On the Death of Satyrus

I had nothing indeed, dearest brethren, in human affairs more precious than so great a brother, nothing more lovable, nothing dearer; but public things take precedence over private. If one were to ask his own judgment, he would rather have been slain for others than live for himself; for this reason Christ died for all according to the flesh, that we might learn not to live for ourselves alone.

Add to this that I cannot be ungrateful to the divine will: for one must rejoice the more that I had such a brother, than grieve that I have lost a brother; for the one was a gift, the other is a debt. Therefore I have discharged, as long as it was allowed, the loan entrusted to me: he who deposited the pledge has received it back. It makes no difference whether you disown a deposit, or grieve at its restoration. In either case there is doubt of faith, danger to life. Or if you deny money, is it a fault; if you deny a sacrifice, is it piety? Since the lender of money can be cheated, but the author of nature and the creditor of kinship cannot be defrauded. Therefore the more abundant the sum of the loan, the more welcome the interest of the principal.

Whence we cannot be ungrateful concerning our brother; because what was common to nature, he has given back: what is of singular grace, he has merited. For who would refuse the common condition? Who would grieve that his own pledge has been snatched away, when for our consolation the Father delivered up His own only Son to death for us? Who should think himself owed exemption from the condition of dying, who was not exempted from the condition of being born? Great is the mystery of piety, that the death of the body was not excepted even in Christ; and although He was Lord of nature, yet He did not refuse the law of the flesh which He had assumed. And it was necessary for me to die, but it was not necessary for Him. Or does He who says of the servant, "If I will that he remain thus until I come, what is that to thee?"—could He not Himself have remained thus, if He had willed?

But by the perpetuity of this life He would have lost the price for Himself, the sacrifice for me. What greater consolation is there for us, then, than that Christ also died according to the flesh? Or why should I weep the more vehemently for my brother, when I know that piety could not have died?

Why should I alone weep beyond the rest, for him whom all of you weep? I have dispersed my private grief into the common grief, especially since my tears profit nothing, but your tears build up faith, bring consolation. You weep, you who are rich, and by weeping you prove that stored-up riches avail nothing for salvation; since death cannot be deferred by the price of money, and the last day snatches away rich and poor alike with equal use. You weep, you who are old, because in this you dread the lot of your children; and therefore, since you cannot prolong the life of the body, train your children not for the use of the body, but for the office of virtue. You weep also, you who are young, because the end of nature is not the ripeness of old age. The poor too have wept, and—what is far more precious, far more abundant—with their tears they have washed away his faults.

Those are redeeming tears, those are the groans that hide the sorrow of death, that grief which, with the abundance of everlasting joy, overshadows the sense of the old sorrow. And so, although the funeral is private, yet the weeping is public; and therefore the weeping cannot be long-lasting, which has been consecrated by the affections of all.

For why should I weep for you, my most loving brother, who have been so taken from me as to belong to all? For I have not lost the use of you, but exchanged it: before, inseparable in body, now undivided in affection; for you remain with me, and you will always remain. And indeed, when you lived with us, our homeland never took you from me, nor did you ever prefer your homeland to me; and now you have provided another: for I have already begun not to be a stranger here, where the better portion of myself is. For I was never wholly in myself, but in the other of us the greater part of both was found: and both of us were in Christ, in whom is both the sum of the universe and the portion of each single person.

This tomb is more pleasing to me than my native soil, in which there is fruit not of nature, but of my grace; for in this body, which now lies lifeless, there is a more excellent function of my life; because in this body too which I bear, there is a richer portion of you.

And would that, as we could breathe of your memory, of your grace, so too we could breathe of this life of yours, whatever it is, and that half of my time might fall away, to profit the use of yours! For it would have been fitting that, as the patrimony of our fortunes was always undivided, so the time of life should not be divided: or at least that we, who always had undistinguished fellowship in living, should not have distinguished fellowship in dying.

But now, brother, whither shall I go forward, or whither shall I turn? The ox seeks the ox, and thinks itself not whole, and testifies with frequent lowing to its dutiful love, if perchance he with whom it was accustomed to draw the plow under a common yoke should fail: and shall I not seek you, brother? Or can I ever forget you, with whom I always sustained the plow of this life? Inferior in labor, but more joined in love: not so much capable through my own virtue, as bearable through your patience, you who, ever solicitous with dutiful affection, hedged my side with your side: in love, as a brother; in care, as a father; in solicitude, as an elder; in reverence, as a younger. Thus in the single degree of one relationship you bestowed on me the offices of many relationships; so that in you alone I must seek not one but several who are lost, in whom alone flattery was unknown, piety was expressed.

For you had nothing to add by pretense, you who comprehended the whole by piety, so that you neither received increase, nor awaited a return.

But why, forgetful of duty, mindful of grace, do I proceed with immoderate grief? The Apostle recalls me, and lays, as it were, a bridle upon my mourning, saying, as you have just heard: We would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them that sleep; that you be not sorrowful, even as others who have no hope. Grant pardon, dearest brethren. For not all of us can say: Be ye imitators of me, as I also am of Christ; but if you seek an author to imitate, you have one whom you can imitate. Not all are fit to teach—would that all were apt to learn!

But we have not incurred a grave fault by our tears: not every weeping is a mark of unbelief or of weakness. One thing is the grief of nature, another the sadness of distrust: and it matters much whether you long for what you have had, or mourn what you have lost. Not sorrow alone has tears; joy too has its own tears, and piety excites weeping, and prayer bedews the bed, and supplication, according to the prophetic saying, washes the couch. They too made great weeping when the patriarchs were buried. Tears, therefore, are marks of piety, not enticements to grief. I too, I confess, have wept; but the Lord also wept. He wept for a stranger, I for a brother: He in one wept for all, I in all will weep for you, brother.

He wept from our affection, not His own; for divinity has no tears: but He wept in that in which He was sorrowful: He wept in that in which He was crucified, in which He died, in which He was buried: He wept in Him of whom the prophet today has revealed to us, saying: The mother Zion shall say: A man, and a man was made in her, and the Most High Himself founded her. He wept in Him whom He called mother Zion, begotten in Judea, taken up from a Virgin. But according to divinity He could not have a mother, because He is the author of His mother. He was made not by divine generation, but by human; because He was made man, He was born God.

Thus also elsewhere you have: A child is born to us, a Son is given to us. In "child" is the name of age, in "Son" the fullness of divinity. Made of a mother, born of the Father; yet He is the same who is both born and given: think it not diverse, but one. For there is one Son of God, both born of the Father and risen from the Virgin, differing in order, but concurring in one name, as the present reading also teaches, because both a man was made in her, and the Most High Himself founded her—man indeed in body, Most High in power. And though He be God and man in the diversity of nature, yet He is the same, not another in each. One thing then is proper to His own nature, another common with us: but in both He is one, and perfect in both.

It is not, then, to be wondered at, that God made Him both Lord and Christ. He made Jesus, indeed, Him who took His name from the body; He made Him of whom the patriarch David also writes: The mother Zion shall say: A man, and a man was made in her. (But being made man) He is indeed unlike, not in divinity, but in body: nor is He separated from the Father, but received into an office: remaining in the fellowship of power, set apart in the mystery of the Passion.

This passage demands more discussion, by which we might show the authority of the Father, the property of the Son, the unity of the whole Trinity: but today I have taken up the role of one consoling, not of one discoursing; although drawing away the mind from grief by the intent of discourse serves the purpose of consolation. But my grief must rather be tempered than my affection alienated; that longing may rather be soothed than lulled to sleep. For it does not please me to withdraw far from my brother, and be drawn away by occupation; since this discourse was undertaken as if for the sake of accompanying him, that I might follow longer in feeling him as he departs: and whom I hold with my eyes, I may embrace with my mind.

For it pleases me to fix the whole gaze of my eyes upon him, to linger with him in all the duties of the soul, to surround him with the whole homage of endearments; while my mind is stunned, nor do I believe him lost, whom I still perceive present: nor do I think him dead, whose offices I do not yet fail to require, to which I had devoted the whole use of my life and every function of breathing.

For what shall I render for such grace, for such labor? I had made you, brother, my heir, you have left me your heir: I wished you to be my survivor, you have left me as survivor. I, in exchange for your gifts, used to return vows to compensate for your benefits: now I have lost the vows too, but yet I have not lost your benefits. What shall I do, successor to my own heir? What shall I do, survivor of my own life? What shall I do, deprived a share of this light which I still receive? What thanks, what gifts shall I render to you? You have nothing from me but tears. Or perhaps, secure in your merit, you do not require these tears, the only thing I have left surviving. For even when you still lived, you forbade me to weep, and testified that our grief, rather than your death, was a sorrow to you. Tears are forbidden to go further, and weeping is called back.

Your own grace also forbids it; lest, while we weep for our own loss, we seem to despair of your merits.

But surely you yourself also lessen for us the bitterness of this grief: I have nothing to fear, I who used to fear for you; I have nothing left that the world can now snatch from me. Although our holy sister survives, venerable in her integrity, equal in character, not unequal in offices; yet for you both we feared more, we thought the pleasantness of this life was reposed in you. For your sake it was delightful to live, for your sake it was not grievous to die; for both of us prayed that you might survive us, it did not please us to outlive you. When did our mind not shudder, when fear of this kind used to tease it? How was our mind struck with dismay at the news of your illness!

Woe to our wretched supposition! We thought him given back, whom we now see was only granted a delay; for we now know that a furlough had been obtained through your prayers at the shrine of the holy martyr Laurence. And would that you had asked not only a furlough, but also a long extent of life! You could have obtained many years of living, you who could obtain a furlough of coming. And indeed I give thanks to you, almighty, eternal God, that you did not deny us even these last consolations, that you granted us the longed-for return of my most loving brother from the regions of Sicily or Africa; for so quickly, after he came, was he snatched away, as if he seemed to have been delayed for this reason alone, that he might return to his brothers.

I plainly have my pledge, which no journeying can now tear from me: I have relics to embrace: I have a mound with which to cover with my body; I have a sepulchre upon which to lie; and I shall believe that I shall be the more commendable to God, because I rest upon the bones of a holy body. Would that I could have opposed my own body against your death as well! If you had been assailed by swords, I would rather have offered myself to be pierced in your stead: if I had been able to call back your departing soul, I would rather have offered my own.

It profited me nothing to have drawn in your last gasps, nothing to have breathed my breath into your mouth as you died; for I supposed that either I myself was taking on your death, or that I was pouring my own life into you. O unhappy, yet sweet, those last pledges of kisses! O wretched embraces, amid which the lifeless body stiffened, the last breath vanished! I clasped my arms indeed, but already I had lost him whom I held; and I gathered up your last breath with my mouth, that I might drink in the fellowship of death. But I know not how that breath became to me a thing of life, and breathed forth a greater grace even in that very death. And would that, if I could not by my own spirit prolong your life, at least the vigor of your final breath could have been transfused into my mind, and that our affection had breathed in that purity and innocence of your soul!

This inheritance, dearest brother, you would have left me, one which would not strike my heart with tearful grief, but commend to me, its heir, a memorable grace.

What then shall I now do, since I have lost all the sweetness of this life, all its comforts, and finally all its adornments? For you alone were to me a comfort at home, an honor abroad: you, I say, were my counselor in deliberations, my partner in care, the entreater of my anxiety, the dispeller of my grief: you were the champion of my acts, and the defender of my thoughts: you, finally, were the one in whom my domestic concern found rest, and my public care found repose. I call your holy soul to witness, that in the building of the Church I often feared this, lest I should displease you. Indeed, when you returned, you chastised my delay: so much were you, at home and abroad, a kind of instructor and arbiter to the bishop, that you did not allow me to think of domestic matters, while you thought I ought to attend to public ones.

But I shall not fear to seem to speak arrogantly; for this is a part of your praise, that without any offense you both governed your brother's household and lent credit to his priesthood.

I feel indeed that my mind is moved by recounting your services and reviewing your virtues: yet I find rest in this very affection of mine, and these recollections, though they renew my grief, nevertheless bring me pleasure. Can I either not think of you, or ever think of you without tears? And shall I ever be able either not to remember so great a brother, or to remember him without a certain tearful grace? For what was ever pleasant to me that did not proceed from you? What, I say, was ever a pleasure to me without you, or to you ever without me? What use of things did we not share, and almost our very appearance, and our common sleep? What will was ever separate? What footstep was not shared? So much so that when I lifted my step, either you seemed to lift my body, or I yours.

But if ever one of us had to go forth without the other, you would have thought your side uncovered, you would have seen a troubled countenance, you would have judged a sorrowful spirit: the accustomed grace did not shine forth, nor the usual vigor: the solitude, suspect to all, brought fear of some sickness. So strange did it seem to everyone that we should be parted! I certainly, impatient of my brother's absence and not forgetful of it, would often turn my neck as if seeking him present, and I seemed to myself to speak with him and look upon him face to face: but as though dragging a yoke on a suspended neck, when I had fallen short of my hopes, I thought I was dragging myself along, reluctant to go forward, ashamed to be seen, and hastening to return, because it did not please me to go on without you.

But indeed, when both of us had to go forth, there were no more steps taken on the journey than words spoken; nor was our walking more frequent than our conversation: nor was our concern for walking, but for talking together; for each of us hung upon the other's lips. We did not read the road with intent gaze, but tried out mutual anxious talk, drank in the grace of each other's eyes, breathed in the delights of a brother's likeness. How silently I marveled to myself at your virtues! How I congratulated myself, that the Lord had granted me such a brother, so modest, so effective, so innocent, so simple; that when I considered your innocence, I would despair of your effectiveness: when I beheld your effectiveness, I would not think you innocent! But you joined both together by a wondrous virtue.

In short, those things which the two of us together had been unable to accomplish, you alone fulfilled. Prosper, as I hear, congratulated himself, thinking that, on the occasion of my priesthood, he would not have to restore what he had taken away: but he found your effectiveness alone more forceful than that of the two of us. So he released everything, neither ungrateful for your moderation, nor mocking your sense of shame: but grateful for your modesty, and not insolent at your effectiveness. But for whom, brother, did you seek these things? For we both wished the reward of your labors to be the same thing which was the proof of them. You accomplished everything, and when, having discharged all your duties, you returned—you alone, who ought to be preferred above all, are snatched from us; as though you had put off death for this very reason, that you might complete the office of piety, and carry off the palm of effectiveness.

How little, dearest brother, did even the honors of this age delight us, because they parted us one from another! We attained them not because their acquisition was to be desired, but lest their refusal seem base. Or perhaps they were granted for this reason: that, since by your untimely death you were to be the setting of my joy, we might learn to live henceforth without you.

And indeed I recognize the foreboding fear of a presaging mind, when I often recall what I wrote. I called you back, brother, urging that you yourself not seek Africa, but rather appoint someone else to go. I feared to entrust you to the road, to commit you to the waves, and a fear greater than usual had entered my mind: but you both carried through the journey, and arranged the matter, and, as I hear, on an old and leaking vessel entrusted yourself again to the waves. For while you pursued speed, you neglected caution, eager for my satisfaction, disregarding your own peril.

O deceptive joy! O uncertain course of human affairs! Restored from Africa, brought back from the sea, saved from shipwreck—we thought you could no longer be torn from us: but we, set upon dry land, endure a graver shipwreck; for him whom the shipwrecks of the sea, escaped by vigorous swimming, could not bring to death, his death has now begun to be a shipwreck for us. For what sweetness remains, for us from whom so sweet an ornament, so bright a light in this world's darkness, has been extinguished: in whom not only the glory of our family, but of the whole country, has fallen?

