Letters 33.1–36.4

Thanks be to God, who has made manifest to me the fragrance of his grace in you through the eloquence of your letter. For through my brother Victor, most dear in God, who serves as a soldier of God in this office, to serve brotherly love and provide us, separated by long distances of land, with a tireless courier in yearly journeys, and to spend bodily labor with spiritual affection in the most devout duties of those who visit one another; through this brother, then, and fellow servant in the Lord and common friend of one heart (for he boasts that he is most welcome to you also with the same grace with which he is bound to us), through him, I say, my holy and venerable brother, I have received a gift as sweet as it was unexpected, your letter, in which the good treasure of your heart appeared to us. So I rightly rejoiced in receiving the blessing of your courtesy, since, beholding the face of your inner self in your most chaste eloquence, I recognized how great a help is granted me by the Lord in you.

But in what you thought should be enjoined on me, rich as you are in your estimate of my poverty, you showed indeed the holy confidence of the purest love; yet, as far as I understand, you were led on by the report of the Lord’s work to think that, after the work of the Lord, who has deigned to inspire in us care for our redemption, we also have resources of talent and speech. But hope, deceived by empty opinions, has cheated a good desire of great faith. For where would I get as much water as you thirst for, or a cup that you could worthily drink? Where would I get as many loaves as you ask for? But you will be the author of your own wrong in going hungry longer, you who, longing for the gospel food of light and life in the deep night of this world, knock at the needy pantry of a sleepy and poor friend; who, thirsting for rivers of living water, scrape at a parched little vein and try to squeeze moisture out of pumice. For within me there is either no spring, from the dryness of uninspiredness, or a bitter one, from the gall of malice; and would that your prayers and letters, often spent on me, might make it overflow and grow sweet by the wood of your faith and the sweetness of your eloquence, so that, by the word of God too, which as a good minister you have drawn out with a devout mouth, as by the prophet’s rod, when the … of my heart is struck

Not in vain, my dearest friends, is a manger set out for beasts, nor does it lie there only for show; it is a kind of table, though for irrational animals, yet constructed by human reason, so that four-footed creatures may take their food from it. But if those who have taken care to build mangers neglect to bring in fodder, the beasts, wasting in a poor stall, will sink down and fail, and hunger will feed upon the animals that are not fed. And those men will suffer a loss on the whole, worthy of their neglect or avarice, who took the labor only of making the manger and lacked the care of filling it; for along with the dead animals they will also lose the use of the manger, justly bearing two grave losses because they spared to supply the one necessary cost of a useful outlay. By this example, then, my dearest friends, we must beware lest we incur loss of soul and damage to salvation by neglecting the table set by the Lord in the church for the needy, which we look on with contemptuous eyes or pass by with dry hands. Far from your minds, I beg, be such a contagion. For the cancer of avarice easily creeps into hearts that are protected by no bowels of mercy, and it binds the captured soul with viper’s chains, if the enemy serpent finds it naked of good works and abounding in the material of captivity, that is, in unfruitful wealth. Let us not, then, allow the Lord’s table to be left empty for us and bare for the needy, to stand only for show and not for use, lest the groans wrung by our neglect from the hungry be turned back upon us. For he who despises the poor, as it is written, provokes him who made him, that is, the common Creator of all, who, as he rejoices in the refreshment of the needy, so is saddened by their failing.

