Letters 47.1–49.15

Although our son Cerealis left me uncertain whether he would go on to you at the time when he returns to holy Peter, yet we judged that not to write to you through one who is as much yours as ours would be as blameworthy for us as it would be sad for you. So, preferring to risk the loss of a little sheet, if perhaps he did not see you, than the loss of a courtesy, as we believe, if he did see you, we have entrusted this letter not to chance but to faith. For we believe that in the Lord the way of our letter and of our son will be directed to you, because for those who desire good all things will turn out for good; and he desires you as much as you ought to be desired by one who understands his own benefit from your company. And so I presume that, according to his faith and devotion, his desire will be satisfied with good things, and he will reach you and remain with you, and a saving protection before the Lord will be doubled for us in you both, when so good a son, companion, disciple, and helper is added to you, and you, given to him by the Lord as father and teacher of every good, add the strength of spiritual grace to the effective power of prayers. As for us, although, thanks to your love, we presume that, about to return to the East, you will not bear to go away without visiting us, yet because of our sins we fear lest even the daughter of Babylon, so near to us, turn you away. So we commit our desires and prayers to the Lord, that he may act not according to our merit but according to our desire, and direct your way to us in the way of his peace, because those who do not walk in it have been condemned to a reprobate mind, lest they deserve to desire you.

Indeed, with that importunity with which I have been accustomed to knock at your door even at midnight, never forced to modesty and moderation in asking by fear of a refusal, I now hand over to you this business of mine: that you deign to explain the blessings of the twelve patriarchs, distributed among the rest of his sons, of which you have already published for me the beginning, the prophecy concerning the person of Judah expounded in written pages, as was asked, with a threefold interpretation. So may I through you become acquainted with the truth and have as author of great grace and praise, if to those who, thinking of me beyond what I am because of the grace of a necessary work, have thought I should be consulted, I give answers that are divine and of your spirit rather than foolish and of my own understanding. May the grace of God remain with you, as it does, for ever, brother of one heart in Christ.

… For if you see today priests worthy of the Lord, such as Exuperius at Toulouse, or Simplicius at Vienne, or Amandus at Bordeaux, or Diogenianus at Albi, or Dynamius at Angoulême, or Venerandus at Clermont, or Alethius at Cahors, or now Pegasius at Périgueux, however the evils of the world stand, you will see the most worthy guardians of the whole faith and religion, in their excellence …

It is honorable to proclaim the works of the Lord, and this has been the cause of this letter, because the affair of this householder, Secundinianus, whom I am commending to your oneness of heart, cannot, as you will see, be told without the glory and praise of the Lord. For as he said in the gospel, ‘My Father is working until now, and I am working,’ so he does now too, and the good Lord does not cease to rouse and truly challenge our faith by evident proofs of his truth. So, appearing to us, as it is written, by various proofs, God our Savior works for us on land and sea, and what he does in individuals he provides for the faith and salvation of many. For see how wonderful and worth proclaiming is the work which the Lord Jesus has done in one old man with his holy angels. This is the case of our aforesaid friend and brother, a man faithful in Christ. Last winter he was compelled in Sardinia, along with other shipowners, to take on board, by the service of his own ship, grain to be carried to the state granaries; and, without waiting for the time of the usual sailing, under pressure of public authority, he sent off the loaded vessel before the mildness of summer. At once, as he told me, a storm arose in the nearest strait, drove back from their intended courses a fleet of many ships rashly set loose from the harbor, and wrecked them on the shore. His ship, at a certain place on that island which they call Ad Pulvinos, they tried to anchor fast, so that it might not be dashed likewise; but, as the violence of that same storm prevailed and the cables broke, the terrified sailors let down the skiff, either to help hold the ship more strongly by renewing the anchors and fixing them deeper, or to rescue themselves, if they could, from the danger to the ship. But the storm, it is said, at once snatched them with the frail refuge of their little boat onto the rocks and overwhelmed them with the breaking waves. One of the whole number of the crew, an old man assigned to bailing, they left behind, either forgetful of him in their fear or despising him as a cheap life. Meanwhile the ship, abandoned by sailors and anchors, was carried out to sea.