I owe you indeed the greatest thanks, most beloved brethren, holy people, for believing my grief to be none other than your own; for believing that this solitude has befallen you as well, and for bringing, with a certain fresh devotion, the weeping of the whole city, the vows of every age, of every rank. For this is not the grief of private compassion, but a kind of public office and duty of grace: or if some compassion for me touches you, because I have lost such a brother, I have therein an abundant fruit, I have a pledge of your affection. I would rather have my brother living; yet a public office is more pleasant in prosperity, more welcome in adversity.

Nor indeed does the merit of so great a service seem to me a small one. For it is not without purpose that, in the Acts of the Apostles, when Tabitha was dead, the weeping widows are described, nor that in the Gospel a crowd, moved by the tears of the widow, is described as accompanying the funeral of the young man to whom resurrection was owing; yet the widows wept for that Tabitha, while the whole city wept for this young man. There is no doubt, then, that your tears may be compared to the patronage of the apostles: there is no doubt, I say, that Christ was moved with compassion when He saw you weeping.

Even if He has not now touched the bier, yet He has received the commended spirit: and if He has not called the dead man back with the voice of the body, yet by the authority of His divine power He has freed his soul from the torments of death, and from the incursions of the spirit of wickedness: and if he who was dead has not sat up on the bier, yet he has found rest in Christ: and if he has not spoken to us, yet he beholds those things which are above us: and he already rejoices to see those things which are better than ours. For through what we read in the Gospel, we understand what is to come: and the appearance of things present is an indication of things future.

He had no need of a temporal resurrection, to whom an eternal one is owed. For why should he fall back into this wretched and most sorrowful ruin, and return into this tearful life—he whom we ought rather to rejoice has been snatched away from such imminent evils and pressing dangers? For if, when the world was at peace and wars had ceased, no one mourned the rapture of Enoch, but rather the prophet praised it, as Scripture says of him: "He was taken away, lest wickedness should change his understanding" (Wisdom 4:11); how much more must it now rightly be said, when to the slipperiness of the age is added the uncertainty of life! He was taken away, lest he should fall into the hands of the Barbarians: he was taken away, lest he should see the ruin of the whole world, the end of the age, the funerals of his kin, the deaths of citizens, and finally—more bitter than any death—the defilement of holy virgins and widows.

I indeed, brother, count you blessed, both by the flower of your life and by the timeliness of your death. For you have not been snatched from us, but from perils: you have not lost your life, but have been spared the dread of pressing bitternesses. For with what mercy of holy mind you regarded your own, if you now knew that Italy was being pressed by so near an enemy, how you would groan, how you would grieve, that the sum of our safety rests upon the rampart of the Alps, and that a wall of our honor is being built with felled timber! With what affliction you would mourn that your people are held back from the enemy by so slight a margin—from an enemy impure and cruel, who spares neither chastity nor safety!

In what way, I say, would you have borne these things, which we are compelled to suffer, and perhaps—what is more grievous—to behold: virgins ravished, and little children torn from their parents' embrace thrown upon spears, bodies consecrated to God defiled, and the aged womb of a widow of riper years turned to unaccustomed uses of burden, no longer of offspring? In what way, I say, would you have borne these things, you who, even with your last breath, perhaps already forgetful of yourself, yet still mindful of us, kept warning us again and again to beware the incursion of the Barbarians, recalling that you had not said in vain that we must flee? Perhaps you said this because you saw that we would be left destitute by your death: which you did not out of weakness of mind, but out of devotion; and though weak on our behalf, yet steadfast for yourself.

When you were called back by that noble man Symmachus, your kinsman, on the ground that Italy was said to be burning with war, that you were heading into danger, that you were rushing upon the enemy, you answered that this very thing was your reason for coming, that you might not fail us in our peril, that you might show yourself a partner in your brother's danger.

Happy, then, in so timely a death, since you were not preserved for this grief. Certainly happier than our holy sister, who, bereft of your comfort, anxious for her own chastity, lately blessed in two brothers, now made wretched by the loss of two brothers, can neither follow the one nor abandon the other: for whom your tomb is her lodging, and the sepulchre of your body is her home. And would that even this were a safe shelter! Her food is in weeping, her drink in tears; for you have given us bread of tears to eat, and tears to drink in full measure, or perhaps beyond measure.

For what shall I say of myself, to whom it is not permitted to die, lest I abandon my sister: nor is it pleasing to live, lest I be torn from you? For what can be pleasant to me without you, in whom all my pleasure ever consisted? Or what does it profit to linger longer in this life, and to dwell on earth, in which we lived so pleasantly only so long as we lived together! Even if there were something here that could delight us, it could not delight without you: and even if we had ever wished earnestly to prolong life, still we would not wish to be without you.

These things are unbearable. For what is bearable without you, so great a companion of my life, so great a partner in my labors and duties? I could not even foresee your death beforehand, so that it might be more bearable; so much did my mind dread to think anything of the sort concerning him! Not that I was ignorant of our condition, but a certain habit born of hopes had veiled the sense of our common frailty; so that I knew not how to think of him except favorably in every way.

Finally, when recently I was pressed by a grave (and would that it had been my last!) decline, this alone grieved me, that you yourself were not sitting by my bed, and, sharing with my holy sister the office I had longed for, closing my dying eyes with your own fingers. What I had hoped for! What I now render instead! What vows have failed! What services have taken their place! I was preparing one thing, I am compelled to perform another; no longer myself the recipient of the funeral office, but its minister. O harsh light of my eyes, that could look upon a dying brother! O merciless and rough hands, that closed those eyes in which I saw more than in my own! O harder neck, that could bear so mournful a burden, however consoling the duty!

These things, brother, you owed me more justly. These I expected from you, these services I longed for. But now, surviving even my own life, what solace shall I take without you, who alone were wont to console me when mourning, to rouse my joy, to drive away my sadness? Such as I now behold you, brother, no longer bringing me any words, no longer offering me kisses! And yet such mutual love had always so settled in each of us, that it was rather fostered by inward affection than proclaimed by outward flattery; for we sought no testimony of others, we who held such great favor of one another.

So thoroughly had the very sap of brotherly manliness infused itself into each of us, that we seemed not to prove our love by blandishments, but, content with the inward love of a conscious devotion, to have no need of the paint of flattery—we whom even our very likeness fashioned toward mutual love; for by I know not what expression of mind, what likeness of body, each of us seemed to be seen in the other.

Who looked upon you who did not think he had seen me? How often, when I greeted people, they, having already greeted you before, would say that they had already been greeted by me! How many said something to you, who would recall having said it to me! What joys came to me from this, what frequent joy arose, when I perceived them to be mistaken concerning us! How pleasant the error, how delightful the slip, how devout the deception, how sweet the false claim! For there was nothing in your deeds or words that I feared, since I rejoiced that your good was ascribed to me.

Yet if they insisted the more vehemently, recalling that they had confided something to me, I would answer, laughing and rejoicing: See that you do not tell my brother. For although all things were common between us, an undivided spirit, an undivided affection; the one thing not held in common was the secret of friends: not because we feared the danger of sharing it, but because we kept faith in guarding it. Indeed, if a matter had to be weighed by counsel, the counsel was always common, but the secret was not always common. For even if friends spoke to one of us in such a way that their words reached the other; yet I know that for the most part the trust of the secret was so kept that it was not even entrusted to the brother. For it was a faithful token that a thing had not been betrayed to a stranger, when it had not even been shared with a brother.

Lifted up, I confess, by so many and such goods into a kind of ecstasy of mind, I had ceased to fear that I might survive him, since I believed him more worthy of life: and therefore I have received a blow which I cannot bear; for wounds long premeditated are more tolerable in so great a sorrow than wounds unforeseen. Who now will console the mourner? Who will lift up the afflicted? With whom shall I share my cares? Who will vindicate me from the usury of this world? For you were the author of my affairs, the censor of my servants, the arbiter of my brothers—an arbiter not of strife, but of devotion.

For if ever I had something to discuss with my holy sister, as to which opinion seemed the better, we took you as judge, who would wound no one's mouth, and, eager to satisfy both, held both the affection of loving and the measure of judging; so that you dismissed each of us pleased, and claimed for yourself the gratitude of both. Or if you yourself brought something to be debated, how pleasant was your contention! How without bitterness your very indignation! How the correction of the servants themselves was not harsh; since you would rather learn to defer to your brothers than choose to punish out of feeling! For our profession restrained the zeal of correcting; nay rather, you, brother, drew us away from every impulse to punish, promising to vindicate and desiring to soothe.

Not slight, therefore, is the testimony of his prudence, which is thus defined by the wise: that the first of goods is to know God, and to venerate with pious mind that true and divine reality, to love with the whole love of the mind that lovable and desirable beauty of eternal truth. The second, however, is to derive piety toward one's neighbors from that divine fount and heavenly nature: which even the wise men of the world drew from our laws. For they could not have derived these things into the disciplines of men, except from that heavenly fount of the divine law.

Why then should I proclaim his observance toward the worship of God? He, before being initiated into the more perfect mysteries, being caught in a shipwreck, when the ship in which he was carried was dashed against a rocky shoal and, pressed by waves from this side and that, was breaking apart, fearing not death, but lest he should depart from life empty of the mystery, sought from those whom he knew to be initiated that divine sacrament of the faithful: not that he might bring curious eyes into the mysteries, but that he might obtain the aid of his faith. And indeed he had it bound in a napkin, and wrapped the napkin around his neck, and so cast himself into the sea, not seeking a plank loosed from the ship's frame on which he might float and be helped, since he had sought the arms of faith alone. Thus, trusting himself sufficiently covered and fortified by these, he desired no other aid.

At the same time one may behold his fortitude, who, as the rowing failed, did not take up a plank like a shipwrecked man, but, like a strong man, took up from himself the support of his own virtue: neither did hope forsake him, nor did his expectation deceive him. At length, saved first from the waves and carried into the harbor of an earthly landing, he recognized the presider to whom he had entrusted himself: and straightway, as soon as he had either himself freed his other servants or learned that they were freed, neglecting his possessions, and not longing for what was lost, he sought out the church of God; that, being freed, he might give thanks, and come to know the eternal mysteries, declaring that no duty is greater than the rendering of thanks. But if not to render thanks to a man is judged like homicide, how great a crime is it not to render thanks to God!

It belongs, therefore, to the prudent man to know himself, and, as it has been defined by the wise, to live according to nature. For what is so according to nature as to render thanks to the Author? Behold this heaven; does it not render thanks to its Author, when it is beheld? For the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims the works of his hands. The sea itself, when it is calm and tranquil, bears witness to a sign of divine serenity: when it is stirred, that supernal indignation strikes terror. Do we not all rightly marvel at the grace of God, when we observe that an insensible nature restrains its waves by a certain sensible reason, and the wave knows its own bounds? For what shall I say of the lands, which, obedient to the divine precept, of their own accord supply food to all living creatures; and restore what the fields have received, multiplied and heaped up as if by growing interest?

Therefore he, who, guided by nature, had perceived by the fiery vigor of his mind the reason of the divine work, knew that thanks must be rendered first of all to his Savior: but because he could not render it, he could hold it. For such is the power of this grace, that even when it is rendered, it is held; and by being held, it is rendered. He therefore rendered thanks, and offered his faith. For he who had experienced such protection from the heavenly mystery wrapped in a napkin, how much greater did he judge it would be, if he took it into his mouth, and drank it in with his whole inmost breast! How much greater did he think it, poured into his very vitals, since a thing merely covered by a napkin had so profited him!

But he was not so eager as to be incautious; for we know that many, through eagerness of zeal, neglect caution. He summoned to himself a bishop, and thought no grace true except that of the true faith, and he inquired of him whether he was in agreement with the catholic bishops, that is, with the Roman Church? And it happened that at that time the church of that region was in schism; for Lucifer had then separated himself from our communion, and although he had gone into exile for the faith, and had left heirs of his faith, yet he did not think that there was faith in schism. For even if they held the faith toward God, yet they did not hold it toward the Church of God, whose limbs, as it were, they suffered to be divided, and whose members to be torn apart.

For since Christ suffered for the sake of the Church, and the Church is the body of Christ; faith does not seem to be shown to Christ by those by whom his passion is emptied of meaning, and his body torn apart.

And so, although he held the loan of grace, and, as debtor of so great a name, feared to sail; yet he preferred to cross over to where he could pay safely: for he judged that the payment of divine grace lay in affection and faith; which indeed, as soon as freer opportunity of the Church was given him, he did not delay to fulfill. And he both received the grace he had desired, and kept what he had received. Nothing, therefore, is wiser than that prudence which distinguishes things divine from things human.

Why should I speak of his eloquence, proven in the duties of the forum? With what incredible admiration did it shine forth in the court of the sublime prefecture! But I prefer to praise those things which, once he had received the mysteries of God, he judged more excellent than human things.

If anyone wishes to consider his fortitude more fully, let him consider how often, after the shipwreck, with a certain unconquered contempt for this life, he crossed the seas: and traversed by his journeying far-flung regions: and finally, how at this very time he did not flee from danger, but came to danger, patient of injury, careless of the cold—and would that he had been careful of caution! But blessed in this very thing, that while it was permitted him to use the vigor of his body, having performed, unhindered, the office of youth in carrying out what he wished, he lived his life, and knew not weakness.

With what pursuit shall I unfold his simplicity? For it is a certain temperance of character, and sobriety of mind. Grant, I beg, pardon, and permit my grief, that I may speak a little more fully of him with whom it is no longer granted me to converse. Surely it profits you also, that you may perceive that you have not conferred this office out of some frailty, but out of judgment: nor moved by pity for death, but summoned by the honor due to his virtues; for every simple soul is blessed. So great, moreover, was his simplicity, that, turned as it were into a boy, he shone with the innocent simplicity of that age, with the likeness of perfect virtue, and as a certain mirror of innocent character.

He entered, therefore, into the kingdom of heaven, since he believed the word of God; since, like a child, he rejected the art of flattery, gently absorbed the pain of injury rather than avenge it more harshly; more ready for complaint than for guile, easy to satisfaction, hard to ambition, holy in modesty; so that you would often proclaim in him a superfluous rather than seek a necessary modesty.

But the foundations of virtue are never superfluous; for modesty does not withdraw a duty, but commends it. Thus, as it were suffused with a maidenly bashfulness of countenance, betraying his feeling by his face, if by chance he had suddenly come upon and offended some relative, he was as though cast down and, as it were, sunk into the earth, though in no way unlike the company of men, rarely lifting his face, raising his eyes, resuming speech: which he did from a certain chaste modesty of mind, with which the chastity of his body also agreed. And indeed he kept unstained the gifts of holy baptism, clean in body, purer in heart: shrinking no less from the reproach of adulterous speech than of body: judging that no less reverence for purity was to be paid to the integrity of words than to the chastity of the body.

In short, he so loved chastity that he did not even seek a wife; although in this there was not only an appetite for chastity, but also the grace of piety. But in a wondrous manner he both dissembled marriage and shunned boasting: and such was his dissembling, that even when we pressed him, he seemed rather to defer than to refuse the union. This alone, then, was the thing in which he trusted not even his brothers: not from any hesitancy of delay, but from the modesty of virtue.

