Letters 39.1–39.8

Let others be paid revenues from their inheritances by solemn reckoning; we, whose possession is your love in Christ, take our revenue from the services of your affection, and it is counted in the kindness of your letters. Thanks to the Lord our God, who, paying back living goods for dead and perishing ones, has also given you to us as a most fertile estate. For as in earthly things that estate is dearer which either answers the greedy wishes of its farmer with flowing fertility or charms the eyes of a fastidious owner with its pleasantness, so now in our spiritual estates, that is, the holy brothers whom the love of Christ has bound to us and given us as an eternal possession, that man is valued by us as a richer field who has been more loving toward us and more fruitful to us in ministering saving benefits. Since this is so, see how great a mass of such possession we have, when, besides the affection which you pour out to us in return, you bestow other gifts, which we cannot match, from the wealth of your tongue and the riches of your mind. For the courtesies and eloquence of your letters, which you pay us generously by yearly courier, show how ample a possession you are to us and how fertile a land to God, already producing thirtyfold fruit from your continence with each other, drawing near to sixtyfold by the daily increase of your common faith, and promising a hundredfold from your virgin offspring.

As for your writing that the care of property and children, which causes that necessity of tending earthly things while you long for heavenly ones, is a hindrance to your purpose, we judge rather that these things have been set before you by divine counsel as manifold material for exercising faith and perfecting virtue. For since this whole possession of the world seems to have been established for man and subjected to man, who would doubt that in every place of the world, in every part of nature, benefits have been prepared for the human race, from which we may gain not only bodily advantages but much more read spiritual ones? Therefore Wisdom herself, the maker of things, who orders all things sweetly, says through Solomon that husbandry was created by the Most High, so that you may cultivate it not only with bodily but also with spiritual zeal. In short, she teaches how much can be drawn from the countryside for the instruction of the soul when she sends her followers to the ant and the bee, both creatures of the countryside, the one provident of the fruits of life, the other the worker of honey from flowers. And the Lord in the gospel taught by how many rustic examples, showing the signs of the last times from the fig tree and from the regions already yellowing with harvest near, and warning us to learn in the field what we must beware of in the spirit, lest the enemy sow among us a fraud rivaling our faith, as tares among wheat. So he called us his field and showed himself the sower of our life in us, and expressed the differences of souls by the various natures of soils, so that we may beware lest we be barren, and may cultivate ourselves too, by steady study in the law of the Lord, for the fruitfulness owed to God and useful to ourselves.

So when you are in the field and looking at your land, think that you too are Christ’s field, and look at yourself as at your own field. Whatever appearance you require your steward to give your field, give such cultivation to God, the Lord of your heart, and understand that whatever displeases or pleases you in your field, the same pleases or displeases Christ in your soul. If it is foul and waste with sins as with briars, and is not rained upon by the clouds of the prophets and apostles, it will be condemned, grace deserting it, to a dry wilderness. But if, careful of itself, it cultivates itself with frequent prayers, is fattened by the sacred Scriptures, presses the plow of the cross deep into the heart, roots out its thorns with the rake of divine fear, and is burned in its faults and enlightened in its senses by the fiery word of God, then the householder must needs delight to walk in your heart and to go through all the regions of your soul, and rejoicing over you in his own field, he will say to you, if you appear a careful cultivator of yourself: ‘Well done, good servant, enter into the joy of your lord; because you were faithful in a few things, I will set you over many.’

But as for us, who in reversed order, weak ourselves, give counsel to the strong, what shall we answer for ourselves, who are in fact as poor as you think us, but in spiritual rather than earthly things, humble not by strength of mind but by want of strength? That narrow little garden, which you describe with an eloquent and generous mouth, barely bearing and holding a single cabbage, is ourselves, and we are, as the prophet said, more tasteless than half-cooked beet; let us take care that that cabbage is not the only thing without salt in our house. Yet it is more excusable for it to have no salt, which it did not receive because of the necessity of our want or the fault of stinginess; we rather are the boiled ones, we more culpably saltless, in whom, as folly abounds from voluntary sins, the apostolic salt has lost its savor, and from the face of our sins the spiritual seasonings have fled. But unless we are refreshed by your prayers, even that single cabbage will not flourish in us, and, utterly deserted, we shall lack even the saltless vegetable.

Pray, then, that the harmful caterpillar may not lay waste the shoots of our soul, that the greedy locust may not consume the crop of our mind, that the sluggish canker-worm may not settle on our heart, and that blight, the last companion of these little creatures, may not eat away the inmost fibers of our vitals. For evil beasts press upon our inner man, and troublesome birds often attack, to snatch away from us, if they can, the seed of the word. But thanks to God that we did not fall from the sower’s hand beside the way, but rather were sown in the way itself, that is, placed in the bosom of our Catholic mother; and that we may not be cast out from it like untimely births we need his mercy, that he may give us understanding in this way which he has bidden and enabled us to enter, and fix his eyes upon us, lest we become like the horse and the mule, which have no understanding.

But let us return to the language of our husbandry; for our God and Father is himself the farmer, God our Savior is the true vine, and the Holy Spirit is the one who waters souls. So may it come about for us through your prayers that the supreme householder, the heavenly farmer and diligent gardener, may visit, frequent, and mark the garden of our soul like that one in which he taught, prayed, and rose again. May he strengthen in us the bond of his love, so that we may live as branches abiding in him. May he command his clouds to rain upon us, and remove from our heart the wicked passions of fleshly thoughts, like those animals hostile to good crops, lest that word of the prophet be fulfilled in us: ‘What the caterpillar left the locust ate, and what the locust left the canker-worm ate, and what the canker-worm left the blight ate.’ For in our body there are as many principal incitements to vice: hope, fear, joy, and grief, by which the human race is most troubled, two concerning the present and two the future: concerning the present, distress of mind or joy; concerning the future, fear or hope. So we must beware lest, while we flee one of these vices, we run into its opposite.

So in the caterpillar, the locust, the canker-worm, and the blight we must understand the passions of our affections, some of which cling briefly to the heart, while others grow little by little and, if not cast out, reach the marrow and drink up all the sap of the soul. For see how these monsters of vices in our hearts correspond to the ravages of the monsters that befall crops. For example, if I desire something forbidden and soon cast away the thought, that is a caterpillar sitting on a leaf and shaken off; if I cast it away, but the thought comes back again, and begins to be cast away and to return more and more often, that is a locust flying off and returning. But if it begins to linger and takes more time eating than flying away, it is called a canker-worm. And if that canker-worm, which does not fly away enough but rather sits, is not cast out, it turns into blight, which, now clinging deep within, is never, or only with difficulty, driven out of the soul, as from the stalk.

I fear that, while I weary you with too much talk, I have myself settled on you more troublesomely than a locust or canker-worm. So shake off this little sheet like a caterpillar and throw it far away, lest from longer contact with our speech you gather the blight of our folly, by which the brightness of your heart might be dulled and the vigor of your mind blunted. Yet forgive us this sin by which we weary you so heavily, for this reason only: that we abuse your patience by the license of love, and we trust that your heart is so filled with love for us that it takes no offense at us, even if we do you an injury by which we might deserve to offend, if you could ever be offended by us, even when we deserve it.