The old man, who had not known he was left behind, when he felt himself tossed and rolled, came up from the depths of the ship and saw everything empty, sea on every side and on every side sky. Since solitude heaped up both fear and danger for the wretched man, he spent six days and nights fasting. For his tears were his bread day and night. Then, when he was now more eager for death than for life and longed for an end of his sufferings by the departure of his soul, the merciful and compassionate Lord deigned to approach him close at hand and revive him with the food of his word. He himself relates, still weeping, the happiness of his danger, and he cannot be heard without tears of the heart and joy of the spirit, how he was addressed by Christ as he came near, how he was strengthened by his exhortation, how he was bidden to cut down the mast, the cutting of which at that time was the remedy for the ship; and what many very strong men can hardly do without danger to themselves and the ship, he, alone and weak, not daring to undertake, dared at the word of God. Struck only twice and lightly with the axe, touched rather than hewn by an old man’s hand, the mast sprang so from the wound that it was thrown far outside the ship into the waves and fell harmlessly. Then, in the various tasks that the tossing of the sea and the rigging of a ship require, when either the foresail had to be set or the bilge had to be emptied, he was called by the Lord by the name of Victor and bidden only to stretch out his hand, by way of acting, to any work. For among the many and various graces of divine wonders concerning this old man, this gift of God too seems not to be passed over: that he also received the name by which he is now enrolled at his rebirth and is written by men and angels. For by his family name he was called Valgius, who is now called Victor by the Lord; and he is a victor in the Lord, who gave him a name fitting his own works in him, because, namely, both at sea, over storms and shipwreck, by the help of Christ, and lately on land, by the grace of the same, over sins and the devil, he has triumphed, so that, to be wholly renewed in Christ, he should remain old neither in name nor in man.

Wonderful faithfulness and unspeakable kindness of the saving Lord! If perhaps the old man, sluggish with sleep, rose too slowly for his tasks, he first felt for him gently with a soft hand, so that he might not wake up in fright, and roused him by pulling his ear lightly; and when the old man made a light effort, he saw at his very first attempt the things done by angelic hands. He had hardly touched a rope as if to haul it, and already the topsail stood unfurled on its spars, or the ship was making sail. Water taken in through the seams had tried to sink the ship, and after one or two scoops of a small bailer, the ship was drained and dried of moisture, and he had nothing to do, amazed that the labor was taken from him without labor and his task forestalled by a hidden hand, if one can rightly call hidden a hand that gave such clear help. But the workers themselves were not withheld from the simple eyes of the most innocent old man; for he often saw armed men, that is, soldiers of the army of heaven, keeping watch over the vessel and managing every task of seamanship. And indeed no sailors befitted that ship but angels, since the governor of the world was its helm. For the Lord himself, now shining with his own face, as he is described in the Apocalypse, and radiant in his hair, now venerable with the face of his confessor and friend, my lord, our common patron Felix, sat on the stern, as it is called in nautical usage, at the steering oars, or rather in place of the steering oars, which the ship had lost on that shipwreck shore along with its anchors and sailors, unhappy, but happily, so that for all its lost men and gear it gained either the Lord’s martyr or the martyr’s Lord. The old man relates, weeping for joy, that he used to lie at the feet of him who steered, now the Lord, now the martyr, and even, as he drew him more familiarly, had a blessed pillow for his reclining head on the sacred knees and bosom and in divine breaths of fragrance.

Should we now doubt that the bosoms of the patriarchs lie open to faithful servants in Christ, when his boundless goodness has cherished in his own lap, or in his saint’s, even this man, then a catechumen? For he himself was present in his saint, he who said, as you know, to the Father, ‘I have given them the glory which you gave me, that they may be one, as we are one: I in them, and you in me’; and again to the apostles, in whom he spoke to his whole body: ‘Behold, I am with you all the days of my life until the end of the world.’ This his power proves daily to us by conspicuous miracles, working in the hand of his apostles and martyrs, so that we may believe that the Son of God and our Lord Jesus, reigning in heaven at the right hand of the Father from the resurrection of the dead, is the Lord of the living, not of the dead. So when he cherished the old sailor in the likeness of his holy confessor too, he himself was present in his saint, and soothed the weary and spent man with gentle words, and refreshed him no more with food than with word, because he himself is the true bread which came down from heaven to give food to all flesh. For in every man he loves his own work and wishes every man, as far as lies in him, to be saved, because, being the giver of life and wholly life, he did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living, he who prefers mercy to sacrifice, nor does he accept persons, he who made all, but judges according to merits, because God is judge.