Who then would not marvel at a man who, between two brothers, one a virgin, the other a priest, being the middle in age, not unequal in magnanimity, so conducted himself between two such great gifts, that he rendered the chastity of the one office and the sanctity of the other, not by the bond of profession, but by the office of virtue? Therefore if lust and anger are the nurses of the remaining vices, I may rightly call chastity and clemency certain parents of the virtues; although piety too, as it is the chief of all goods, is likewise the seed-plot of the other virtues.

Why should I speak of his frugality, and of a certain chastity in the matter of possessing? For he does not seek what belongs to others, who preserves his own: nor is he puffed up with excess, who is content with what is proper to him. He wished, therefore, to recover nothing but his own; more that he might not be defrauded than that he might be enriched. For those who sought what belonged to others he rightly called hawks of money. But if the root of all evils is avarice, surely he strips off vice, who does not seek after money.

Never was he delighted by more elaborate banquets or heaped-up dishes, except when he was inviting friends: seeking what was enough for nature, not what remained over for pleasure. And indeed he was not poor in resources, yet was poor in spirit. Of his blessedness we ought by no means to doubt, who neither exulted in riches as a rich man, nor judged what little he had to be scant, as a poor man.

It remains that, for the conclusion of the cardinal virtues, we ought also to observe in him the offices of justice. For although the virtues are akin to one another, and grown together, yet a more expressed form of each is desired individually, and most of all of justice. For she is wholly sparing of herself outwardly, and whatever she possesses of a certain harshness toward herself, while she is carried away by common love, she pours out upon her neighbors.

But of this there is manifold kind. One toward kinsfolk, another toward all men universally, another toward the worship of God, or the relief of the needy. Thus what he was toward all men, the zeal of the provincials, over whom he presided, teaches: who declared that he had been rather their own parent than a judge; a welcome arbiter of pious relationship, a steadfast adjudicator of equal right.

But what he was among brothers, although he embraced the whole human race with benevolence, the undivided patrimony teaches: an inheritance neither distributed nor diminished, but kept whole. For indeed he denied that filial affection was for him a reason for making a will. For this too he signified in his last words, when he commended those whom he had loved; that he had had no choice of taking a wife, lest he be torn from his brothers; nor any wish to make a will, lest our judgment be injured in anything. Finally, though entreated and besought by us, he thought nothing should be drawn up; yet not forgetful of the poor, but only beseeching that as much be given as should seem just to us.

By this one thing he gave sufficient proof both of divine fear, and set forth an example of human religion. For what he bestowed on the poor, he offered to God; since he who gives to the poor, lends to God: and by asking for what is just, he left not a little, but the whole. For this is the sum of justice, to sell what you have, and give to the poor. For he who has scattered abroad, has given to the poor, his righteousness endures forever. Therefore he left us stewards, not heirs; for an inheritance is sought for a successor, a stewardship is bound over to the poor.

Whence not undeservedly, even today, through the voice of a small reader, the Holy Spirit has expressed how great he was: Innocent in hands, and clean of heart, who has not received his soul in vain, nor practiced deceit against his neighbor: this is the generation of those who seek God. This man, then, shall both ascend the mountain of the Lord, and shall dwell in the tabernacle of God; because entering without stain, he has wrought righteousness, spoken truth, has not deceived his neighbor: nor did he lend out his own money at interest, he who always wished to recover the inheritance of others. I acknowledge the oracle; for what no arrangement ordained, the Spirit revealed.

What indeed shall I recount of this, that going beyond justice itself in devotion; when he had thought that certain things ought to be granted to the manager of our common produce out of regard for my office, he would boast me as author of the generosity, while conferring the profit of his own share to our common partnership.

These things and others, which were then a delight to me, now most of all exasperate the recollection of grief. Yet they remain, and shall ever remain, nor do they ever pass away like a shadow, for the grace of virtue does not perish with the body, nor is the end the same for nature and for merits; although the very exercise of nature does not perish forever, but rests in a certain temporal vacation.

Him, then, who has fulfilled such virtues, snatched from dangers, I shall weep more for longing than for loss. For the very opportuneness of the death persuades that we should think it rather to be attended with thanksgiving than to be lamented; for it is written that in common grief private grief ought to have no place For it is said by the prophetic word not to that one woman who is figured, but to individuals, when it seems said to the Church.

It is said, then, to me also, and heavenly Scripture says: Do you teach this, do you thus instruct God's people? Or do you not know that your example is a danger to others? Unless perhaps you complain that you were not heard. First, it is a mark of arrogant impudence to wish to deserve alone what you know has been denied even to many saints; since you know that God is no respecter of persons. For although God is merciful, yet if He always heard all, He would seem to act not now from free will, but from a certain necessity as it were; then, since all pray, if He heard all, no one would die. For how many, then, do you pray daily! Is the ordinance of God to be dissolved out of regard for you? Why then do you grieve that something was not once obtained, when you know that it is not always obtainable?

Foolish one, it says, beyond all women, do you not see our mourning, and what has befallen us, that Zion our mother is afflicted with the sadness of us all, and has been humbled with humiliation. Mourn most strongly even now, since we all mourn; and be sorrowful, since we all are grieved: for you grieve for a brother. Ask the earth and it will tell you, that this is she who ought to mourn, the survivor of so many offspring: and from her, it says, from the beginning all were born, and others shall come, and behold almost all go to perdition, and their multitude comes to destruction. Who then ought to mourn more, than she who has lost so great a multitude, than you who grieve for one?

Let common grief, then, absorb our grief, and shut out the bitterness of private sorrow. For we ought not to grieve for those whom we perceive to be set free; nor is it in vain that we call to mind that souls so holy have at this time been released from bodily bonds. For as if by divine judgment we see widows so grave taken away at one time, that it seems rather a departure of a journey than the falling of death; lest their chastity, veteran with accomplished service, should fall into doubt after their long-preserved modesty. What groans, what sorrows does so bitter a recollection stir in me! And if I were not free from grief; yet in that very private grief, in that very loss of the flower of such great merits, a certain common condition of nature consoled me: and grief, fixed on one, had overspread the bitterness of a public death with the appearance of domestic devotion.

I return, then, sacred Scripture, to your consolations; for it helps to linger upon your precepts, your sayings. How much easier it is for heaven and earth to pass away, than for one tittle to fall from the Law! But now let us hear what is written: Now, it says, keep to yourself your grief, and bear bravely what has befallen you. For if you justify the ordinance of God, you shall receive your son back in due time, and shall be praised among women. If this is said to a woman, how much more to a priest? If of a son, surely it is not absurd that such things also can be said of the loss of brothers; although if I had had a son, I could never have loved him more. For as, in the death of children, labors poured out, sorrows undertaken in vain seem to increase grief; so too in the case of brothers, the practice of familiarity and companionship kindles the bitterness of grief.

But behold, I hear Scripture saying: Do not make this speech, but consent to be persuaded. For what is the fall of Zion? Console for the grief of Jerusalem. For you see that our holy things have been polluted, and the name that was named over us has almost been profaned, and our own have suffered insult, and our priests have been burned, and our Levites have been in captivity, and our women have been defiled, and our virgins have suffered violence, and our just ones have been carried off, and our little ones betrayed, and our young men enslaved, and our strong ones made feeble. And what is greater than all, the seal of Zion because she has been unsealed from her glory, has now also been delivered into the hands of those who hate us. Do you therefore shake off your great sadness, and put away from you the multitude of your griefs; that the Mighty One may be reconciled to you, and the Most High may make you rest, with a resting from griefs.

Let tears, then, cease, for we must yield to healing remedies, since there ought to be some difference between the faithful and the faithless. Let those weep who cannot have hope of resurrection, which the judgment of God does not take away, but the harshness of unbelief. Let there be a difference between the little servants of Christ and the worshippers of idols; that those may weep for their own, whom they think perished forever: let those have no rest from tears, let them obtain no repose from sadness, who think there is no rest for the dead. But for us, for whom death is not the end of nature, but of this life; since nature itself is restored to something better, let weeping wipe away every occurrence of death.

Surely if those found some consolations for themselves, who reckoned death to be the end of sensation, and the failure of nature; how much more we, to whom the conscience of good deeds promises better rewards after death! The pagans have their own consolations, since they reckon death the rest from all evils: and as they lack the fruit of life, so too they think they have been deprived of all sense and feeling of the pains which in this life we bear grievous and unremitting. But we, as we ought to be more uplifted by the reward, so too ought we to be more patient in consolation; for they seem not to be lost, but sent before, whom death shall not take, but eternity shall receive.

Tears, then, shall cease: or if they cannot cease, in common lamentations I shall weep for you, brother, and under public grief shall veil my private groans. For how could they cease, when at every sound of your name tears steal forth, or when habit itself stirs up remembrance, or when affection represents your image, or when recollection renews grief? For when are you absent, who are represented by such great services? You are present, I say, and are ever poured over me, and with all my soul and mind I embrace you, behold you, address you, kiss you, grasp you, whether in the very quiet of the night, or in clear daylight; when you deign to revisit and console the mourner. Finally, the very nights themselves, which while you were living seemed rather troublesome, because they denied the abundance of mutual sight: sleep itself, once the unlovely interrupter of our conversations, has now begun to be sweet; because it has restored you to me.

Not wretched, then, but blessed are we; whose presence does not fail, nor is care diminished, and grace is increased. For the image of death is like that of sleep.

But if in the quiet of night, still clinging to bodily bonds, and as it were bound within the prison-bars of the limbs, souls can nevertheless perceive higher and separate things: how much more do they behold these things, when now with pure and ethereal sense they suffer no hindrance of bodily failing! And deservedly, when I complained, with the day now somewhat declining toward its setting, that you did not revisit me at rest, you were wholly present, undivided, at every time; so that, overspread with that slumber of the limbs, while I was awake for you, you were alive for me, I would say: What is death, brother? For surely you were separated from me by no moments; for you were so present everywhere, that what abundance of your company we could not have in the use of this life, is now always and everywhere at hand for us.

For then indeed all things could not be at hand; for our embraces, and sight, and the sweetness of bodily kisses were not available in every place and at every time. The images of our minds were always with us, even when we were not together: which even now have not perished, and constantly fly to us, with the more abundance the greater the longing.

I hold you, then, brother, nor shall death or time tear you from me. Sweet indeed are these tears, pleasant this weeping, by which the ardor of the soul is quenched, and affection, as it were relaxed, evaporates. For I cannot be without you, nor ever fail to remember you, nor remember you without tears. O bitter days, that betray our interrupted union! O tearful nights, which have lost me so good a companion of rest, and my undivided comrade! What torments would you produce, if the image of your presence did not spread itself over me, if the visions of the mind did not represent him whom the appearance of the body denies!

Now, now, brother dearest to my soul, though you have departed by untimely death; yet blessed are you, who do not endure these things, nor are compelled to grieve for a lost brother, whom, absent, you could not for long endure, but with swift return you would revisit. But if then you hastened to drive away the tedium of my loneliness, to lighten the sadness of your brother's mind; how much more often now ought you to revisit my afflicted spirit, and, through yourself, soothe the grief conceived because of you!

But to me indeed the exercise of my office grants some respite, and the strain of priestly duty draws my mind away: but what shall become of our holy sister, who, though she tempers her devotion with divine fear, nevertheless in turn kindles the very grief of devotion by the zeal of religion, lying prostrate on the ground and embracing the whole tomb with her bosom, wearied with laborious approach, sorrowful in feeling, renews her grief day and night? For although she often suspends weeping by speech, she renews it in prayer: and although the memory of the Scriptures runs ahead with consolations for those who sow them; yet she compensates the desire for weeping with assiduity of prayer, renewing the abundance of tears then especially, when no one can interrupt her. Thus you have what to pity: what to reprove, you do not have; for to weep in prayer is a mark of virtue.

And although this is familiar to virgins, whose sex is softer, whose feeling more tender, who from the contemplation of common frailty overflow into tears even without the sense of domestic grief; yet when there is greater cause for mourning, an end is shut out from sorrows.

There is lacking, therefore, a way of consoling, because occasion for excusing presents itself. For you could not forbid what you teach; especially since it ascribes the tears to religion, not to grief; and covers over the course of a common lamentation under the fear of shame. Do you, therefore, console who can approach the soul, penetrate the mind. Let him see that you are present, let him feel that he is not dead; that he who is secure of his merit, having received your comfort, may learn not to grieve heavily for him who has admonished him that there is no need for grief.

But why do I delay you, brother? Why should I wait, that my speech should die together with you, and be buried, as it were, with you? Though the very appearance and form of the lifeless body brings comfort, and the grace that remains and the enduring figure soothe the eyes; I delay no longer, I say, let us proceed to the tomb. But first, before the people, I bid you a last farewell, I proclaim peace, I give the parting kiss. Go before to that home, common and owed to all, but now, above all others, desired by me. Prepare for your guest a place of companionship; and just as here all things were common to us, so there too let us know no divided right.

Do not, I beg you, put off long one who longs for you; wait for one who hastens, help one who hurries; and if I seem to you to be delaying too long, summon me. For never were we absent from each other for very long, but you were wont to return to visit me. Now, since you can no longer return, I will go to you: it is fitting that I repay the office, that I take my turn. Never was our condition of life more undivided: always either health or illness was shared; so that when one grew ill, the other fell into sickness too; and when one recovered, both rose together. How have we lost our right? And if there was a sharing of sickness, how has there not been a sharing of death?

To you now, almighty God, I commend an innocent soul, to you I offer my sacrifice: receive, propitious and serene, this brotherly gift, this offering of a priest. These libations of mine I send before; with this pledge I come to you, not a pledge of money, but a pledge of life; lest you make me remain longer a debtor of so great a loan. Not slight is the interest of brotherly love, nor cheap the lot of nature, which the increases of virtue heap up. I can bear it, if I am soon compelled to pay it off.

In the previous book I indulged somewhat the longing, lest, as with a burning wound, more severe remedies applied should exasperate rather than soothe the pain: at the same time, because I had often spoken to my brother, and held him before my eyes, it was not absurd to relax for a little the affection of nature, which is fed more by tears, soothed by weeping, made numb by stupor. For the form of piety is a soft and tender thing, loving nothing insolent, nothing harsh, nothing hard: but patience is proved more by enduring than by resisting.

Therefore, since a while ago the day of death, amid tearful gazes, was bound to sway my brotherly soul, because it held the whole of me; now, since on the seventh day we return to the tomb, which day is a symbol of the future rest, it is fitting to turn the mind for a little from my brother to the common exhortation of the human race, and to transfer my attention there; so that we may neither be wholly fixed in our senses upon my brother, lest emotion steal upon us, nor, as exiles from so great piety and grace, abandon him whom we love; and truly increase for ourselves the injury of so great a grief, if today he should die for us again even in speech.

Wherefore, dearest brethren, I have proposed to console ourselves by the common experience, and not to think it hard, whatever awaits us all; and therefore that death is not to be mourned: first, because it is common, and owed to all: then, because it releases us from the troubles of this age: finally, because, under the appearance of sleep, where there is rest from the labor of this world, a livelier vigor is poured back into us. What grief does not the grace of resurrection console? What sorrow does it not shut out, if you believe that nothing perishes by death; nay rather, that by the very swiftness of death it comes about that it can perish no more? It will be, then, dearest brethren, that in this common exhortation we should also render our affection to our brother; nor shall we seem to have strayed too far from him, if, through the hope of resurrection and the sweetness of future glory, he should today live again for us even in speech.

