Letters 42.1–43.7

We rejoice in the Lord that we have been visited and challenged by a letter of your holiness, so that we, who had not before enjoyed the favor of knowing you, now by God’s sudden gift should take up full confidence in you as in an old friendship. ‘Wine,’ it says, ‘and a friend will grow old, and you will drink it with pleasure.’ See, your holiness has surpassed this saying of the prophet, for it has begun to love us with such perfect affection that in the first newness of this covenant it has given us the sweetness of an aged love, so that we need not wish for the increase of a love whose finished maturity we experience in its abundant beginnings, so that we can compare the richness of your soul to great springs, which, bursting from their source with a wide-poured mouth, are rivers at once at their rising. Blessed, then, is the Lord, who has superabounded over our sins with such grace that he has enriched us, unworthy even to know you, with your love too; and to us, who lacked until now a lesser good, since we had no bodily acquaintance with you, he has granted a gift from you as much greater as the spirit is a more important substance in man than the flesh. Therefore our heart exults, and with our mouth filled with joy we say: ‘The Lord has done great things for us,’ since you have anticipated us with the blessing of sweetness through holy words tried like refined silver, visiting us, as I said, and rousing us from the mold of our sloth to the observance of your love, in which we were not asleep through ignorance, but silent through ignorance. So blessed be the name of the Lord, and may he rejoice in this work too of his goodness, by which he has shown to us, who do not know your face in the flesh, rather this appearance of your mind, in which you are more beautifully formed in Christ. ‘For a man’s speech,’ it says, ‘shows what he is, and out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.’

Your speech, seasoned with apostolic salt, expressed for us the flavor of the grace that has been given you, and from the droppings of your lips we have tasted how sweet the Lord is in you, who have been made and set as head of the people, chosen from the sheep to be the ram of the flock, to rule the sheep of the pasture of him who laid down his life for his sheep. He, the same Lamb and Shepherd, will rule us for ever, who made us sheep out of wolves, and is now the shepherd of those sheep, to guard them, for whom he was the lamb, as victim. This, then, is our Lord and God, who was seen on earth and lived among men for us, who is sheep and shepherd in us, because he rules us inwardly with an invisible staff and a saving rod, so that even if we walk in the shadow of death we fear no evil, because God is with us, that Emmanuel, the Lord of majesty and the son of a handmaid, of whom the one he was born, the other he was made. The same is the Creator of man and his Redeemer, God from God, man for man, Son of God before the ages, Son of man for the world, in the form of a servant for the freedom of servants; he was made poor, so as to enrich the poor by his poverty, because he is rich toward all in every good, who is filled all in all, the fullness of the divinity, the hope of all the ends of the earth and of those far off on the sea, God our Savior, the Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who is in the glory of God the Father, God over all, blessed for ever.

He, then, who has deigned to take you up into the lot of his apostles, so that by their craft you might be a fisher of men and draw out with the hook of the saving word, from the bitter and deep waves of this world, a catch to be given life rather than killed for God, which you surely do daily; this God, who has made you a helper in his building and husbandry, who has deigned to plant love for our lowliness in the lofty soul of yours through humility of heart, because no doubt by the meekness of a sheep and the innocence of a lamb you deserved to be a shepherd; this God, I say, who deigns to make you love us, not doing according to our evil merit but according to the riches of his goodness, so that help may be heaped up for us from the support of your prayers, and reward for you from your great love even for lesser neighbors, may make you mindful of us perpetually, and mingle care for our salvation with all your prayers and offerings, lest this great outlay of your love, in which we glory in the Lord, become a stumbling block to us, if we cover the ravening beasts of untamed senses with sheep’s clothing. So pray, until you obtain it, that our heart may be made spotless in the sight of the Lord, so that we may not be confounded or dragged off together with those who speak peace with their neighbor, but evil is in their hearts; but that, at one in tongue and mind, we may believe with the heart to righteousness and confess with the mouth to life. So at last the devotion with which you love us will be returned fruitful to you, if your prayer for us is so effective that we are changed from our earthly appearance and transferred into your likeness, so as to bear the image of the heavenly man with equal truth.

Then we shall truly be happy in your love, if you obtain that we are not unlike your love. In this, however, we do not stretch to so proud a wish as to hope to reach the summit of your merit, but that, enclosed within the bounds of salvation, we may go over the footsteps of truth on the straight road, after the pattern of your faith, and that our end may be he who is the beginning, the head and foundation of his body, the Rock, Christ: that rock which follows us, thirsting for righteousness in the deserts of this world, with an accompanying spring and refreshes us with a sweet drink, lest we be scorched by the heats of fleshly desires; that rock on which the house, established, did not fall; and that rock which, its side pierced by the lance, flowed with water and blood, so as to pour out for us together saving springs, the water of grace and the blood of the sacrament, by which the same is both the fountain and the price of our salvation.