In short, the sailor was not cheaper to him because of the calamity of shipwreck or because of age and want; rather, all those things for which his comrades had despised him moved Christ and shook his heart. ‘For his eyes always look upon the poor.’ Surely this poor man too cried, and the Lord heard him. Perhaps the Lord, and the very cause of his danger, even dictated to him the prophetic words for praying, so that he cried: ‘Save me, O God, for the waters have come in even to my soul. I have come into the depth of the sea; let not the storm of water drown me, nor the deep swallow me up. Let your mercy quickly anticipate me, before I am fixed in the mire of the deep and the pit shuts its mouth upon me. Look upon me, for I am alone and poor,’ and ‘I have become like a pelican of the wilderness, like a night-raven in its dwelling,’ and so, in my ship, ‘like a lone sparrow on the housetop.’ The Lord heard and had mercy on him, and sent his angels round about him, and became his salvation. He commanded the storm, and it stood still into a breeze; he rebuked the sea, and its waves were silent, and he led him on many waters, seeing the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep. He fed him with the fat of wheat, and, with Christ speaking to him, he was filled as with honey from the rock. He who has blessed the poor in spirit looked upon the lowly; he who promised comfort to those who mourn spoke to him as he wept; and he who gives fullness to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, himself the bread, the righteousness, and the fountain of life, watered from himself and fed this fainting man, and he had mercy on him with no other kindness than that with which, devoted to the Father even to the death of the cross, he has had mercy on every man tossing in the sea of this world, because, namely, one man is a portion of the whole, and the whole is the form and cause of one man.

In short, governing not only the ship but also the man for whose sake he was guarding the ship, and dispensing in him the distinct tasks of flesh and spirit, he bade him rest secure by night and watch carefully by day, promising that he would keep watch for him while he slept and would work with him while he watched. You will surely recognize in these words of the Lord that affection by which he always so cherishes our hope as not to relax our care, and so provides for the weak flesh that the spirit does not cease to be willing. And therefore he allowed the weary old man to sleep in such a way that he did not release even an old and exhausted man from the task of watching, so that, namely, he might not slacken into sluggish sleep and begin to sleep not only in body but also in mind. Fearing this, a certain holy man says, ‘Enlighten my eyes, O Lord, lest I ever sleep in death.’ For torpor of minds is a disease near to death. And then the enemy will say, ‘I have prevailed against him,’ if sleep has overcome the eyes of the mind too. We recognize, then, that he was present to the old man who said to his drowsy disciples, ‘Watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation,’ and again said to them when they were watching, now secure in the vigor of those he had roused, ‘Sleep now and take your rest.’ That this was said no more of bodily sleep than of firmness of faith he teaches elsewhere, saying, ‘Be steadfast, for I have overcome the world.’ For this is man’s true rest, if, constant in faith and secure from every enemy by Christ’s victory, he enjoys peace of one heart: for he is our rest who is our peace, and who watches for us so that he may rest in us, and who now bids us watch for the sake of perpetual rest.

The Lord himself deigned to do in this one old man those same gifts of his kindness which he wishes done in the whole world: severe with gentleness, and indulgent but not without the bridle of fear, he pulled his ear to shake off the sleep of torpor, and offered his bosom to give him perpetual rest. For twenty-three days a man shut off not only from land but also from men, the plaything of all the winds, an exile from every land, a guest of different seas and without a share in the human race, worn out by fasting, age, and fear amid the waves and the monsters of the sea in the wandering lodging of a drifting ship: did he, I ask you, endure by his own nature? To whom, then, could it be obscure that God was in him? What God do I mean? Is it not he who alone does wonders, who calls the things that are not as though they were? By his help the ship swam across the whole lonely sea and moved itself on with an invisible helmsman, as if empty and yet with heavy bulk, with the man shut in its cabins along with the grain, as that ark, pregnant with the seeds of the world, floated on the flood, and, tossed on more than one sea, did not change its course with the storms.