Let us begin, then, by teaching that the deaths of our own are not to be mourned. For what is more absurd than to bewail as something special what you know is prescribed for all? This is to raise the mind above its condition, to refuse to accept the common law, to reject the fellowship of nature, to be puffed up with a fleshly mind, and yet not to know the measure of that very flesh. What is more absurd than not to know who you are, and to lay claim to what you are not? Or what more imprudent than not to be able to bear, when it happens, what you knew was going to happen? Nature herself calls us back, and by a certain consolation of her own withdraws us from griefs of this kind. For what grief is so heavy, or what sorrow so bitter, in which the mind is not sometimes relaxed?

Nature has this property, that although men are in sorrowful circumstances, yet, if only they are men, they withdraw their minds for a little from grief.

There are said to have been certain peoples who mourned the births of men, and celebrated their deaths. Not without reason; for they thought those who had come into this sea of life were to be mourned: but those who had emerged from the storms and waves of this world, they judged should be attended with no unjust joy. We ourselves too forget the birthdays of the departed, and renew with a solemn festival the day on which they died.

No heavy grief, then, need be undergone according to nature; lest we should seem to arrogate to ourselves some more excellent exemption from nature, or to refuse what is common. For death is equal for all, undistinguished for the poor, unexempted for the rich. And therefore, although it passed through into all through the sin of one, that we may not refuse the author of death, whose author of our race we do not refuse: and let it be for us, as death came through one, so also resurrection through one; nor let us refuse the trouble, that we may arrive at grace: for Christ came, as we read, to save that which had perished: and that He might have dominion not only of the living, but also of the dead. I fell in Adam, was cast out of paradise in Adam, died in Adam; how shall He call me back, unless He finds me in Adam, so that, as guilty of the fault and owing death in him, so I might be justified in Christ?

If, then, it is a debt of death, the payment ought to be tolerable. But this point must be reserved for later parts.

Now it is proposed to assert that death ought not to be a cause of graver grief, because nature herself rejects it. Finally, the precepts of the Lycians are said to be such that they order men to put on women's dress if they indulge in grief; because they judged that mourning in a man is soft and effeminate. For it is unseemly that those who, for the sake of faith, for religion, for country, for equity of judgment, and for the pursuit of virtue, ought to offer their breast to meet death, should mourn more heavily for another what, if the cause should demand it, ought to be sought for themselves. For how can you not refuse in yourself what you grieve, with less patience, has happened to another? Lay aside your grief, if you can: shut it in, if you cannot.

All grief must either be swallowed up, or repressed. For why should not reason rather than the passage of time soothe your sadness? Not that a lapse of time will obliterate it, but prudence will better mitigate it. Indeed, I consider this very thing irreligious toward the memory of those whom we grieve to have lost; that we should prefer to forget them rather than be soothed with consolation; or to remember with horror rather than to remember with gratitude: to fear recollection of those whose image ought to be a delight: to distrust rather than to hope concerning the merits of the departed: and to reckon those whom you loved as condemned to punishment, rather than owed to immortality.

But you say: We have lost those whom we loved. Is this not common to us with the world itself and its elements; since we cannot hold in perpetuity what was entrusted to us only for a time? The earth groans beneath the plough, is beaten by rains, shaken by storms, bound by cold, scorched by sun: that she may bring forth her yearly fruits in travail: and when she has clothed herself with varied blossom, she is stripped and despoiled of her own adornment. How many plunderers does she have! Yet she does not complain that her fruit is lost, which she brought forth for this very purpose, that she might lose it: nor does she deny it hereafter, remembering that it was to be taken from her.

The sky itself does not always gleam with the globes of glittering stars, with which it is marked, as it were, with certain crowns. It does not always grow white with the rising of light, or glow red with the rays of the sun: but by constant alternations that most pleasing face of the world grows dark with the damp horror of night. What is more pleasant than light? What more delightful than the sun? Yet they perish daily; still, we do not take it ill that they have departed from us, because we presume they will return. You are taught by these things how much patience you ought to show in your own affairs. If things above you perish, and are no cause of grief, why, if human things perish, should they be mourned?

Yet let grief be patient, let there be measure in sorrows, as is required in prosperity. Or if it is not fitting to rejoice immoderately, is it fitting to mourn immoderately? For no small evil is the excess of grief, or the fear of death. How many has it driven to the noose, armed for the sword; so that in that very act they betrayed their own madness, not enduring death, yet seeking death: and what they fled as an evil, they adopted as a remedy? Since they could not bear and endure what was consonant with their nature, they fall into the contrary of their wish; so that they are separated forever from those whom they had desired to follow. But these cases are rare; since nature herself calls back, even if madness rushes headlong.

But this is frequent among women, that they sow public outcries, as though fearing lest their trouble go unknown: that they affect the filth of their garment, as if there were some sense of grief in it: that they wet an unkempt head with squalor: that finally—what commonly happens in many places—with garment torn and robe rent asunder, they prostitute naked the secret places of their modesty, as though they were pandering to modesty itself, because they have lost the rewards of their own modesty. Thus wanton eyes are provoked to lust, to begin to love the bared limbs; which, if they did not look upon them, they would not love. And would that those soiled coverings of the body veiled not the form but the mind! Often beneath a sad garment lies hidden lasciviousness of mind, and the deformed horror of the garment is covered over, so that the secrets of wanton spirits may be hidden.

She mourns her husband piously enough who preserves her modesty, who does not abandon her fidelity. These are the good offices bestowed on the departed, that they may live in our minds, persevere in our affections. She has not lost her husband who displays chastity: she is not widowed of her marriage who has not changed her husband's name. Nor have you lost your heir, who assist your co-heir: but for the successor of perishable things, you have exchanged a companion of the immortal. You have one who represents your heir for you: pay to the poor what is owed to the heir; that he may be the survivor not only of his mother's or father's old age, but even of his own life. You leave more to your successor, if his portion redounds not to the luxury of the present, but to the price of the future.

But we long for those we have lost. For there are two things which chiefly torment us: either longing for those we have lost, as I measure by my own example; or the thought that, deprived of the sweetness of life, they have been snatched from the fruits of their labor. For tender is the titillation of love, which excites an unforeseen feeling, so that the faculty for soothing grief is left rather than for shutting it out entirely: at the same time, because it seems pious to long for what you have lost, and weakness grows under the appearance of virtue.

But why should you think that she ought to be more patient, who has sent a beloved one abroad, and has learned that he has crossed the sea for the sake of military service, or the duty of an office undertaken, or the practice of trade; than you, who have been left behind, not by any chance decision, or by the pursuit of money, but by the law of nature? "But," you say, "for me hope of recovering him is shut off": as though it were certain for anyone that he will return. And commonly uncertainties trouble more, when the fear of danger is still whole, and it is more grievous to fear that a thing may happen than to endure what you already know has happened. For the one heaps up the full sum of dread, the other awaits the end of grief.

Or is there a right for masters, by which they may decide to transfer their slaves, and is there none for God? But you have no resource to wait for one returning; yet you have the resource to follow one who has gone before. And certainly the brief span of life seems not to have taken away much from him who has gone before, nor to delay you very long, who have remained behind.

But if you cannot mitigate your longing, does it not nevertheless seem unworthy, for the sake of your own longing, to wish the order of things to be reversed? The longings of lovers, surely, are more ardent, and yet they are tempered by regard for necessity: and if they grieve to be forsaken, still they are not accustomed to mourn: those who are bereft blush to love too impatiently. Thus is patience in longing the more approved.

But what shall I say of those who think that the dead are deprived of the sweetness of life? There can be no pleasantness amid these bitternesses or griefs of our life, which arise either from the weakness of the body itself, or from the discomfort of things happening from without. For, ever anxious, and suspended even in the very wishes of our more joyous hopes, we waver in a certain uncertainty, hoping for doubtful things as if certain, for troublesome things as if favorable, for fleeting things as if solid: having no power in our own choice, no firmness in our wishing. But if anything happens contrary to our will, we think ourselves ruined; and we are more broken by the grief of adversities than we are gladdened by the enjoyment of prosperities. Of what goods, then, are they deprived, who are rather snatched away from troubles?

Good health, I suppose, helps more than bad health afflicts; or wealth delights more than want distresses; or the pleasing grace of children is more lovable than their mournful loss; or youth is more joyful than sad old age. How often one is weary of one's own wishes and repents of what was desired, so that one grieves over the very thing obtained which one had feared not to obtain! But as for exiles, and the bitternesses of other punishments, what can compensate for one's native land? What pleasures? Which, even when present, are yet weakened, either by the fear of not being able to enjoy them, or by the fear of losing them.

Yet grant this: let the course of human life remain unoffended, free from griefs, perpetual in pleasures; what advantage, nevertheless, can the soul gain, shut up as it is within the framework of such a body, and constrained by the narrow confines of its members? If our flesh flees the prison, if it detests everything that denies it the power of roaming freely—flesh which indeed seems, by its small senses, to reach out beyond itself to hear and to see—how much more does our soul long to escape this bodily workhouse, our soul which, free in its airy motion, we know not whence it comes or whither it goes!

We know, nevertheless, that it survives the body, and that, once freed from the barriers of its own senses, it beholds with a free gaze the things which before, placed in the body, it did not see. This we may judge by the example of those who sleep, whose minds, while the body lies as it were buried in rest, raise themselves to higher things, and, withdrawing from the body, report visions of things absent, or even of heavenly things. Therefore if the death of the flesh releases us from the hardships of the world, it is certainly not an evil, since it restores freedom and shuts out grief.

From this, then, we must undertake the argument that death is not an evil, because it is a refuge from all hardships and evils, and a faithful station of security, and a harbor of rest. For what adversity do we not experience in this life? What storms and tempests do we not endure? By what troubles are we not vexed? Whose merits are spared?

The holy patriarch Israel, a fugitive from his native land, from his brother, from his parents, exchanged home for exile; he wept over the violation of his daughter, the murder committed by his sons-in-law; he endured famine; and even in death he lost his burial-place, for he entreated that his bones be carried away, lest he rest even in death where he had died.

The holy Joseph experienced the hatred of his brothers, the plots of the envious, the servitude of a menial, the commands of merchants, the wantonness of his mistress, the ignorance of her husband, and even the hardship of a prison.

The holy David lost two sons: one incestuous, the other a parricide. To have had these was a matter of shame; to have lost them, a matter of grief. He lost also a third, a little one, whom he loved. This child, while yet living, he wept for; but dead, he did not mourn him. For thus we read that, while the boy was sick, David besought the Lord for him, and fasted, and lay upon sackcloth, and though the elders stood by urging him to rise from the ground, he thought he ought neither to rise nor to eat. But when he learned that the boy was dead, he rose from the ground, at once washed, was anointed, changed his garments, worshiped the Lord, and took food.

When his servants marveled at this, he answered that he had rightly fasted and wept while the infant lived, because he rightly judged that the Lord could show mercy, and there was no doubt that He who could give life to the dead could preserve the life of the living; but now, death having come, why should he fast, since he could no longer bring back the dead or recall the lifeless to life? “I,” he said, “shall go to him; but he shall not return to me”.

O greatest solace for one who mourns! O true judgment of a wise man! O wondrous wisdom of one who serves God! That no one should think it unworthy that something adverse has befallen him, or complain that he has been afflicted beyond his deserts. For who are you, that you should pronounce beforehand about your own merit? Why do you wish to forestall the Judge? Why do you snatch the sentence from Him who is to judge? Nor was this permitted even to the saints, nor was it ever usurped by the saints with impunity. David confesses in his own song that he was scourged for this reason: “Behold, these are the sinners, and yet abounding in the world they have obtained riches. Therefore have I in vain justified my heart, and washed my hands among the innocent: and I have been scourged all the day, and my chastisement was ready in the morning”.

Peter also, although full of the faith of devotion, yet because he was not yet conscious of our weakness, had presumptuously said to the Lord: “I will lay down my life for thee”; he fell into the temptation of presumption before the cock crowed the third time. Though that temptation was a lesson unto salvation, that we might learn not to despise the weakness of the flesh, lest by despising it we be tempted. If Peter was tempted, who shall presume, who shall assert, that he cannot be tempted? And doubtless Peter was tempted for our sakes, so that in one stronger there might be no danger of temptation; but that in him we might learn how, resisting in persecutions, even though we should be tempted by love of life, we might yet conquer the sting of temptation by the tears of patience.

Yet, lest perhaps the diversity of these deeds trouble any diligent reader of the Scriptures, the same David—I say—wept for his dead parricide son, who had not wept for the innocent one. Finally, when he wept and mourned, he said: “My son Absalom, my son Absalom; would God I had died for thee”! Not Absalom alone, then, is wept for; the parricide is wept for; Ammon is wept for. Not only is the incestuous one wept for, but he is also avenged: one by the contempt of the kingdom, the other by the exile of his brother. The wicked man is wept for; the beloved one is not wept for. What is the reason? What is the cause? No small matter, then, is here for the deliberation of the prudent, the confirmation of the wise; for great is the constancy of prudence, and one faith, amid so great a diversity of deeds.

And he wept for those who were dead, and did not think the dying infant should be wept for; for those he believed had perished for him, but this one he hoped would rise again.

But of the resurrection later; now let us return to our proposed subject. For we have already premised that even holy men suffered grave and many things in this world, without any favor shown for their merits, amid the hardship of labors. Whence David, turning back to himself, says in later passages: “Remember, Lord, that we are dust; man is like grass, his days”; and elsewhere: “Man is become like vanity: his days pass away like a shadow”. For what is more wretched than we, who, as if despoiled and naked, are cast forth into this life, with fragile body, slippery heart, feeble mind, anxious under cares, slothful in labors, prone to pleasures?

Not to be born, then, is by far the best, according to the judgment of holy Solomon. This very saying even those who seemed to themselves to excel in philosophy have followed. For he, earlier than they, yet later than our own, thus spoke in Ecclesiastes: “And I praised all the dead who were already dead, more than the living, whoever live even until now. And better than these two is he who has not yet been born, and who has not seen this evil work which is done under the sun. And I saw all the labor, and all the excellence of this work; for it is the envy of a man toward his neighbor. And this too is vanity, and vexation of spirit”.

And who said this, but he who asked for wisdom and obtained it; that he might know the structure of the world, and the power of the elements, the course of the year, and the arrangements of the stars, might not be ignorant of the natures of animals, and might grasp the wraths of beasts, the force of the winds, and the thoughts of men? He, then, from whom the heavenly things were not hidden—how could mortal things be hidden from him? He who traced out the thought of the woman claiming for herself another's infant, who by the inspiration of divine grace came to know the natures of animals which he had not received by learning—could this man err or lie concerning the condition of his own nature, which he had experienced in himself?

But he was not the only one to feel this, though he alone expressed it. He had read that the holy Job had said: “Let the day perish wherein I was born”; and he had learned that to be born is the beginning of all evils; and therefore he wished the day of his birth to perish, that the origin of troubles might be removed; and he wished the day of his begetting to perish, that he might receive the day of resurrection. Solomon had also heard his father say: “Make known to me, O Lord, my end, and the number of my days, that I may know what is lacking to me”. For David knew that that which is perfect cannot be grasped here, and therefore he hastened toward the things that are to come.

For now we know in part, and we know in part; but then that which is perfect shall be able to be grasped, when, with the face unveiled, not the shadow but the truth of the majesty and eternity of God, which we are to contemplate, shall begin to shine upon us.