Let us rouse ourselves, then, from the sleep of sloth, and, to shake off the torpor of neglect or to break the chains of avarice, let us look carefully into all the words, commands, promises, works, and counsels of our Savior God, and consider with ourselves why this table has been set out in the courts of the house of the Lord, in the sight of all his people, and by whose authority; and, what is most to be considered, for whose good, by what grace, and for what fruit it is placed there, shining and open. Consult the very oracles of truth, and the prophet will answer you: ‘He who has pity on the poor lends to the Lord.’ This table, then, belongs to the heavenly banker, who builds up the treasure of life and carries on God’s lending in order to trade for the pearl. For he who lends to the Lord’s poor awaits from the Lord the repayment of an eternal reward. And the blessed apostle Paul too, teaching amid his care for all the churches, testifies that his care for the poor was not the least; for he says, ‘Only that we should remember the poor, which very thing I was eager to do.’ The same apostle cries elsewhere: ‘We brought nothing into this world, nor can we carry anything out,’ and again: ‘What do you have that you have not received?’ And so, my dearest friends, it is not that we should be tight with what is our own, but that we should lend out of what has been entrusted to us. ‘For a stewardship,’ he says, ‘has been entrusted to us,’ and the use of temporal money is common, not the eternal possession of a private thing. If you recognize that it is yours for a time on earth, you will be able to make it yours for ever in heaven. If you remember in the gospel those who received the Lord’s talents, and what the householder on his return repaid to each, you will know how much more useful it is to place money on the Lord’s table to be multiplied than to keep it idle with barren faith, and you will know that a thing kept with no return to the lender, at great loss to the unprofitable servant, was kept only to increase his punishment.

Hasten, then, rather to deserve to hear that word, ‘Well done, good servant, enter into the joy of your lord,’ than this: ‘Wicked and slothful servant, out of your own mouth I judge you,’ and the rest that is well known, when the useless one was cast into the outer darkness and his talent given to the one who abounded with multiplied deposits: ‘For to everyone who has,’ he says, ‘it will be given, but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.’ Let us remember also that widow who, careless of herself out of care for the poor, mindful only of the future, emptied her whole substance for living, as the Judge himself bears witness. ‘For others,’ he says, ‘gave out of their surplus abundance’; but she, poorer perhaps than many of the poor, for whom two mites were her whole wealth, but richer in mind than all the rich, looking only to the riches of an eternal reward, greedy for heavenly treasure, renounced at once for herself the whole of that substance which is taken from the earth and returns to the earth. She cast in what she had, so as to possess what she had not seen. She cast in corruptible things, so as to buy immortal ones. That poor little woman did not despise the reckoning arranged and ordered by God for receiving what is to come; and therefore the arranger himself was not unmindful of her, and the judge of the world has already anticipated his sentence and praised in the gospel the one whom he will crown at the judgment.

Let us lend to the Lord, then, from the Lord’s gifts; for we possess nothing without his gift, and without his nod we ourselves do not even exist. And what should we especially think our own, we who by a greater and special debt are not our own, not only because we were made by God, but also because we were bought? Let us rejoice, though, that we were bought at a great price, indeed with the blood of the Lord himself, a price by which we cease to be cheap and for sale, because freedom is cheaper than slavery, to be free from righteousness; for such a free man is the slave of sin and the captive of death. Let us give back his gifts to the Lord, then; let us give to him who receives in every poor man; let us give, I say, joyfully, so that, as he says, we may receive from him exulting. For such a wrong pleases him, that we do violence to his kingdom, breaking open the bars of heaven by good works. For our Lord, who alone is good as the one God, desires to receive not out of zeal for avarice but out of an affection of generosity. For what does he lack who has given all things? Or what does he not possess who possesses the possessors themselves, since all men of riches are in his hands? But his boundless justice and goodness alike wish that, from his own gifts, gifts be made to him in return, so that, because he is good, it may produce for him matter for kindness toward you, and, because he is just, it may make for you a merit, so that you may worthily receive.

His treasuries of good things lie open, then, and the riches of his goodness are at hand, so that each one need not wait to receive, but may freely seize for himself as much as he will. For the good Lord and holy Father made us for this, that we should be good for our own good. For what outward good would he need, who is himself wholly, in all his greatness, goodness and blessedness? For this reason, as far as lies in him, dearest friends, he wishes every man to be saved, because in every man he loves his own work; and he is lavishly generous to you from his own wealth, if you are not envious and avaricious toward yourself with the things God has made yours, not to be a cause of death to you, but a return to life. O abundance of God’s goodness! He wishes to borrow from what he himself has bestowed; he desires to become the debtor of his own gifts, so as to repay you your interest with much reckoning.