But woe is me, a sinner! Where have I now advanced, or rather slipped? While I plead with you in many words so that I may earn, when you direct your prayers, help for my sins, or rather against my sins, I heap up from my talkativeness the same burden which I ask you to lessen by your prayers, as if forgetful of what is written: ‘In much talking you will not escape sin.’ And what shall I do? With what mouth shall I ask to be cleansed? Or by what reasoning shall I be defended by you, when, knowingly and wittingly, I have committed the opposite of the prophetic word, so as to harm myself by the sin of much talking and to weary your holiness? I shall stick fast in this crime, and not even your prayer will be able to cover me, unless you yourself first forgive me this fault of wronging you, and offer for me to God a sacrifice of appeasement, as blessed Job was commanded to do for his talkative friends. For I claim so much of your mind as to presume that this talkativeness will go unpunished by your indulgence, not doubting that you have as much patience as you have love.

Long ago we had given brother Victor a short letter for you, and I wanted that too to be brought to your holiness, so that it might bear witness for its bearer himself that his delay with us was not of his own choosing. For the reason for its brevity was that Victor, hurrying back from us to you shortly after his arrival, was so obstinately set on retracing his journey that he barely gave us the opportunity of a short letter to you. Meanwhile sudden obstacles drew him back as he was setting out, since winter closed off sailing and fear closed the roads; hindered and recalled by these, he who had refused love’s request for a postponement granted necessity a long delay. During these delays he was also sick, and indeed suffered so severely that, brought back from the gates of death, he spent more time recovering his health than he had spent enduring his illness. Afterward, with the birthday of the apostles near, we thought it unkind to send him off. So to the longer delays which he had made because of the necessities mentioned we added this short delay by our own wish, so that, having celebrated the apostolic feast as a companion of our yearly vow and journey, he might return to you as messenger of this business of ours too.

The letters he carries to the blessed man of God, our brother Severus, we wrote at different times, as the pressure of haste allowed, as the varied reading of them will show; for Victor, hurrying and hanging at the very doors of departure, demanded the shorter ones, while we wrote the longer ones, as with a mind relaxed and loosened into leisure, once we had begun to feel secure about his long stay. Our brother Severus had written to us to send him back, and he had so prescribed the time that, sent back, he should arrive by the days of the vintage. Since we could not obey him in this, we have tried at least to show obedience in this form: that he may receive him arriving, if not in the same year he had hoped, at least at the same season he had ordered. And if he does not wish to charge his slowness to the necessities which I have set out, let him reckon it to my fault that he stayed; yet let him owe even his late return to his own prayers, because when he was sick and quite given up, I hoped for his health from the faith of Severus, while I despaired of it from my own merits, by which I saw Victor’s innocence being scourged, so that my iniquity was punished in him, in whom the divine justice was avenging what erred in love of a sinner. For love roused punishment for me too, so that I endured, suffering with him in torment of heart and mind, the tribulation which a man of one heart with me was suffering in his body.

As for the matter about which you had written to me through him, seeking sweet and abundant water in a bitter and dry little stream, I pour it back to your grace to explain; for I confess that I have not dared to touch even with a finger the weight of such great names and mysteries. For I have read that ‘wisdom will not enter a malicious soul,’ and so, conscious of my malice, I could not have confidence in divine revelation, since with a dark heart I could not receive the light of prudence. But you, blessed one, a vessel clean and fit for God, if you have received understanding of that blessing with which the patriarch, enlightened by the prophetic Spirit in the blindness of his body, addresses his sons, explain to me in your reply the mysteries of the kingdom and the sacraments hidden from the ages and revealed for the ages in Christ Jesus, in whom the various figures of all the saints meet, who is prefigured in the patriarchs, speaks in the prophets, works in the apostles, and is filled all in all, because in him all fullness was pleased to dwell, who is the beginning and end of all. But if you have not yet received it, because perhaps, believing it given to me, your neighbor, as if already stored in your own pantry, you have put off asking the Lord for it yourself, ask and you will receive according to your faith and your soul, which, the chaster it is in its members, the livelier in its senses, and the purer in heart, the more capable it is of Christ, who is possessed by the humble and seen by the pure in heart.