Yet no one would hasten toward the end unless he were fleeing the discomfort of this life. And therefore David too explained why he hastens toward the end, saying: “Behold, thou hast made my days old, and my substance is as nothing before thee: yet indeed all is vanity, every man living”. Why then do we delay to flee vanity? Or what delights us in this world, to be vainly troubled, to lay up a treasure of money, and not know for what heir we are gathering it? Let us ask that the plagues be removed from us, that we be snatched from this senseless world, that we be free from long wandering, and return to that native land and natural home. For on this earth we are strangers and pilgrims: we must return whence we came down; we must strive and beseech, not perfunctorily, but earnestly, that we may be freed from the deceits and iniquity of the talkative.

And he who knew the remedy nevertheless groans that his sojourning is prolonged, and laments that he dwells with sinners and the unjust. What then shall I do, who both have sin, and know not the remedy?

Jeremiah also laments that he was born, in these words, saying: “Woe is me, my mother! Why hast thou borne me a man of strife, a man of contention to all the earth? I have not profited, nor has anyone profited me: my strength has failed”. If, then, holy men flee life, whose life, though useful to us, is yet reckoned unprofitable to themselves—what ought we to do, who can profit others in nothing, and who feel this life of ours weighing us down day by day like borrowed money growing heavy with a certain usurious accumulation of the debt of our sins?

“I die daily,” says the Apostle. Better indeed than those who called the meditation of death philosophy: for they preached only the study of it, but he practiced the very exercise of death. And they indeed did it for their own sake; but Paul, though himself perfect, was dying not for his own weakness, but for ours. But what is the meditation of death, but a certain separation of body and soul; since death itself is defined as nothing other than the parting of body and soul? But this is according to the common opinion.

But according to the Scriptures we understand that death is threefold. One is when we die to sin, and live to God. Blessed, therefore, is that death which, fleeing from guilt, given over to the Lord, separates us from what is mortal and consecrates us to what is immortal. Another death is the departure from this life, by which the patriarch Abraham died, the patriarch David died, and they were buried with their fathers; when the soul is freed from the bond of the body. The third death is that of which it was said: “Let the dead bury their dead”. By that death not only the flesh but also the soul dies: “For the soul that sins, it shall die”. For it dies to the Lord, not by weakness of nature, but by guilt. But this death is not the completion of this life, but the fall of error.

There is therefore one death spiritual, another natural, a third penal. But that which is natural is not the same as that which is penal; for the Lord gave death not as a penalty, but as a remedy. Accordingly, to Adam when he sinned one thing was prescribed as a penalty, another as a remedy; as a penalty, when it is said: Because thou hast heard the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I had commanded thee that of it alone thou shouldst not eat, cursed is the earth in thy works: in sorrow shalt thou eat the fruit of it all the days of thy life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread, till thou return to the earth out of which thou wast taken.

You have here the boundary of the penalties, for against the thorns of this world and the cares of the world, and the pleasures of riches, which shut out the Word, they enclose the penalty; death was given as a remedy, as the end of evils. For he did not say: Because thou hast heard the voice of thy wife, thou shalt return to the earth; for this would have been a penal sentence, as is that: Cursed is the earth, it shall bring forth to thee thorns and thistles; but he said: Thou shalt eat thy bread in the sweat of thy brow, until thou return to the earth. Do you see that death is rather the goal of our punishments, by which the course of this life is cut short?

Death, therefore, is not only not an evil, but is even a good. Indeed it is sought for as a good, as it is written: Men shall seek death and shall not find it. For they shall seek it who shall say to the mountains: Fall on us, and to the hills: Cover us. That soul also which sins shall seek it. The rich man placed in hell seeks it, who wishes to have his tongue cooled by the finger of Lazarus.

We see, then, that this death is gain, and life is a penalty. Whence Paul also says: To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. What is Christ, but the death of the body, the life of the spirit? And therefore let us die together with him, that we may live with him. Let there be in us a certain daily practice and disposition of dying; that through that separation from bodily desires which we have spoken of, our soul may learn to withdraw itself, and, as if placed on high, where earthly lusts cannot approach it and cling to it, may take up the image of death, lest it incur the penalty of death. For the law of the flesh fights against the law of the mind, and subjects it to the law of error, as the Apostle has revealed, saying: For I see the law of my flesh warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin.

We are all assailed, we all feel it: but not all are set free. And therefore, wretched man that I am, unless I seek a remedy.

But what remedy? Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. We have a physician, let us follow the remedy. Our remedy is the grace of Christ, and the body of death is our own body. Let us therefore be pilgrims from the body, lest we be pilgrims from Christ: although we are in the body, yet let us not follow the things of the body, nor abandon the rights of nature, but let us prefer the gifts of grace: For to be dissolved, and to be with Christ, is far better: but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for your sake.

But it is not necessary for all, Lord Jesus: not for me, who am useful to no one; for it is gain to me to die, lest I sin more. It is gain to me to die, I who by this very book with which I console others am driven, as by a more vehement monitor, to longing for my lost brother; since it does not allow me to forget him. Now I love him more, and desire him more vehemently. I desire him when I speak, I desire him when I read this over again; and therefore I think it better to write this, lest at any time I be torn away from remembrance of him. This I do not do against the Scriptures, but I feel with the Scriptures; that I may grieve more patiently, desire more impatiently.

You have granted me, brother, not to fear death, and would that my soul might die in your soul; for this Balaam, endowed with the Spirit of prophecy, wishes for himself as the greatest good: Let my soul, he says, die in the souls of the just, and let my seed be as the seed of these. And truly he wishes this in accordance with prophecy; for he who had seen the rise of Christ saw his triumph, saw his death, saw in him the perpetual resurrection of men; and therefore, being destined to rise again, he does not fear to die. Let not my soul, then, die in sin, nor receive sin into itself: but let it die in the soul of the just, that it may receive his righteousness. Indeed, he who dies in Christ becomes a partaker of his grace in the font.

Death, then, is not to be feared, nor bitter to the needy, nor heavier to the rich, nor unjust to the elders, nor cowardly to the brave, nor perpetual to the faithful, nor unforeseen to the wise. For how many have consecrated life by the mere title of death, how many were ashamed to live, and profited by dying? By the death of one we have often learned that the greatest peoples were freed: by the death of a commander the armies of the enemy were put to flight, whom living he could not have conquered.

By the death of the martyrs religion was defended, faith increased, the Church strengthened: the dead conquered, the persecutors were conquered. So we celebrate the death of those whose life we do not know. Whence David also, glorying prophetically in the ecstasy of his mind, says: Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. He chose to prefer death to life. The very death of the martyrs is the reward of life. By death even the hatreds of enemies are dissolved.

What more? By the death of one the world was redeemed. For Christ could have not died, had he willed; but he thought death not to be shunned as though it were cowardice, nor could he have saved us better than by dying. Thus his death is the life of all. By his death we are signed, his death we announce in our prayers, his death we proclaim in our offering: his death is victory, his death is a sacrament, his death is the yearly solemnity of the world. What more shall we say of his death, since we prove by divine example that death alone sought immortality, and death itself redeemed itself? Death, then, is not to be mourned, which is the cause of public salvation: death is not to be shunned, which the Son of God did not disdain, did not flee. The order of nature is not to be dissolved; for what is common to all cannot be an exception in individuals.

And death indeed was not in nature, but was turned into nature; for God did not from the beginning institute death, but gave it as a remedy. And let us consider lest it seem to be contrary. For if death is a good, why is it written, that God did not make death, but by the malice of man death entered into the world? For truly death was not necessary to the divine work, since to those placed in paradise there flowed a continual abundance of all good things; but after transgression was condemned, in long labor and unbearable groaning, human life began to be wretched: and an end of evils had to be given, that death might restore what life had lost. For immortality is rather a burden than a benefit, unless grace be breathed upon it.

And if you examine well, this death is not of nature, but of malice; for nature remains, malice dies. What was rises again: and would that, as it is now free to sin, so it were empty of former guilt! But this very fact is a sign that death is not of nature, because we shall be the same as we were. Therefore either we shall pay the penalties of our sins, or we shall obtain the grace of good deeds done. For the same nature will rise again, now more honored by the wages of death. Indeed, the dead who are in Christ shall rise first: then we also who live, he says, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet Christ in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord. They first, but the living second. They with Jesus, the living through Jesus. To them life is sweeter after rest: to the living, though the gains are welcome, the remedies are yet unknown.

There is nothing, then, which we should fear in death, nothing which we ought to grieve for; whether life, which was received, is repaid to nature demanding it back, or is given up in payment for a duty, in which is the practice of religion or the exercise of virtue. For no one has wished for himself that he should remain so forever. To John it was thought that a promise had been made, but it was not believed. We hold the words, but derive the meaning. He himself in his book denies that it was promised to him that he should not die; lest anyone be assailed by a vain hope through his example. But if it is unbridled hope to wish this; how much more unbridled is it to grieve beyond measure over what has not happened beyond measure?

Gentile men generally console themselves either by the commonality of misfortune, or by the law of nature, or by the immortality of the soul. Would that their discourse were consistent, and that they did not transfer the wretched soul into various mockeries and forms of monstrosities! What then ought we to do, whose wages is resurrection? Whose grace, since most cannot deny, they refuse to believe. And therefore let us establish it, not by one argument only, but in as many ways as we can.

And indeed all things are believed to be, either by usage, or by reason, or by example, or because it is fitting that they should be; and each of these lends support to belief. Usage, because we are moved: reason, because what moves is rightly reckoned to belong to another power: example, because the field has produced fruits, and therefore we presume it will produce them again: fitness, because even where we do not expect fruit, we still believe it fitting, that we may not at all abandon the works of virtue.

Each thing, then, is established by each argument. Yet the faith of the resurrection is more clearly gathered from three things, in which all are comprehended: reason, the example of the universe, the testimony of the fact accomplished; since very many have risen again. The reasoning is clear; since, as all the practice of our life consists in the partnership of body and soul, and the resurrection has as its reward either the good act, or the punishment of the wicked act, it is necessary that the body rise again, whose act is weighed. For how shall the soul be called to judgment without the body, since account must be rendered concerning its own partnership with the body?

The resurrection is granted to all: but it is therefore believed with difficulty, because it is not our merit, but a gift of God. The first proof of the resurrection is the usual course of the world, and the state of all things, the series of generations, the alternations of successions, the setting and rising of the constellations, the setting of day and night, and their daily, as it were, revived succession. The reason of the fertility of this earth also could not otherwise subsist, unless as much of the moisture, by which all earthly things are generated, as the daily heat of the sun consumes, so much divine arrangement restores by the nightly dew. For why should I speak of fruits? Do they not seem to you to die, when they fall: to rise again, when they grow green again? What is sown, rises again: what has died, rises again; and is reformed into the same kinds, into the same species. These fruits the earth first gave back; in these our nature first imitated the likeness of the resurrection.

Why do you doubt that body will rise from body? A grain is sown, a grain rises again: a fruit falls, a fruit rises again; but the grain is clothed with a flower, and dressed with a husk: And this mortal must put on immortality, and this corruptible must put on incorruption. The flower of the resurrection is immortality, the flower of the resurrection is incorruption. For what is richer than perpetual rest? What is more abundant than lasting security? This is the manifold fruit, by whose yield the nature of men becomes more fruitful after death.

But you marvel how decayed things are made solid again, scattered things come together, consumed things are restored, yet you do not marvel how seeds, dissolved by the warmth and pressure of the earth, grow green. For indeed these very seeds are dissolved by decay in the union with the earth, and when the life-giving juice of the fertile soil has animated them, blind and dead as they were, they exhale, by a certain vital warmth, a kind of breath of greening herb.

Then little by little nature raises up the tender growing age of the sprouting ear upon its stalk, and encloses it, as it were, in certain sheaths, like a careful mother; lest harsh frost should scorch it while budding, and to protect it from excessive heat of the sun: and the grain itself, as if still bursting from its first cradle, and soon grown to maturity, lest the rain beat it down, lest the wind scatter it, lest the bite of small birds destroy it, nature is accustomed to fence it in with a rampart of awns.

Why then do you marvel if the earth restores men, whom it has received; when it gives life, raises up, clothes, fortifies, and defends whatever bodies of seeds it has received? Cease, then, to doubt that the earth, in good faith, renders back the deposit of the human race, which restores, multiplied by a kind of interest at usury, the seeds committed to it. For why should I speak of the kinds of trees, which rise from seed once placed, and revive their scattered fruits with renewed fertility, and restore them to their old form and image, and carry certain bodies of trees, restored, through many ages, so that by enduring they conquer the centuries themselves? We see the grape-stone rot, the vine rise again: a cutting is grafted, a tree is reborn. Is there divine providence for the restoring of trees, and no care for men? And shall he who has not allowed the things which he gave for the use of men to perish, allow man to perish, whom he made in his own image?

But it seems incredible to you that the dead should live again: Foolish one, that which you sow, does it not first die, that it may be brought to life? Sow any withered fruit whatsoever, it is revived. But it has sap. And our body has its own blood, has its own moisture. This is the sap of our body. Whence I think that too is refuted, which some deny, that a withered shoot revives, and they strive to draw this out as a prejudice against the flesh. For flesh is not dry, since all flesh is from mud, mud is in moisture, moisture from the earth. Moreover, many growing things, though from dry and sandy soil, are born even amid unbroken drought; since the earth itself supplies moisture for itself. Does the earth then degenerate in the case of men, when it is accustomed to regenerate all things?

Whence it is clear that there is no need to doubt that this is rather according to nature than against nature; for it is according to nature that all things which are born rise again, but it is against nature that they perish.

There follows that which very often disturbs the gentiles, how it can come about that the earth should restore those whom the sea has swallowed up, whom wild beasts have torn apart, whom beasts have devoured. To this point one must necessarily come, that the doubt is not about the faith of the resurrection, but about a part of it. For granted that the bodies of those torn apart do not rise again, the rest rise; nor is the resurrection destroyed if an exception is made for a condition. Yet I wonder why they think one ought to doubt even concerning these, as though all things which are from the earth do not return to the earth, and are resolved into the earth. The sea itself too, whatever human bodies it has submerged, very often spews them out with its wave upon neighboring shores.

Were it not so, I believe it would be difficult for God to join together things scattered, to unite things dispersed—He whom the world obeys, whom the mute elements serve, whom nature serves: as though it were not a greater miracle to animate mud than to join it together?

A bird in the region of Arabia, whose name is the phoenix, capable of being restored by the revived moisture of its own flesh, when it has died, comes to life again; shall we alone not believe that men are raised up? And indeed we have learned this by frequent report and by the authority of the Scriptures, that this recorded bird has a lifespan of five hundred years prescribed for its vital use; and that when it has perceived by a certain prophetic instinct of its own nature that its end of life is at hand, it adorns for itself a coffin of frankincense and myrrh and other spices, and when the work is completed together with the time, it enters therein, and dies: from whose moisture a worm arises, and this gradually grows into the shape of that same bird, and is formed for use, and being sustained also by the oarage of its wings, begins the offices of renewed life by a duty of piety.

For that coffin, or tomb of the body, or cradle of the one rising again, in which the dying one perishes, and the perishing one rises again, it carries from Ethiopia into Lycaonia: and thus by the resurrection of this bird, the inhabitants of those regions understand that the period of five hundred years has been completed. Therefore for this bird the five hundredth year is the year of resurrection, for us the thousandth: for it, in this age; for us, at the consummation of the world. Many also suppose that this bird itself kindles a funeral pyre for itself, and again comes to life from its own embers and ashes.