Hasten, then, brother, to bind to yourself so rich a debtor, so that he may call you friend instead of servant, and, having found you faithful in your earthly coins, may make you rich from his heavenly treasures. Do not tremble, do not delay, do not spare. Be violent toward God; seize the kingdoms of heaven. He who forbids the touching of what belongs to others rejoices that what is his own is invaded; and he who condemns the rapacity of avarice praises the plunder of faith. Your guests have long been standing before your doors, waiting for the time and the king of the table. You keep your guests waiting; run anxiously, lest they remain fasting longer, and lest by the wrong done them he be roused who made them, and who made them poor for your good. For the almighty Lord, dearest friends, could have made everyone equally rich, so that no one should need another; but by the counsel of his infinite goodness the merciful and compassionate Lord has so arranged it as to test your mind in them. He made the wretched man so that he might recognize the merciful one. He made the needy man so as to exercise the wealthy one. Your brother’s poverty is the material of your riches, if you consider the needy and the poor, and do not keep for yourself alone what you have received; for God gave you in this world his share too, so that he might owe you whatever of his gifts you have offered to the needy by your voluntary affection, and might in turn enrich you on the eternal day from his share. For through them Christ now receives, and then he will repay for them. That rich man of the gospel, in hell, teaches us, and Lazarus, no longer a beggar but in Abraham’s bosom, who in that penal want of the burning rich man abounded in the refreshment of life; that example, I say, teaches that an exchange is distributed to the human race here and there, and that what seems denied to the poor here is to be repaid there; and, on the other hand, that the rich, who were poor toward the poor here, will take nothing of the happiness of the poor, and that perpetual beggary, with an abundance of punishments, is to be repaid them as a just vengeance for the wrong done to the poor.

Therefore walk, as it is written, as children of light in the light, while you have the light; and act so, Christian, while the day for repenting and providing is still at hand, that you may deserve to hear from the Lord, ‘Well done, good servant, because you were faithful over a few things, I will set you over many.’ See, then, and attend to this word, brother, and do not neglect the grace that has been offered to you. Do not go down empty into the house of Christ, which is the church of the living God. If you give even a little from your much, you have prepared for yourself a great addition to what remains to you. Very many wait for you and hang on your coming, looking around for when they may see you. For you are spent the prayers of all the needy and the vows of the weak. See that they are not forced to change such devout affections and turn their prayers into complaint, and that the groans, uttered against you, which the need of those in distress has wrung from the exhausted when you showed no pity, do not strike and summon God, the father of orphans, the avenger of widows, and the fellow sufferer of the poor.

Beware of loving only yourself, if you love yourself, because that love is of iniquity, and he who loves iniquity, as it is written, hates his own soul; the fullness of the law is love of neighbor, because every man is brother to every man by kinship of nature. So take equal care of yourself and of the poor man, so as to imitate the imitator of Christ by caring for what is useful not to yourself but to others, so that God may take the more lavish care of you. For see with how great a crime pride or avarice separates you from him to whom God has joined you by his work. Refresh the hungry soul, and you will not fear in the evil day the wrath that is to come. For ‘blessed,’ he says, ‘is he who considers the needy and the poor; in the evil day the Lord will deliver him.’ Work, then, brother, and cultivate this region of your land, so that it may bring forth for you fruitful produce, full of the fat of wheat, bearing you, with great interest, a hundredfold fruit of multiplied seed. In the desire and pursuit of this possession or business, avarice is holy and saving; for such desire, which earns the heavenly kingdom and longs for everlasting good, is the root of good things. Long for such riches, then, as was said above, and possess such an inheritance as the debtor pays you in hundredfold fruit, so that you may increase your heirs too, along with yourselves, in everlasting goods. For this possession is truly great and precious, which does not burden its owner with a worldly heap but enriches him with eternal return, which flows with milk and honey, and offers to its farmers a nectar of sweet liquors not pressed from hives or flocks, but poured out through glad rivers.

