalty of the offending Adam, and those who had not sinned were held liable for others' sins, what must we believe of those who said in their hearts, 'There is no God,' who have become corrupt and abominable in their desires, who have turned aside and become together useless; there is none who does good, not even one? And if Lazarus is seen in Abraham's bosom and a place of refreshment, what comparison is there between the underworld and the kingdom of heaven? Before Christ, Abraham was among the dead below; after Christ, the thief is in paradise. And so at his resurrection many bodies of those who slept arose and were seen in the heavenly Jerusalem. And then was fulfilled that saying: 'Arise, you who sleep, and rise up, and Christ will enlighten you.' John the Baptist cries in the wilderness: 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has drawn near.' For from the days of John the Baptist the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent have plundered it. That flaming sword, the guardian of paradise, and the cherubim who stand at its doors have been quenched and unlocked by the blood of Christ. No wonder this is promised to us in the resurrection, since all of us who live in the flesh but not according to the flesh have our citizenship in heaven, and it is said to us while we are still placed on earth: 'The kingdom of God is within you.'

Add to this that before the resurrection of Christ God was known only in Judea, his name great only in Israel; and even those who knew him were dragged down to the underworld. Where then were the men of the whole world, from India to Britain, from the frozen region of the north to the burning heat of the Atlantic Ocean, so many countless peoples and such multitudes of nations, as varied in language as in dress and arms? They were crushed like fish and locusts, like flies and gnats; for without knowledge of his Creator every man is a beast. But now the voices and writings of all nations proclaim the passion of Christ and his resurrection. I say nothing of the Hebrews, Greeks, and Latins, the nations which the Lord dedicated to his faith in the title on the cross. The immortality of the soul and its survival after the dissolution of the body, which Pythagoras dreamed of, Democritus did not believe, and Socrates discussed in prison to console himself for his condemnation, the Indian, the Persian, the Goth, and the Egyptian now philosophize about. The wildness of the Bessi and the crowds of skin-clad peoples, who once sacrificed men at the funerals of the dead, have broken their harsh noise into the sweet song of the cross, and Christ is the one voice of the whole world.