But perhaps a more discerning nature seems to bring also a discernment of faith: let our mind return to the origin and beginning of man's procreation. You are men, you are women; you are not ignorant of the things that are human: and if any of you are ignorant, you suppose that that from which we are born is out of nothing. From how small a beginning do we rise to how great a stature! And if we do not express it, yet you understand what we wish, or rather what we do not wish, to say. Whence comes this head, and this wondrous countenance, whose craftsman we do not see, though we see the work, formed for various offices and uses? Whence the more upright form, the loftier stature, the power of acting, the vividness of sensing, the faculty of walking? The organs of nature are certainly unknown to us, but their ministrations are known. And you too were once seed, and your body is the seed of one who is to rise again.

Hear Paul, and learn that you are seed: It is sown in corruption, it shall rise in incorruption: it is sown in dishonor, it shall rise in glory: it is sown in weakness, it shall rise in power: it is sown a natural body, it shall rise a spiritual body. You too, then, are sown like the rest; why do you marvel if you shall rise like the rest? But you believe those things, because you see them; these things you do not believe, because you do not see them: Blessed are they who have not seen, and have believed.

Yet before the time comes, those things too are not believed; for not every time is suited for reviving seeds. In one season wheat is sown, in another it is born; in one season the vine is grafted, in another the budding branches grow ripe, the tendril flourishes luxuriantly, the grape is formed; in one season the olive is planted, in another, as if heavy and burdened in its womb with the offspring of its berries, it bends with the abundance of its fruit. But before its proper time comes for each thing, the yield is more restrained; nor does that which brings forth have the age of generation in its own power of generating. Now you may behold the universal parent of all things shapeless in its inert state, now bare of offspring, now green with flowers, now withered.

She would indeed wish to clothe herself at every season, and never to lay aside the golden garments of the harvests or the greening garments of the meadows: she herself in need, and, having poured out her yields into others, left without the increase of her own gains.

Therefore, even if you do not believe our resurrection by faith, and do not believe it by example, you will come to believe it by experience. And indeed for other fruits—the vine, the olive, and various apples—the final season of the year is fit for their ripening: for us too the consummation of the world, like the final end of the year, has prescribed the fitting age for rising again. And rightly is the resurrection of the dead placed at the consummation of the world; lest after the resurrection we should have to fall back into this evil age. For this is why Christ suffered, that he might free us from this evil age; lest the temptations of this age should again undermine us, and it should be harmful to be reborn, if we were reborn unto guilt.

We hold, then, both the reason and the time of the resurrection: the reason, because nature corresponds equally with itself in all its offspring, nor does it degenerate in the succession of men alone: the time, because all things are generated at the end of the year. The seasons of the world are one year. And what wonder is it that it is one year, when it is one day? For on one day the Lord hired laborers for the vineyard, saying: Why do you stand here idle the whole day?

The causes of origins are seeds. The Teacher of the Gentiles asserted that the human body is seed. There is, therefore, a substance for rising again, since there is a succession of sowing. But if there were no substance or cause, would anyone think it difficult for God, from whatever source He willed, or in whatever manner He willed, to regenerate men—He who bade the world be, out of no matter, no substance, and it was made? Behold the heaven, look upon the earth. Whence come the fires of the stars? Whence the orb of the sun and its rays? Whence the globe of the moon? Whence the peaks of mountains, the hardness of rocks, the wooded forests? Whence the diffused air, or the waters poured in and poured over? But if God made all these things out of nothing (for He Himself spoke, and they were made; He Himself commanded, and they were created), why should we marvel that what has been can be born again, when we see that what was not has been born?

This is remarkable, that though they do not believe in the resurrection, yet, lest the race of men should perish, they provide for it with a certain merciful kindness; and therefore they say that souls pass over and migrate into bodies, lest the world should perish. But let them themselves declare which is more difficult: that souls should pass over, or return; that they should seek their own things again, or seek new ones.

But let those doubt who have not learned; but for us who have read the Law, the prophets, the apostles, the Gospel, it is not right to doubt. For who could doubt, when he reads: And at that time your whole people shall be saved, whoever is found written in the book: and many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, one part unto everlasting life, and another unto reproach and everlasting confusion: and they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and many of the just as the stars for ever and ever? Rightly, then, has he called it a sleep, the rest of those who sleep, that you may understand that death, which is entered upon like sleep for a time, and is for a time excluded, is not perpetual: and he shows that the better estate of that life which is to be after death, exceeds that of the life which before death is passed in grief and sorrow.

Since indeed the one is compared to the stars, the other is consigned to affliction.

For why should I weave together those things which are written elsewhere: You shall raise me up, and I will give thanks to you? What also of this, that holy Job, having experienced the injuries of this life, and overcoming all adversities by the power of patience, promised himself compensation for his present evils from the resurrection, saying: You shall raise up this my body, which has suffered many evils? Isaiah too, announcing the resurrection to the peoples, said that he was the messenger of the Lord's response; for thus you have it: For the mouth of the Lord has spoken, and they shall say in that day. What then the mouth of the Lord has spoken that the peoples shall say, is declared in what follows, where it is written: Because of the fear of you, O Lord, we have conceived in the womb, and have been in labor, and have brought forth the spirit of your salvation, which you have poured out upon the earth.

They that dwell upon the earth shall fall, they that are in the tombs shall rise again: for the dew that is from you is health to them, but the land of the wicked shall perish. Go, my people, and enter into your chambers. Hide yourself for a little while, until the wrath of God passes over.

How well has he signified the tombs of the dead as chambers, in which we are hidden for a little while; that we may be able to pass more tolerably through the judgment of God, which for our sins will assume the right of due indignation! He lives, then, who is hidden and rests, as one withdrawing himself from the midst and retreating; lest the affliction of this world should entangle him in its tighter snares—he for whom, as the heavenly oracles promise in prophetic voices, the joy of the resurrection is stored up, and the health of dissolved bodies is capable of being restored by the divine dew. And rightly is the dew signified, by which all the generative seeds of the earth are revived. What wonder, then, is it if the ashes and embers of our own crumbling body too abound with the richness of the heavenly dew, and, having received the vital moisture, the form of our members is restored into its own frame?

Holy Ezekiel the prophet also teaches, and describes with a full exposition, how vigor is poured back into dry bones, how sensation returns, how motion is added, and, the sinews returning, how the human frame stiffens into its structure: how bones, extremely dry, are clothed again with revived flesh, and how the opening of veins and rivulets of blood are covered by the veil of extended skin. In these very prophetic words, as we read, the harvest of human bodies seems to rise again revived, and you may see the very stretches of the fields sprouting forth with new seeds.

But if the wise men of old believed that from the hydra's teeth in the region of Thebes a harvest of armed men bristled forth: though it is certain that seeds of one nature could not have been turned into another nature, nor have poured forth an offspring discordant with their own seeds—that men should be born from a serpent, that flesh should be begotten from teeth—how much more must it be believed that whatever things have been sown rise again into their own nature, and that harvests do not differ from their sowing, and that soft things do not come to life from hard, nor hard from soft, nor poisons turned into blood; but that flesh is restored from flesh, bone from bones, blood from blood, moisture from moisture. Can you, then, gentiles, deny the reformation of nature, you who can assert its transformation? Can you fail to believe the oracles, not the Gospel, not the prophecies, you who believe empty fables?

But now let us hear the prophet himself; for thus he says: And the hand of the Lord came upon me, and the Lord led me out in the spirit, and set me in the midst of a field, and it was full of human bones: and he led me round about them, and behold, there were very many bones on the face of the field, exceedingly dry. And he said to me: Son of man, shall these bones live? And I said: Lord, you know. And he said to me: Prophesy over these bones, and say to them: You dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord to these bones: Behold, I will bring the spirit of life into you, and I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring flesh upon you, and will spread skin over you, and will put my Spirit within you; and you shall live, and shall know that I am the Lord. And I prophesied as he commanded me.

And it came to pass, as I prophesied all these things, that behold, there was a great earthquake.

See now how he shows that both hearing was present in the bones, and motion, before the spirit of life was poured back into them. For above, the dry bones are bidden to hear, as though they had the sense of hearing: and here it is signified in the prophetic word that each one of them came to its own joint; for thus you have it: And the bones came together, each one to its own joint. And I looked, and behold, sinews and flesh grew upon them, and skin came up over them from above, and there was no spirit in them.

Great is the grace of the Lord, that a prophet is employed as witness of the future resurrection, that we too might see it through his eyes. For it was not possible for all to be employed as witnesses, but in one we are all witnesses: because falsehood does not fall upon a holy man, nor error upon so great a prophet.

Nor ought it to seem too improbable that, at God's command, bones are reformed into their own structure; since we surely have countless examples in which the nature of things has obeyed heavenly commands; that the earth was bidden to bring forth food, and brought it forth; that at the touch of the rod the rock poured forth water for the thirsting peoples, and, by divine mercy, streams flowed from hard rocks for those parched by heat. What else did the rod turned into a serpent indicate, but that, by the will of God, sensible things can be generated from insensible ones? Or do you think it more incredible that bones, when commanded, come together; than that streams are turned backward, that seas flee? For thus the prophet testifies: The sea saw and fled, the Jordan was turned back.

Nor can there be any doubt on this point, which was proved by the salvation of one people and the destruction of another—that the courses of the waters stood restrained, and the same waters surrounded some, and were poured back upon others unto death, so that they drowned some, and preserved others What of the Gospel itself? Did not the Lord there prove that at his word the wave grows calm, the clouds of heaven are put to flight, the blasts of the winds yield, and the mute elements serve God on peaceful shores?

But let us pursue the rest, so that we may be able to observe how the dead are animated with the spirit of life, how those lying down rise, how the tombs are opened. And he said to me: Prophesy, son of man, and say to the spirit: Thus says the Lord: Come, spirit, from the four winds of heaven, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. And I prophesied as he commanded me, and the spirit of life entered into them, and they lived, and stood upon their feet, an exceeding great congregation. And the Lord spoke to me, saying: Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. For they themselves say: Our bones are dried up, our hope is perished, we shall perish.

Therefore prophesy, and say: Thus says the Lord: Behold, I will open your graves, and bring you out of your graves, O my people, into the land of Israel, and you shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall have opened your sepulchres, and shall have brought you out of your graves, O my people, and shall put my Spirit in you, and you shall live, and I shall set you upon your own land: and you shall know that I am the Lord: I have spoken, and I will do it, says the Lord.

We have observed how the exchange of the vital spirit is resumed, we have learned how, when the tombs gape open, the dead are raised up. Or is it indeed to be marveled at that at the Lord's command the tombs of the dead are opened, when the whole earth within its own bounds is shaken by a single thunderclap, when the sea overflows its bounds, and then restrains the course of its own waves? Finally, he who has believed that in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet (for a trumpet shall sound), the dead shall rise; shall first be caught up in the clouds to meet Christ in the air; but he who has not believed shall be left behind, and shall subject himself, by his own faithlessness, to that sentence.

The Lord shows you also in the Gospel—to come now to examples—how you shall rise again. For he raised up not Lazarus alone, but the faith of all: which if you believe, as you read, your mind also, which had been dead, comes to life again in that Lazarus. For what does it mean that the Lord went to the tomb, and cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth? Unless to furnish a specimen of the future resurrection, to produce an example? Why did he cry with a voice, as though he were not accustomed to work by the spirit, as though he were not accustomed to command silently? But that he might show that which is written: For in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, the dead also shall rise incorrupt; for the crash of trumpets is measured by the loudness of a voice. And he cried: Lazarus, come forth.

Why also is the name added; unless perhaps lest another raised up should seem to be mistaken for another, or the resurrection should seem rather accidental than commanded?

The dead man therefore heard, and came forth out of the tomb, bound feet and hands with bands, and his face was bound about with a napkin. Grasp, if you can, how with closed eyes he took his way, with bound feet directed his step, with an inseparable gait and yet a separable progress. The bonds remained, and did not hold: the eyes were covered, but they saw. He who was rising, who was walking, who was leaving the tomb, indeed saw. For, by the power of divine command operating, nature did not require its own function; and as though placed in a state beyond itself, it no longer served its own order, but the divine nod. The bonds of death were broken before those of burial: he was set in motion before his going was prepared.

If you wonder at these things, learn who commanded, that you may cease to wonder. Jesus Christ, the power of God; life, light, resurrection of the dead: power raised up the one lying prostrate, life brought forth his step, light put to flight the darkness, restored his sight, resurrection reformed the grace of living.

Perhaps it troubles you that the Jews take away the stone, that the Jews loosen the bands; lest perhaps you too be anxious as to who shall take away the stone from your own tomb. As if indeed he who was able to pour back the spirit was not able to remove a stone: or he who had made the bound man walk could not break bonds: or he who had poured light into eyes that were covered could not uncover a face: or he who was able to reform nature could not cleave a rock? But that they might believe, even by their own eyes, who were unwilling to believe with the mind, they remove the stone, they see the corpse, they perceive the stench, they tear apart the bands. They cannot deny that he is dead, whom they behold rising; they see the signs of death, and the gifts of life. What if, while they labor, they themselves are amended by the very labor? What if, while they hear, they believe even with their own ears?

What if, while they gaze, they are corrected even by their own eyes? What if, while they break the bonds, they loose their own minds? What if, while Lazarus is unwrapped, the people is freed? While they allow Lazarus to depart, they themselves return to the Lord? Finally, many who had come to Mary, seeing the things that were done, believed.

Nor did our Lord Jesus Christ produce this one example alone; but he raised up others too, that we might believe by even richer examples. He raised up the young man, moved by the weeping of the widowed mother, when he came near and touched the bier, saying: Young man, I say to you, arise: and he who had been dead sat up, and began to speak. As soon as he heard, he at once sat up, at once spoke. This is one grace of power, that is another order of nature.

For what shall I say of the ruler of the synagogue's daughter, at whose death the crowds wept, the flute-players sounded? For indeed the pomp of the funeral is exhibited to confirm the fact of death. How quickly at the Lord's word the spirit is turned back, the revived body raised up, food taken; that it might be believed as testimony of life.

And why should we marvel that, at God's voice, the soul is poured back, that the inward parts return to the bones; when we remember that a dead man was raised by the touch of a prophet's body? Elijah prayed, and raised up a dead infant: Peter, in the name of Christ, commanded Tabitha to rise and walk, and the poor, rejoicing that she was restored to them, believed for the sake of their sustenance; and do we still not believe, for the sake of our own salvation? They redeemed another's resurrection with their tears; do we not believe our own, even by the passion of Christ?

Who, when he gave up his spirit, that he might show that he had died for our resurrection, carried out the very sequence of resurrection; for at the same time, as he cried again with a loud voice and gave up the spirit; and the earth was shaken, and the rocks were split, and the tombs were opened, and many bodies of the sleeping saints arose, and coming forth out of the tombs after his resurrection, they came into the holy city, and appeared to many.

If these things happened when he gave up his spirit, why do we think it incredible, when he shall begin to return for judgment? Especially since this resurrection is a proof of that resurrection, and an example of the truth to come: but an example is less than the truth. Who, then, opened the tombs at the Lord's passion, gave a hand to those rising up, showed them the way by which they might seek the holy city? If it was no one, then it was surely a divine power, which was working in the bodies of the dead. Do you seek the help of man, where you discern the work of God?