First, driven toward the City, the ship saw the lighthouse of Rome’s harbor; then it coasted Campania in long stretches, and, the whirlwinds changing, flew over to the shores of Africa; and, carried off again from them, it ran past Sicily. Around Sicily, they say, the straits are agitated and full of whirlpools from the many islands, and the courses dangerous even for ships with a helmsman, amid the windings and obstacles of the islands; yet the idle old man passed through them by so direct and unimpeded a voyage that, like a divine ship, wise with a breath sent from God, it of its own accord avoided what was to be shunned, sought what was to be followed, and was turned usefully and skillfully through necessary detours, until at last, on the twenty-third day, God now taking pity, it was to put an end to its wanderings and dangers on the shores of Lucania. As it drew near them, the eternal Lord, so that his tireless goodness might work its wonders to the very end of the voyage he had taken on himself, sent out to meet it, by a silent prompting of his inspiration, fishermen driven from the shore in two little boats. Seeing this ship from afar, they fled terrified at first sight; for, as they themselves afterward reported, it seemed to them full of armed men and like a warship. Then, called back at last by the loud and often repeated cries of our old man, they reasoned with themselves, and, the Lord so working, they understood that they had nothing to fear from the ship to which they were called. They came up to the vessel, and only with difficulty, though the old man assured them of it, and when at last they had boarded it, did they believe their own eyes that what they had seen from afar crowded was empty of soldiers. There the old man received them with a meal which he had prepared the day before at the Lord’s bidding, and filled them abundantly with the plentiful bread of the lost sailors, and rewarded them with a great payment. Glad at these wages, with their little boats serving it and leading the way with a towline, they brought the ship to their harbor, as if it had served its time and been crowned after a heavy war and contest, being the survivor of shipwreck and the victor over winds and waves. What would the vanity of those men have made of this ship, who, by the error by which they worship whatever they fashion, have consecrated in fabulous literature the ship of the unhappy Argonauts and even now believe they see it in the sky and count it among the choirs of stars? With no less madness they venerate the ship that carried the Epidaurian dragon, while the serpent himself, whose embodied phantom they carried, mocks them.

But let us flee from fictions and foreign things, and not mix the lies and poisons of those who are perishing with the light of our truth. We have our own ships, so that we may more worthily use true and domestic examples. We have the ark of Noah. We have both the ship of Tarshish and the ship of the man of Tarsus. But that one from which the whale, avenger and guardian, received the fugitive prophet of God can be compared with this ship only so far as it was in danger before the lot was cast; but the third ship fits my example in this, that it carried the apostle and martyr, and for his sake and in him received Christ, or when he gave back to him the whole multitude of the ship that was about to perish.

Let us then set before ourselves and behold in mind the most beautiful spectacle of divine work: seeing one ship snatched from the wreck of many ships and all its sailors, with one old man traveling over different seas, alone on the sea and he alone in it. Now that ark of the flood, the image of the church, will turn before our eyes, floating firmly over the whole world, over the submerged globe, under the single face of a sea spread everywhere, between the poured-out waters of heaven and the deep; and this ship bore its image in many ways on a smaller scale. For as that ark was full of seeds of every kind, so this ship was full of various grains, carrying, besides the public cargo, much from the wages and private goods of the sailors. That ark carried one family for the restoration of the human race, and this ship one man for the faith of many. To that the dove brought the branch of peace; to this the Lamb showed peace. A bird entered that one in the image of the Holy Spirit, and Christ approached this one through the image of his confessor. Let us look also at Jonah’s ship: we shall see this one saved by a larger gift of the same power and by a greater miracle. For that one was saved with all safe except one; this one was saved with all lost but one. And this ship also seems to have imitated that whale, the harmless devourer of the living prophet, since it likewise carried a man shut in its belly through the depths of the sea and set him unharmed on the shore, as that beast, fasting from its prey, at the command of hiccups threw out the undigested man from the prison of its spacious belly and poured him back to God, at whose command it had received him, and, the mystery of the saving passion fulfilled, vomited him out on the third day in hope of the resurrection.