But, my dearest friends, provide by present care and diligent working of righteousness, not only so that you may seek eternal goods, but so that you may deserve to avoid countless evils. For you need great help and protection, and we need the support of many and unfailing prayers. For our adversary does not rest, and the enemy, ever watchful for our destruction, besieges all our ways and carefully searches out the exits and entrances of all; he fastens himself, an inseparable companion, to the footsteps of each one, throws hedges across our goings out and puts them among our feet, so that, ill-wary, you may strike a hidden pitfall even on level ground. Hence it is written: ‘There are ways that seem level to men, but their end leads to hell.’ And if you fall, secure on the level and not careful on the slippery, he rushes on at once and presses the fallen man, and he will not let go until he breaks and devours him. So beware in everything; while you set down your foot, look around at everything. For the devil threatens from every side, like a lion ready for the prey. Do not trust even your own ground; you must tread it with a cautious, or rather a protected, step, for it, knowing the sin of the first father in all human flesh, carries out the Creator’s sentence, fertile in thorns and thistles, serpents and beasts. Besides, many crosses beset us in this world, countless dangers; plagues of diseases, fires of fevers, and darts of pains rage against souls; torches of desires are kindled; everywhere snares lie hidden, spread before us; on every side drawn swords bristle; life is passed among ambushes and battles, and we walk through fires laid under treacherous ash.

So, before you fall, by chance or by desert, into some plague of such great sicknesses, hasten to be received and held dear by the physician, so that in the time of need you may have the remedy of salvation ready. It is one thing when you pray alone for yourself, and another when a multitude trembles before God for you. You are silent, and while you are silent they cry out for you. They see you and smile at you; they meet you and greet you, and, forgetting their want and weakness, their bodies are invigorated by your health, their souls revive at the sight of you. For you are a fertile field to them, you a fruitful estate; and they in turn are a rich and precious possession to you. They prefer you to their own children, and each is anxious for you before himself, and prays for your welfare with his own, or before his own. They do not neglect themselves, but, their love transferred to you, each loves himself in you and prays for your life as for his own, because your life is his harvest, and your riches are his wealth; they are the riches of poverty. In all the churches they pray for you; in all the streets they congratulate you; and in every place, at the mention of your name, they raise themselves up, blessing the Lord, and kiss you in your absence in their own hands. They always see you and never fail to see you, because they embrace you with the mind, by which we see those who are absent. For you are inscribed and imprinted on their hearts through your great kindness to them. They do not fear hunger, secure in your food, nor dread winter, because you forestall and shut out the winter by providing clothing. Blessed is the man whom the Lord, when he comes, will find so doing!

We have received with our whole longing heart the short letter of your holy affection, abundant to us in great affection. But because there is a time for everything, now, as in a time of sorrow, it has seemed also a time for shortening our words. We confess that we are greatly saddened, not so much by the bodily death of our brother as by his spiritual neglect, by which, mindful rather of the cares to be left here than of the remedies to be provided there, he put first what should have come after and put after what should have come first. He ought both to have cared for those better things for himself and not to have neglected these temporal things for his children. So we ask that you, suffering with our grief in fatherly affection, deign to remember that he too was once begotten as a spiritual son to you by the grace of God, and that this cause is therefore especially your care, lest we put to shame your devotion, which gloried in us as sons, by squandering the substance of our inherited portion; but rather that it may be granted to you by your prayers that a drop of refreshment, distilling even from the least finger of your holiness, may sprinkle his soul; and that for us, while there is time, running back to you and crying, ‘Father, we have sinned against heaven and before you; we are no longer worthy to be called your sons,’ the divine mercy may come to our aid, through your intercession, for the confession of sin, lest, having used up the substance of the eternal Father, which our sins squander daily, we be overwhelmed with shame to return, and, lingering in the far country, be led, which God forbid, to the unworthy keeping and food of swine.