Divine ministries have no need of human ones. God commanded the heaven to be made, and it was made: he decreed the earth to be created, and it was created Who carried the stones on his shoulders? Who assembled the materials? Who lent his labor to a laboring God? These things were done in a moment. Would you know how brief a moment? He spoke, and they were made. If at his word the elements arise, why should the dead not rise at his word? Who, although dead, nevertheless once lived, had a spirit of feeling, had powers of acting; and it makes a great difference whether one has never been capable of a soul, or has remained lifeless after having had one. The devil said: Command this stone that it be made bread. He confesses that, at God's bidding, nature can be converted; do you not believe that, at God's bidding, nature can be reformed?

Philosophers dispute about the course of the sun and the system of the heavens, and there are those who think these are to be believed, when they do not know what they are saying. For they have not ascended into heaven, measured the axis, examined the world with their own eyes; because none of them was with God in the beginning, none of them said of God: When he prepared the heaven, I was with him, and I was with him forming all things, I was he in whom he took delight. If, then, they are believed, God is not believed, who says: As the new heaven, and the new earth, which I make to remain before me, says the Lord, so shall your name stand, and your seed: and it shall come to pass, from month to month, and from sabbath to sabbath: and all flesh shall come to appear before me, to worship in Jerusalem, says the Lord God: and they shall go forth, and see the carcasses of the men who have transgressed against me.

For their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be a spectacle to all flesh

If the earth and the heaven are renewed, why should we doubt that man can be renewed, for whose sake the earth and heaven were made? If the transgressor is preserved unto punishment, why should not the just man be perpetuated unto glory? If the worm of sinners does not die, how shall the flesh of the just perish? For this is resurrection, as the very sound of the word expresses; that what fell, this should rise again: what was dead, should live again.

And this is the sequence and the ground of justice, that since the act is common to body and soul (because what the mind has thought, the body has carried out), both should come to judgment, both should be either given over to punishment or reserved for glory. For it seems well-nigh absurd, that when the law of the flesh assails the law of the mind, and the mind often does what it hates, since sin dwelling in man works through the flesh; the mind should be subjected to another's wrong, guilty of a fault not its own, while the flesh, the author of the trouble, enjoys rest: and that he alone should be crushed who did not err alone; or he alone bear back glory, who did not serve grace alone.

A full account, if I am not mistaken, and a just one: but I do not demand an account from Christ. If I am convinced by reason, I renounce faith. Abraham believed God, and let us believe; that we, who are heirs of his race, may also be heirs of his faith. David too believed, and therefore he also spoke: and let us believe, that we may be able to speak, knowing that he who raised up the Lord Jesus Christ will raise us up also together with Jesus. For this he promised, who never lies, God: this the Truth promised in his Gospel, saying: But this is the will of him who sent me, that of all that he has given me, I should lose nothing: but should raise it up on the last day.

Nor did he think it enough to say this once, but even confirmed it with a repeated expression; for thus it follows: For this is the will of my Father, who sent me, that everyone who sees the Son, and believes in him, should have everlasting life, and I will raise him up on the last day.

Who says this? Surely he who, though dead, raised up very many bodies of the dead. If we do not believe God, do we not even believe the example? Do we not believe what he promised, when he also accomplished what he did not promise? But what cause of dying would he himself have had, unless he had also had a cause of rising again? For since God could not die, wisdom could not die; but he could not rise again, since he had not died; flesh is assumed, which could die, so that while it dies, as is its wont, that which had died might rise again. For resurrection could not exist except through man, since just as death came through man, so also the resurrection of the dead comes through man.

Therefore man rose again, since man died: man was raised up, but God did the raising. Then according to the flesh he was man, now he is through all things God: for now we no longer know Christ according to the flesh, but we hold the grace of the flesh; that we may know him himself as the firstfruits of them that sleep, himself the firstborn from the dead. The firstfruits indeed are of the same kind and nature as the rest of the fruits, for whose more joyful yield the first offerings are brought to God—a sacred offering on behalf of all, and as it were certain libations of a nature restored. Christ therefore is the firstfruits of them that sleep. But is it of his own sleeping ones, who as if exempt from death are held in a certain sweet slumber, or of all the dead? But as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

Thus as the firstfruits of death were in Adam, so too the firstfruits of resurrection are in Christ.

All rise again, but let no one despair, nor let the just man grieve at the common share in rising, since he expects the choicest fruit of virtue. All indeed shall rise, but each, as the Apostle says, in his own order. The fruit of divine clemency is common, but the order of merits is distinct. The day shines for all, the sun warms all peoples, the rain with its more abundant shower makes fruitful the possessions of all.

We are all born, we shall all rise again: but in both, whether the grace of living or of reviving is unequal, the condition is diverse. For in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, the dead shall rise incorrupt, and we shall be changed. Indeed in death itself some rest, others live. Rest is good, but life is better. Finally Paul rouses the resting one to life, saying: Rise, you who sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light. Therefore he is roused here, that he may live, that he may be like Paul, that he may be able to say: For we who live shall not go before those who have fallen asleep. For he does not speak of this common use of living and the exchange of breathing, but of the merit of rising again.

For when he had said, And the dead who are in Christ shall rise first, he then added: And we who live shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet Christ in the air.

Surely Paul died, and through a venerable passion exchanged the life of the body for immortal glory: did he then deceive when he wrote that he, while living, would be caught up in the clouds to meet Christ? For this we read of Enoch, or of Elijah: but you too shall be caught up in spirit. Behold the chariot of Elijah, behold the fires, even if not seen, are being prepared, that the just man may ascend, the innocent be transferred, and your life know not death. Finally the apostles knew not death; whence it was also said: Amen, amen I say to you, many of those standing here shall not taste death, until they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom. For he lives who has nothing in him that could die, who has no shoe of Egypt, or any bond—but he puts it off before he lays down the office of this body. Not Enoch alone therefore lives, since he is not the only one caught up: Paul too is caught up to meet Christ.

The patriarchs too live; for God would not otherwise be called the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, unless the dead lived; for he is not the God of the dead, but of the living. We too shall live, if we are willing to imitate the deeds and manners of our forefathers. We marvel at the rewards of the patriarchs; let us imitate their obedience: we proclaim the grace, let us follow the obedience, not led by food, let us cut through the snares of the world. Let us seize the opportunity of the time, the prescription of the Law, the clemency of the calling, the desire of the passion. The patriarchs went out from their own land, and let us go out by resolve from the power of the body; let us go out by resolve, they by exile: but they did not consider it exile, since it was devotion that undertook it, not necessity that commanded it.

They exchanged land for land, let us exchange earth for heaven: they by dwelling, we by spirit. To them wisdom showed the heaven lit up with stars, let it illumine the eyes of our heart. Thus the type runs together with truth, and truth with the type.

Abraham, ready to receive guests, faithful to God, tireless in service, prompt in duty, saw the Trinity in a type, heaped hospitality with religion, looking up at three, adoring one; and preserving the distinction of persons, he yet named one Lord, bringing honor of gift to three, and signifying one power. For in him it was not doctrine that spoke, but grace: and he believed better, who had not learned, than we who have learned. For no one had falsified the type of the truth, and therefore he sees three, but venerates unity. He brings forth three measures of fine flour, he sacrifices one calf, believing rightly that the sacrifice is one, though the gift of three: one victim, the grace of three. For in the case of the four kings who does not understand that he subdued to himself the elements of material nature, and all worldly things, by the token of the prefigured Lord's Passion? Faithful in war, abstemious in triumph, he preferred to be enriched not by the gifts of men, but of God.

The old man believed he could beget a son, the father judged he could sacrifice a son: nor did fatherly affection tremble, when piety helped the old man's right hand; for he knew that a son sacrificed was more acceptable to God than one kept whole. So he brings his most beloved son to the sacrifice; and him whom he had late received, he quickly offered; nor was he called back by the appellation of the fatherly name, when the one called him father, the other son. Dear indeed are the pledges of names, but more lovable are the precepts of God. And so though their hearts suffered together, their vows held firm. With fatherly hand he drew the sword over his son, and struck with fatherly affection, lest the punishment fail: he trembled lest the stroke go astray, lest his right hand falter. He felt the affection of piety, but did not omit the business of devotion: and he hastened his obedience, even while hearing the oracle.

Whence let us too prefer God to all whom we love, to father, to brothers, to mother; that he may be able to preserve our beloved ones for us, as in Abraham we see a more abundant rewarder than a mere servant.

The father indeed offered his son, but God is appeased not by blood, but by piety. He showed a ram in place of the man upon the wood; that he might both restore the son to the father, and the victim not perish for the priest. And so neither was Abraham stained with parricide, nor was God defrauded of the sacrifice. The prophet saw, and did not affect boasting, nor did he hold to obstinacy: he exchanged a ram for the man. By which it is shown all the more how religiously he offered him whom he received back so gladly. And you too, if you offer your gift to God, you do not lose it. But we are avaricious. God offered his only Son to death for us, we deny our own. Abraham saw this, and recognized the mystery, that salvation would be ours on the wood: nor did it escape him that in one and the same sacrifice one thing was seen to be offered, another thing was that which could be slain.

Let us then imitate the devotion of Abraham, let us imitate the goodness of Isaac, let us imitate his chastity. A good man and modest indeed, devoted to God, chaste toward his wife: who did not return injury, who yielded to those who shut him out, who received back the same when they repented, neither stubborn in obstinacy nor hard in grace. Fleeing quarrels, when he withdrew: ready to forgive, when he received them back: lavish in goodness, when he pardoned. He was sought for fellowship in society, he added a feast of delight.

100. Let us also imitate, in Jacob, the type of Christ; let there be in us some likeness of his deeds. We shall be sharers, if we are imitators. He obeyed his mother, yielded to his brother, served his father-in-law, sought reward from gain, not from division of the flock. It is not greedy division, where the portion is one of profit.

Nor was that ladder from heaven an idle signification, signifying that through the cross of Christ there would be a future fellowship of angels and men. His thigh was made numb, that in his thigh he might recognize the heir of the generation, and the numbness of the thigh might prophesy the passion of the heir.

101. We see, then, that heaven lies open to virtue, and that this is not the portion of a few: For many shall come from the East, and from the West, and from the North and the South, and shall recline in the kingdom of God, expressing the delight of perpetual rest, the movements of souls being laid to rest. Let us follow Abraham in his ways, that he may receive us into his bosom, and, like Lazarus the heir of his humility, surrounded by his own virtues, may cherish us with a devoted embrace. For it is not in a bodily bosom, but in a certain garment of good deeds, that the approved succession of the holy patriarch, before God, cherishes us.

Be not deceived, he says, God is not mocked.

102. We note how grave a sacrilege it is not to believe in the resurrection; for if we do not rise again, then Christ died in vain, then Christ is not risen. For if he did not rise for us, surely he did not rise, he who had no reason of his own to rise. In him the world rose again, in him heaven rose again, in him earth rose again; for there shall be a new heaven and a new earth. But where was resurrection necessary for himself, whom the bonds of death did not hold? For although according to man he died, yet in the very realms below he was free.

103. Would you know how free? I am become as a man without help, free among the dead. And rightly free, who could raise himself up, according to what is written: Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. And rightly free, who had descended to redeem others.

But he was made as a man, not indeed in appearance only, but formed in truth; for he is also man, and who shall know him? For being made in the likeness of men, and found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death; so that through that very obedience of his we might see his glory, glory as of the only-begotten from the Father, according to holy John. For thus the figure of Scripture is preserved, that both the glory of the only-begotten and the nature of a perfect man are preserved in Christ.

And so he had no need of a helper: for he had no need when he made the world, that he should need one when he redeemed it. Not a legate, not a messenger, but the Lord himself saved him: He himself spoke, and they were made. The Lord himself saved him: everywhere himself, for through him are all things. Who indeed could help him, in whom all things were created, and in whom all things hold together? Who could help him, who makes all things in a moment, and at the last trumpet raises the dead? Not because he could not do it at the first, or the second, or the third moment: but the order is kept, not because difficulty is to be overcome late, but because a lawful sequence is to be unfolded. 105. It is time, I think, to speak of the nature of the trumpets, since our discourse draws near its end; that a trumpet may also be the sign for the consummation of our own speech.

We read of seven trumpets in the Apocalypse of John, which seven angels took. Where you have this: that the seventh angel sounded the trumpet, and there was a great voice from heaven saying: The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our God, and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever. A trumpet indeed is also taken for a voice, since you have: For behold, a door was opened in heaven, and the first voice which I heard was as of a trumpet speaking with me, and saying: Come up here, and I will show you what things must come to pass. We also read: Blow the trumpet at the beginning of the month; but also elsewhere: Praise him with the sound of the trumpet. 106. Therefore what the signification of the trumpets means, we ought to note with all our strength; lest, taking it as an old wives' tale, we run the risk of thinking things unworthy of spiritual doctrine, and unbefitting the eminence of the Scriptures.

For when we read that our war is not against flesh and blood, but against the spiritual forces of wickedness, which are in the heavenly places, we ought to reckon them not carnal weapons, but mighty ones for God. For it is not enough to see the trumpet, nor to hear its sound, unless you understand the character of the sound. For if the trumpet gives an uncertain sound, how shall anyone prepare himself for battle? Whence it behooves us to know the meaning of the trumpet's voice, lest we seem barbarians, when we either hear or speak trumpets of this kind. And therefore when we speak, let us pray that the Holy Spirit may interpret them for us. 107. Let us then inquire in the old Scriptures what we may read concerning the kind of trumpets, agreeing that those solemnities which were prescribed to the Jews by the Law are a shadow of the higher celebrations and of the heavenly feasts. For here is the shadow, there the truth.

Through the shadow let us strive to arrive at the truth. A figure of which is expressed elsewhere in this manner; for you have this, that the Lord spoke to Moses: Speak to the children of Israel, saying: In the seventh month, on the first of the month, there shall be for you a rest, a memorial of trumpets, it shall be called holy for you. You shall do no servile work, and you shall offer a holocaust to the Lord. But in Numbers: The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Make for yourself two trumpets of hammered work, you shall make them of silver, and they shall be for you for calling the assembly together, and for moving the camps forward: and you shall sound the trumpet with them, and all the multitude shall be gathered together at the door of the tabernacle of the testimony.

But if you shall sound with one trumpet, all the princes and leaders of Israel shall come to you, and you shall sound the trumpet the first signal, and they shall move the camps forward, and they shall be stationed toward the East. And you shall sound the trumpet the second signal, and they shall move the camps forward, and they shall be stationed toward Lebanon. And you shall sound the trumpet the third signal, and they shall move the camps forward, which shall be stationed toward the South. And you shall sound the trumpet the fourth signal, and they shall move the camps forward, which shall be stationed toward the North. They shall sound the trumpet a signal at their moving forward. And when you shall gather the assembly together, you shall sound the trumpet, and not a signal. And the sons of Aaron the priests shall sound the trumpets, and it shall be to you a perpetual statute throughout your generations.

But if you shall go out to war in your land against the adversaries who resist you, you shall sound the trumpets, and you shall be remembered before the Lord, and you shall have deliverance from your dead. And in the days of your gladness, and on your feast days, and in your new moons, you shall sound the trumpets, over your holocausts and your peace sacrifices, and it shall be to you for a memorial before the Lord, says the Lord. 108. What then, shall we reckon feast days by drinking and by feasting? But let no one judge us in eating; for we know that the Law is spiritual: Let no one therefore judge us in matters of food or drink, or in respect of a feast day, or of new moons, or of a sabbath; which are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ.