But the company of that ship which was granted to the apostle was happier, not indeed by their own merits; for they too had deserved shipwreck, having sailed in contempt of the apostle’s advice. But we can glory no less among the divine works in this vessel too, whose men, though they lacked a like advocate, yet in its single sailor the apostle’s God himself was present as helmsman; and it deserved to be freed for the safety of one innocent man, which that ship did not deserve which first received the chosen vessel in chains, condemned for contempt of the apostle and for the crime of his prison captivity. That ship’s band seems to me to have been freed also for the mystery of grace, so that they escaped naked from the wreck of the doomed ship, namely so that, freed from the former ship, that is, from the sin of Adam’s flesh, and cleansed by the very waves through which they had escaped, lightened of all that they had thrown into the sea, that is, of worldly burdens, and stripped of the heavy and wet garment of the old man, as of the waves as of sins, they might be received by a whole and sound ship, which, presenting the full form of the church of faith, carried them safe into port and to Rome. In these things likewise mystical arguments are formed. For the changed ship is life renewed in Christ, and the port of salvation is the church, whose name, as Greek bears witness, is ‘Rome’ for strength. Let us bless God, then, and exult in our God, who dwells on high and looks upon lowly things, whose good pleasure is not in the strength of the horse nor in the tents of a man, but in the humble and those who fear him, and who, as he has shown in this old man too, heals all the broken in heart and binds up their wounds.

I chatter too much, brother. I feel it, but I beg you to bear with me a few words more. For I would like to ask: would you rather be honored with any dignity of this world than with this favor of God which this old man has enjoyed? Do those seem more blessed to you who shine in purple, who sip from jewels, are stuffed into togas and painted with embroidered robes, and who, ruling over fellow mortals and many better men, are slaves of their desires and of their possessions, insolent to God with God’s gifts, needy of Christ, rich in sin, barren in life, fruitful in death? What, I ask, did the person of a bilge-man, the cheapest among sailors, his poor dress and the sheepskin of the Sardinians, harm this old man? For he was clothed in skins sewn together, when the Lord of hosts, the King of glory, blessed him with his conversation, enlightened him with his sight, and lulled him to sleep in his lap, surely loving in him this very thing too, that he imitated Elijah’s sheepskin and the dress of John the forerunner in a bristly garment. To see the king of the world close at hand and to be sprinkled with his even disdainful speech a great part of the world thinks so blessed that, if it cannot obtain it otherwise, it would even buy it with losses, and, having obtained it, becomes forgetful not only of men but also of itself. How much happier in dignity than how many is this man, whom the King of kings has honored? How much nobler in nobility than how many, whom Christ has acknowledged? How much richer in wealth than how many, on whom such great goods of so many saints have been bestowed together, that he saw Christ like Israel, spoke with the King of heaven face to face like Moses, rested in Christ’s bosom with almost the same familiarity with which John reclined on his breast, and finally received a new name like the friends of God, whom you know well in the patriarchs and apostles? I asked you a little earlier whether you would prefer to be granted this man’s grace rather than all the glory of this world; for my part I think that the very rulers of this darkness, if they deserved to see it, would prefer the most blessed calamity of our poor old man to their wretched felicities and joys, which are to be mourned for ever.

You may perhaps ask by what merits this old sailor, who had always lingered in the darkness of ignorance and was a stranger alike to the works of righteousness and the knowledge of truth, seems to have obtained what is not easily granted to very few workers, although they have borne the weight and heat of the whole day from the morning watch until night. The apostle will surely answer you that the graces and gifts of God are without repentance, and that no flesh will be justified by works. It is the time of grace, and faith is counted for righteousness, because sons of Abraham are raised daily from stones. For now is the acceptable time, now the day of salvation, in which we offer sacrifices of peace and praise; and the sacrifice to God is a contrite spirit, and the temple of God is in man, and saving things are in the heart of the believer, and the holy of holies is in purified breasts. So he who does not despise the contrite and humbled received our old man as a sacrifice pleasing to him for his natural goods, as an odor of sweetness. For he is said always to have been so pure in mind by inborn simplicity that he did not know how to sin. Now, in the old age of his last years, a boy in body and a little one in malice, he bears the infancy not only of grace but also of mind. For lately, as I said above, he has been reborn in Christ and dedicated to the Lord, through whom he escaped the waves of life and the waters of death.