We have sipped the sweetest taste of your mouth in the brief letter of your holiness. For as a drop of honey tastes the same as the whole comb, so, though in a single word, the dripping of your tongue conveys the whole flavor of your holy soul, because whatever is brought out of a good treasure is good and precious. Nor is a pearl cheap because it is small; it is all the more precious because even in a small size it has a great price, so that, as the authority of the gospel too testifies, it is sought even at the cost of squandered inheritances. And the grain of mustard, which seems least among seeds, stands out greatest among herbs. Because the word of this seed has been sown in you and flourishes in your heart, so that you have a burning heart on the way of the Lord, therefore even your brief letter holds the sweetness and strength of the heavenly word and ministers it to us, so that we too may be seasoned with the salt of your wisdom.

So we too will imitate the economy of your speech in this letter, even if we cannot imitate the fullness of your meaning, answering only this: that what chiefly concerned us when we wrote was the fresh grief of being torn from our brother. Even if we know that he has been taken from this world for a time, to be soon followed by us into that one, yet we mourn him as having died more truly for this reason: from what he did or arranged at his end, we have seen that he acted in keeping with our sins rather than our prayers, so that he preferred to pass to the Lord a debtor rather than free. For this reason we earnestly ask that, as a brother, which you deign to be to us in the Lord, helping brothers of one heart, you heap up this further reward for the merits of your faith: that you suffer with our weakness on his behalf and join in the labor of prayer, so that God, merciful and compassionate, who does all things in heaven and on earth, in the sea and in the depths, may refresh his soul with the droppings of his mercy through your prayers. Because, as the fire kindled by him will burn down to the lowest hell, so without doubt the dew of his pardon too will penetrate the lower regions, so that we, burning in the blazing darkness, may be refreshed by the dewy light of his goodness.

Pray also for us, that we may not die in our sins; may the Lord make known to us our end, so that we may know what we lack and hasten to fulfill what remains, that we may not be called back in the midst of empty days, weaving the spider’s web with empty works, but that full days may be found for us, so that we may be boys dying at a hundred years, that is, little ones in malice and mature in understanding. So may it be that, dead, we may leave to the survivors, by a good example, a wholesome repentance, and that our mourning may not exceed seven days, if we agree in the way of this life with our adversary, that is, with the Spirit and word of God, which opposes us when we sin. For the Spirit convicts the world of sin, and the word of God, as the Lord testifies in the gospel, if we do not obey it, will be our accuser and will hand us over to the Judge, the Word, who will demand the account of his talent to the last farthing, and, unless he receives the doubled interest of his money by the exercise of godliness, which is profitable for all things, will set the portion of an idle faith with the unbelievers, because he is next to an unbeliever who carries, under the empty name of Christian, a faith dead without works. And this is the fool, whose mourning lasts for all time, because, not having the fear of the Lord, he has not held the head of wisdom. And he has become the tail, because he who loves iniquity and hates his own soul does not dwell in the midst of the house; and, handed over to the officer of the prison of hell, he is sent into the outer darkness, because he lived according to the outer man. Therefore he is to be mourned here without end, because, condemned to eternal fire, he will die without end.

Let us then have peace with the Lord, not the peace of this world, which, friendly to sins, is at odds with God, but the peace of Christ, which unites us with God and conforms us to Christ, if our soul clings to the word of God, so that we may become one with God through the intervention of the Mediator, who is our peace, because he has made both one, joining in himself the discordant natures of God and man, and in us making two into one, that is, the flesh agreeing with the spiritual soul. And then Jesus will remain in our midst, whether the agreement of these two in us, or of three with the Spirit, invites him to make in our heart a dwelling pleasing to himself with the Father and the Spirit, and in turn to lead us where he is, saying, ‘Enter into the joy of your Lord.’