Let us therefore seek the body of Christ, which the paternal voice from heaven showed to us, as though it were the last trumpet, at that time when the Jews said that it had thundered to him: the body of Christ, which again a last trumpet will reveal to us; since the Lord himself, at the command of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God, will descend from heaven: and the dead who are in Christ shall rise again; for where the body is, there also are the eagles: where the body of Christ is, there is the truth. 108. The seventh trumpet of the week thus seems to signify rest, which is reckoned not only in days and years and periods (whence also the jubilee is a consecrated number), but also comprises the seventieth year, when the people returned to Jerusalem, who had endured seventy years in captivity.

In hundreds too, and in thousands, the observance of the sacred number is by no means passed over; for God did not say idly: I have reserved to myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee before Baal. Therefore the shadow of the future rest is figured in the days, months, years, and in the very time of the world; and hence it is commanded through Moses to the children of Israel, that in the seventh month, on the first of the month, a rest be made for each, as a memorial of trumpets: and let no servile work be done, but let a sacrifice be offered to God; because at the very end of the week, as it were the sabbath of the world, spiritual works, not carnal ones, are required of us. For what is carnal is servile; because the flesh serves the soul: but innocence makes free, and fault makes a bond-servant.

109. It was fitting, then, that spiritual things should come to pass through a mirror and in an enigma: For now we see through a glass, but then face to face. Now we war according to the flesh, then we shall see the divine mysteries in the spirit. And therefore let the character of the true law be expressed in our conduct, we who walk in the image of God; since now the shadow of the law has passed away: a shadow for carnal Jews, an image for us, the truth for those who shall rise again. For we know these three things according to the Law, shadow, image, truth: shadow in the Law, image in the Gospel, truth in the judgment. But all things are of Christ, and all things are in Christ, whom now we cannot see according to the truth: but we see him as it were in a certain image of things to come, whose shadow we beheld in the Law.

Therefore Christ is not a shadow of God, but an image: not an empty image, but the truth. And therefore the Law came through Moses; because the shadow came through man, the figure through the Law, but the truth through Jesus. For truth could not proceed from anywhere else, except from truth. 110. If anyone, then, desires to see this image of God, he ought to love God so that he may be loved by God: and let him now be not a servant, but a friend, he who has done the commandments of God; so that he may be able to enter into the cloud where God is. Let him make for himself two rational trumpets, of hammered work, of tested silver, that is, composed and adorned with the precious word; through which not a hoarse murmur, threatening with a terrible sound, shall resound, but sublime praises to God shall be poured forth with continual jubilation.

For by the sound of such trumpets the dead are raised, not indeed by any clashing of brass, but being animated by the word of truth. And perhaps these are those two trumpets, through which by the divine spirit Paul cried out, saying: I will pray with the spirit, I will pray also with the understanding: I will sing with the spirit, I will sing also with the understanding; for the one without the other by no means seems to have a perfect summons. 111. Nor yet is it given to all to sound both trumpets, nor is it given to all to gather together the whole assembly: but this prerogative is granted to the priests alone, and to the ministers of God sounding these trumpets; so that whoever has heard, may follow to where the glory of God is, and may come with prompt intention to the tabernacle of the testimony: and may be able to behold the divine works, and may merit that lawful and eternal dwelling place for the succession of his posterity.

For then is the war finished, then is the enemy put to flight, when the grace of the Spirit sounds together with the diligence of the mind. 112. There are also those saving trumpets, if you believe in your heart, and confess with your mouth: For with the heart one believes unto justice, but with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. By this twin trumpet, then, one comes to that holy land, namely the grace of resurrection; and therefore let them ever sound together for you, that you may ever hear the voice of God: let the oracles of angels and prophets ever rouse and stir you, that you may hasten toward things above. 113. This intention David turned over in his breast, when he said: For I shall pass into the place of the wonderful tabernacle, even to the house of God; with the voice of joy and confession, the sound of one feasting. For not only are enemies conquered by the sound of these trumpets: but delights, and feast days, and new moons cannot exist without them.

For no one can, unless he draws in the promises of the divine word, and believes the resounding oracles, exult in gladness, or celebrate feast days or new moons, by which, emptied of bodily grace and worldly occupation, he desires to be filled with the light of Christ. Sacrifices too cannot themselves be acceptable to God, unless the confession of the voice breathes forth, which by priestly offering is wont to arouse the peoples to entreat the grace of God.

114. Let us therefore be heralds of the Lord, and praise him with the sound of the trumpet, thinking not slight or cheap things of his power, but such things as can fill the ear of the mind, and penetrate the secret of the inmost conscience; so that we do not think things fitting for the body ought to be applied to the divinity: nor let us measure the greatness of the divine power by human strength; so as to ask how anyone rises again, or with what body he comes, or how things dissolved come together again, how things fallen are repaired; for these things, at the same moment they are decreed by the will of God, are fulfilled. Nor is a sensible hearing of trumpets to be expected, but an invisible power of heavenly magnificence works; for with God, to will is as good as to have done: nor is the effort of the resurrection to be inquired into, but the fruit of it is to be sought by us.

This will be more readily celebrated, if, emptied of vices, we attain the fullness of the spiritual mystery, and if the renewed flesh takes grace from the spirit, and the soul borrows the brightness of eternal light from Christ. 115. But these mysteries belong not only to individuals, but also to the whole. For observe, according to the type of the Law, the order of grace. When the first trumpet has sounded, it gathers those from the East, as it were the foremost and elect: when the second, those of like merit, who, thirsting according to Lebanon, have forsaken the mockeries of the nations: when the third, those who, as though tossed at sea by the strait of this world, have wavered amid the waves of this age: when the fourth, those who could by no means sufficiently soften the hardness of their minds by the precept of spiritual eloquence; and therefore they are called according to the north, for the north wind, according to Solomon, is a hard wind.

116. Thus although all are raised in a moment, yet all are raised in the order of their merits. And therefore the first to rise are those who, coming forth with a ready encounter of devotion, and with a certain pre-dawn rising of faith, received the rays of the eternal sun. Which I may rightly recall either of the patriarchs, according to the sequence of the old Testament, or of the apostles, according to the Gospel. The second, however, are those who, forsaking the rite of the nations, passed over from sacrilegious error into the discipline of the Church. And therefore the former are first, from the fathers, the latter are second, from the nations; for from those the light of faith began, in these, taken up, it has endured even to the setting of the world. The third and the fourth are raised, those who are from the south, and those who are from the north.

By these four the earth is distinguished, by these four the year is included, by these four the world is filled up, by these four the Church is gathered together. For all who, joined to the most holy Church, are reckoned by the appellation of the divine name, shall obtain the prerogative of the resurrection and the grace of eternal delight; since they shall come from the East and the West, from the North and the South, and shall recline in the kingdom of God. 117. For Christ embraces his world with no slight light; since his going forth is from the height of heaven, and his circuit even to the height thereof: nor is there anyone who can hide himself from his heat. For he shines kindly on all, and wishes not to reject the fickle but to amend him: not to exclude the hard from the Church, but desires to soften him.

And therefore in the Song of Songs the Church invites them, in the Gospel Christ invites, saying: Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart. 118. Recognize also the voice of the Church inviting; for it says: Arise, O north wind, and come, O south wind; blow through my garden, and let my perfumes flow forth. Let my brother come down into his garden, and eat the fruit of his fruit trees. For knowing that even then the works of these would be fruitful for you, you would promise fruit from such to your Christ: and you who first said you were led into the King's chamber, loving his breasts above wine, when you loved the loving one, sought the nursing one, you despised dangers for the sake of religion. 119. Then, O bride, you are asked to come from Lebanon, still wholly beautiful, still wholly blameless in the judgment of the Lord.

For thus it is written: You are all fair, my neighbor, and there is no reproach in you. Come here from Lebanon, O bride, come here from Lebanon. 120. Afterward, now fearing no more the sliding of waters, no more the rushing descents from Lebanon, you call the north wind and the south wind, desiring that your garden be blown through; that in some your perfumes may flow forth, in others you may offer to Christ the manifold fruits of your fecundity. 121. And therefore blessed is he who keeps the words of this prophecy, which has revealed to us the resurrection by more evident testimonies, saying: And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and they opened the books: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it: and hell gave up the dead who were in it.

Do not, then, doubt how they rise, since hell vomits them forth, the sea gives them back. 122. Receive also when the future grace of the just is promised: And I heard, he says, a great voice from the throne, saying: Behold the tabernacle of God with men, and he shall dwell with them; and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them as their God. And he shall wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither mourning, nor crying, nor shall there be any more pain. 123. Compare now, if you please, and weigh this life against that life, and choose, if you can, a perpetual bodily life amid the toil and wretched hardship of so many changes, the weariness of desires, the disgust with pleasures. If God should wish to make these things eternal, would you not rather choose that other life?

For if life itself, on its own account, is to be fled, so that death may be a flight from troubles, a rest from hardships; how much more is that rest to be desired, upon which the perpetual delight of the future resurrection will follow, where there is no succession of sins, no allurement of transgressions? 124. Who is so patient in pain as not to pray for death? Who is so steadfast in sickness as not to prefer to die rather than to live in weakness? Who is so brave in grief as not to wish to be freed from it, even by dying? But if we are displeased with ourselves while we live, though we know that an end has been set to our living, how much more would this life weary us, if we saw that the labors of this body would be without end for us? Who then is there who would wish to be exempt from death? Or what is more grievous than a wretched immortality?

"If in this life," he says, "we who hope in Christ have hope only, we are of all men most miserable"; not because to hope in Christ is a wretched thing, but because Christ has prepared another life for those who hope in him. For this life is subject to sin, that other is reserved for reward. 124. How much weariness do we see the very short courses of our ages bring us? The boy longs for adolescence, the adolescent measures himself against the years of a greater age, the young man, ungrateful for the benefit of flourishing age, covets the honor of old age. Thus it comes to all by nature to wish to be changed; because we are dissatisfied with what we are. In short, even our own wishes, once fulfilled, become distasteful to us, and what we desired to obtain, once we have obtained it, we disdain. 125. Whence not without reason have holy men also often grieved at the prolongation of their sojourn: David grieved, Jeremiah grieved, Elijah grieved.

If we are to believe the wise, even those in whom the divine Spirit spoke hastened toward better things: if we inquire into the judgments of the rest, so as to know that all agree in one opinion; how many have preferred death to grief, how many death to fear? Judging, evidently, that the fear of death is a heavier thing than death itself. So true is it that death is not feared for its own evils, but is preferred to the miseries of life! Since the death of the dying is sought after, and the fear of the living is shunned. 126. But suppose the resurrection be preferred to this life. What then—have the philosophers themselves discovered any kind of existence after death which will delight us more to use than to rise again? And indeed those who say that souls are immortal cannot sufficiently soothe me, since they redeem me only in part. For what grace can there be, where I have not wholly escaped? What life, if the work of God should perish in me?

What justice, if the end appointed by nature be death, common alike to the erring and the just? What truth is it, that because the soul moves itself, and is always in motion, it should be believed immortal? What we have in common with beasts is in the body; what happens before the body is uncertain; nor is truth gathered from contraries, but rather destroyed. 127. Or does the opinion of those please us, who relate that our souls, when they have departed from this body, pass into the bodies of wild beasts and various animals? But surely the philosophers themselves are wont to argue that these are mockeries devised by the Circean allurements of drugs, the sport of poets: nor do they so much mean that those who are feigned to have suffered these things actually did, as that the minds of those who invented these tales are, as if by a Circean cup, borne into various monstrous forms of beasts.

For what is so like a prodigy as to believe that men could be changed into the shape of wild beasts? How much greater a prodigy is it that the governing soul of man should take on a nature of beasts hostile to the human race, and that a being capable of reason should be able to pass into an irrational animal, than that mere bodily forms should be changed? You yourselves destroy these things, you who teach them. For you have handed down, enchanted by magical songs, the kinds of this portentous transformation. 128. The poets play with these things, the philosophers reprove them: and what they think fictitious concerning the living, they judge to be true concerning the dead.

But those who invented these tales wished not to prove their own fable, but to mock the errors of the philosophers: who think that the soul which, with a gentle and humble disposition, was accustomed to conquer anger, to take up patience, to abstain from bloodshed, could, once inflamed with the raging fury of a lion, be impatient of wrath, and in unbridled madness thirst for blood and seek slaughter: and that soul which used to temper the various clamors of peoples with a certain royal counsel, and soothe them with a rational voice, should suffer itself to howl among trackless wastes in the manner of wolves: or that soul which, groaning under an unjust burden, used to bellow with pitiable complaint at the harsh labors of the plow, should afterward, changed into the form of a man, seek slight horns upon its brow: or that soul which swift wings once bore up through the lofty tracts of air by the oarage of its pinions even to the heights of heaven, should afterward miss its own flight, and grieve to grow sluggish under the weight of a human body.

129. Hence perhaps you have also lost that Icarus of yours, because, led on by your persuasions, the youth had perhaps believed beforehand that he had been a bird. Hence too very many old men have been deceived, so as to be overcome by grievous sorrow, wrongly credulous of tales of swans, while they suppose that, soothing themselves with mournful strains, they change their whitening hair into soft plumage. 130. How incredible are these things! How monstrous! How much more fitting is it that you should believe according to nature, believe according to the use of other fruits, believe according to the examples of deeds done, the oracles of the prophets, the heavenly promise of Christ. What indeed is more excellent than to judge that the work of God does not perish, and that those made after the image and likeness of God cannot be transferred into the shapes of beasts; since, of course, it is not the image of the body, but of the spirit, that is after the likeness of God?

For how should man, to whom the other kinds of living creatures are subject, migrate in the better part of himself into an animal subject to himself? Nature does not allow this, and even if nature allowed it, grace would not allow it. 131. But I shall see what opinion you, O nations, hold of yourselves; nor indeed should it seem strange that you believe you can be changed into beasts, you who worship beasts. Yet I would rather that you judge better of your own worth; that you believe you will be not among the assemblies of wild beasts, but among the fellowships of angels.

132. The soul now has it in itself, from this winding path of life and the defilement of the earthly body, to depart, and to hasten toward those heavenly councils, if it be granted to it, as to the saints, to arrive and to speak praise to God (which we learn from the prophetic reading that those who play upon harps say: "For great and marvelous are thy works, O Lord God Almighty: just and true are thy ways, O King of the nations! Who shall not fear and magnify thy name; for thou alone art holy, for all nations shall come and worship before thee"); also to see thy marriage feast, O Jesus, in which the bride is led from earthly things to heavenly, amid the mingled joys of all; for all flesh shall come to thee, no longer subject to the world, but joined to the spirit: to see the bridal chambers adorned with fine linen, roses, lilies, and crowns. For whose else are nuptials so adorned?

For they are adorned with the bruising of confessors, the blood of martyrs, the lilies of virgins, and the crowns even of priests. 133. This above all things did holy David wish for himself, that he might behold and perceive these things. For he says: "One thing have I asked of the Lord, this will I seek; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, and behold the delight of the Lord". 134. It is pleasing to believe this, it delights to hope it: surely not to have believed is a punishment, to have hoped is a grace. But if I err in this, in that I would rather be joined to the angels after death than to beasts, gladly do I err in this, nor will I ever, while I live, suffer myself to be defrauded of this opinion.

135. For what comfort remains to me, but that I hope to come to you, my brother, the sooner, and that there will not be long separations between us after your departure; and that by your intercessions this may be granted to me, that you may the sooner summon me who long for you. For who is there who ought not to wish this for himself above all else; that this corruptible should put on incorruption, and this mortal should put on immortality? That we who now succumb to death through the frailty of the body, once placed above nature, may no longer be able to fear death?