Receive him, then, gladly in the Lord, as a good odor of Christ, as a lamb of the month of the new fruits, whom I, the shepherd of a small flock but the giver of a great pledge, have sent to your oneness of heart as a spiritual guest-gift, from the new offspring of mother church, spotless, with shining fleece. For I thought no one else more worthy of such a gift than you, who, according to God’s grace and working, would know how to look upon him and receive him. For I seem to see with what rejoicing, with what wonder, with what faith you will hear of him and see him, when you consider that angels sailed with him, that a martyr steered for him, that he slept in Christ’s bosom, that Christ pulled his ear and gave him a name. I confess to you that my affection, while I too much admire and love such remarkable deeds of God in a man of our own time, was almost cruel to the old man himself. For I pulled his ear so constantly that I almost wore it away. I would also have liked to cut off part of one ear, if what would have been a pledge to me had not been a wound to him. For no other affection carries men off to Jerusalem than to see and touch the places in which Christ was bodily present, and to be able to say from their own experience, ‘We have entered his tabernacles and worshiped where his feet stood.’ Although a higher meaning is to be held here too, yet the simple sense according to the letter must not be misused when the matter requires it. If, then, it is a religious desire to see the places where Christ entered, suffered, rose, and from which he ascended, and it is a blessing to take and have either a little dust from those places or something, even like a splinter, from the very wood of the cross, consider how much greater and fuller a grace it is to behold a living old man as a witness of divine truth? If the memory of a former divine presence is celebrated by the manger of the one born, the river of the one baptized, the garden of the Master praying, the courtyard of the one judged, the pillar of the one scourged, the thorns of the one crowned, the wood of the one hanged, the rock of the one buried, the place of the one raised and taken up, and lifeless things prove the ancient truth to present faith as living documents, how reverently is this man to be looked upon, whom the word of God deigned to address, from whom the divine face did not hide itself, to whom Christ showed now his martyr, now himself, in whose living earth we see the footprints of the Lord’s body impressed, if with faithful eyes and spiritual sight we read in him what the bosom of Christ and what his hand touched, stroking often with our hand the grey hair that often lay on the Lord’s knee and was often warmed in the Lord’s bosom, and often feeling the little ear which heavenly fingers pulled as the Lord played?

You have, my brother, my guest-gift: eat it in the spirit of love, and if you have felt sick at the bitterness of my talkativeness, you will temper your disgust with the grace of the Lord and the sweetness of the heavenly story. But I know for certain that you will seek and desire something by which to show toward this man the love with which you love Christ. There is material at hand: apply the zeal of devout devotion, and stand by Secundinianus, this man’s patron, with the whole affection of your faith, to whom almighty Christ, when he already despaired, gave back the ship preserved for this man’s salvation. For you will be defending a gift of Christ. Do not allow, through the envy of the devil, by means of a wicked man, what God gave back to Secundinianus from shipwreck to be snatched from him, or, already snatched, to be denied him. There is said to be a steward of a Christian man, our brother Postumianus, who, when that ship drifted onto the coast of Bruttium, where the senator’s estate is washed by the sea, being greedier than the sea and acting as a pirate on land without a pirate boat, seized it and, having taken it, emptied it; for even now it remains empty on that very shore, to testify to the loss of a cargo saved in vain at sea and lost on land. Complaints about this robbery have often been lodged with the provincial judge, but our Pharaoh has hardened his heart, perhaps so that wonders may be done in him; and when summoned by the officials, he first resisted by force, and afterward fled to Rome. This necessity has forced my Secundinianus to travel to the City by land with his one sailor. I do not doubt that our brother Postumianus will be moved both by your intervention and by his own faith and justice. Therefore we must intervene with this moderation, which you will surely do even if I do not remind you: that with equal labor you may defend and excuse his guilty man to that excellent senator, that is, Christian man, so that the robber himself may be content with the gain of impunity, and we content to receive back from him the gifts of God.