But so that you may bear less hardly being deceived in your opinion by my poverty, think of it as though you had suffered from me what the Lord himself suffered from that fig tree to which he came hungry and, finding it without fruit, struck with the word of his mouth, so that the tree which had been barren became withered by the Lord’s curse. But I beseech your brotherhood, even if you have found me like that unhappy tree, not to strike me with a like word, lest I wither completely and, empty of due fruit, be stripped even of the covering of leaves, that is, of the foliage of grace. But thinking again that the merciful and compassionate Lord wishes no one to die the death, and that in that tree he condemned by his curse not his creature but the fault of the tree, hostile to his planting, I rather ask you to curse my barrenness, so that no fruit may ever be born of it, so that fruit may be born for God from myself. For the death of my barrenness is good for me, so that the fruitfulness of the Lord’s planting may revive in me, and, as the fault by which I am made fruitless dies, I may grow green again for my farmer with the return of good will, so that the Lord himself, hungering for my life, may find me offering on fertile branches the fruits due to him.

But in this same tree Mark added the matter of no small question. For, agreeing with the other evangelists about the fig tree cursed and withered, he said something deeper: after saying that the Lord found no fruit on that tree, he added something that seems to excuse the tree, saying, ‘for it was not the season for it to have fruit.’ If that is so, the tree seems to have received the curse without cause, being free of the guilt of barrenness, if at an unsuitable time of year it did not yet have fruit ready, being not barren through fault but unripe through the season. But what the apostle says about cattle we can also apply to the tree, and say: ‘Is God concerned about a tree?’ Surely it was written for our sake, in whom God always wishes to find his food. For he has both a field and a vineyard in us. He winnows us on his threshing floor; in us he cleanses the wheat, scatters the chaff, burns the tares. So in that tree he was hungry for man’s salvation and was asking from man the fruit due to him. But when he came to his own, his own did not receive him, and the barren synagogue of the unbelieving Jews did not render the due crop of faith which he had sown in them through the law and the prophets. He came to their tree, seeking from the children of his planting the sweet food of the awaited shoot; but it, withholding the fruits of devotion, gave him gall for food, offered him thorns when he asked for grapes, and gave the planter of the good vineyard himself, the true Vine himself and the cluster of sweetness, burning vinegar to drink. Hence their table has been turned into a snare for them, and their grape has become one of bitterness, and their wine the incurable wrath of dragons.

But you, my brother, pray the Lord that our vine may not come from the vineyard of such men, because their stock has degenerated from the vineyard of the Lord of hosts into the vineyard of Sodom. And unless the Lord had left us, in the branches of the apostles from the roots of the patriarchs, a seedbed of life, from which the salvation of the Gentiles might sprout and in which the vein of the blessed seed might endure, we would have been like Sodom and Gomorrah in the whole fullness of malice. But since it is the last hour, and the axe is already laid to the roots of the trees, threatening a just felling to dry and unhappy wood, I ask you to pray for indulgence for me and a respite of time, so that, death being postponed, I may perhaps receive the sap of fruitfulness from the diligence of your love and the cultivation of my own care: that the fear of God may dig around my heart, and necessary repentance may fatten my stock with the dung of humility; that then, roused to the vigilance of care, I may stand ready at every hour and be fearful when the Lord is absent, so as to be secure when he comes; that at every time, every day, Christ may find me fruitful for him, that is, that I may never appear unripe for any work of his will, but that, if perhaps in a time of anger he should desire his peace from me, my mind may not be unripe for concord through the bitterness of anger; and that I may not wait for the sun to go down on my anger, lest my life go down, if evening closes the day before peace has quenched my rage.

What I have put about anger, consider said of every kind of vice. For this, I think, is what is meant by the Lord’s seeking fruit from that tree before its season. For he who knows the secrets of the heart and saw through the thoughts of men did not fail to see what was set before men’s eyes, nor was he less than human understanding, so as not to know the season of the year, which lies within the knowledge even of little children, and to demand autumn fruit in spring. But the craftsman of our salvation, the Creator, whose whole life and action on earth was a pattern of conduct and morals for us, arranged his invisible counsels visibly and expressed in irrational creatures, for the rational soul, the likeness of its own shaping, so as to instruct us in all things saving for us by the written signs of his works and words. And this is what he wished to be understood through the evangelist, by showing us that he sought fruit from the tree out of its season: that man may know that he owes fruit to God at every season, because the good Lord, who prepares mortal man for immortality, wishes him already in this world to put on the likeness of perpetuity, so that he may not take his fruit from the season, but be ripe at every season for him with whom, or in whom, he is to abide without time.