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| How He Mourned His Dead Mother.
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Chapter XII.—How He Mourned His
Dead Mother.
29. I closed her eyes; and there flowed a
great sadness into my heart, and it was passing into tears, when
mine eyes at the same time, by the violent control of my mind,
sucked back the fountain dry, and woe was me in such a struggle!
But, as soon as she breathed her last the boy Adeodatus burst out
into wailing, but, being checked by us all, he became quiet. In
like manner also my own childish feeling, which was, through the
youthful voice of my heart, finding escape in tears, was restrained
and silenced. For we did not consider it fitting to celebrate that
funeral with tearful plaints and groanings;783
| 783 For this would be to sorrow as those that have no
hope. Chrysostom accordingly frequently rebukes the Roman custom of
hiring persons to wail for the dead (see e.g. Hom. xxxii.
in Matt.); and Augustin in Serm. 2 of his De Consol.
Mor. makes the same objection, and also reproves those
Christians who imitated the Romans in wearing black as the sign of
mourning. But still (as in his own case on the death of his mother)
he admits that there is a grief at the departure of friends that is
both natural and seemly. In a beautiful passage in his De Civ.
Dei (xix. 8), he says: “That he who will have none of this
sadness must, if possible, have no friendly intercourse.…Let him
burst with ruthless insensibility the bonds of every human
relationship;” and he continues: “Though the cure is effected
all the more easily and rapidly the better condition the soul is
in, we must not on this account suppose that there is nothing at
all to heal.” See p. 140, note 2, below. | for on such wise are they who die
unhappy, or are altogether dead, wont to be mourned. But she
neither died unhappy, nor did she altogether die. For of this were
we assured by the witness of her good conversation, her “faith
unfeigned,”784
and other
sufficient grounds.
3o. What, then, was that which did grievously pain
me within, but the newly-made wound, from having that most sweet
and dear habit of living together suddenly broken off? I was full
of joy indeed in her testimony, when, in that her last illness,
flattering my dutifulness, she called me “kind,” and recalled,
with great affection of love, that she had never heard any harsh or
reproachful sound come out of my mouth against her. But yet, O my
God, who madest us, how can the honour which I paid to her be
compared with her slavery for me? As, then, I was left destitute of
so great comfort in her, my soul was stricken, and that life torn
apart as it were, which, of hers and mine together, had been made
but one.
31. The boy then being restrained from
weeping, Evodius took up the Psalter, and began to sing—the whole
house responding—the Psalm, “I will sing of mercy and judgment:
unto Thee, O Lord.”785
| 785 Ps. ci. 1. “I suppose they continued
to the end of Psalm cii. This was the primitive fashion; Nazianzen
says that his speechless sister Gorgonia’s lips muttered the
fourth Psalm: ‘I will lie down in peace and sleep.’ As St.
Austen lay a dying, the company prayed (Possid.). That they had
prayers between the departure and burial, see Tertull. De
Anima, c. 51. They used to sing both at the departure and
burial. Nazianzen, Orat. 10, says, the dead Cæsarius was
carried from hymns to hymns. The priests were called to sing
(Chrysost. Hom. 70, ad Antioch). They sang the 116th
Psalm usually (see
Chrysost. Hom. 4, in c. 2, ad
Hebræos).”—W. W. See also note 13, p. 141, below. | But when they heard what we were
doing, many brethren and religious women came together; and whilst
they whose office it was were, according to custom, making ready
for the funeral, I, in a part of the house where I conveniently
could, together with those who thought that I ought not to be left
alone, discoursed on what was suited to the occasion; and by this
alleviation of truth mitigated the anguish known unto Thee—they
being unconscious of it, listened intently, and thought me to be
devoid of any sense of sorrow. But in Thine ears, where none of
them heard, did I blame the softness of my feelings, and restrained
the flow of my grief, which yielded a little unto me; but the
paroxysm returned again, though not so as to burst forth into
tears, nor to a change of countenance, though I knew what I
repressed in my heart. And as I was exceedingly annoyed that these
human things had such power over me,786
| 786 In addition to the remarks quoted in note 1, see
Augustin’s recognition of the naturalness and necessity of
exercising human affections, such as sorrow, in his De Civ.
Dei, xiv. 9. | which in the due order and destiny
of our natural condition must of necessity come to pass, with a new
sorrow I sorrowed for my sorrow, and was wasted by a twofold
sadness.
32. So, when the body was carried forth, we
both went and returned without tears. For neither in those prayers
which we poured forth unto Thee when the sacrifice of our
redemption787
| 787 “Here my Popish translator says, that the
sacrifice of the mass was offered for the dead. That the ancients
had communion with their burials, I confess. But for what? (1) To
testify their dying in the communion of the Church. (2) To give
thanks for their departure. (3) To Pray God to give them place in
His Paradise, (4) and a part in the first resurrection; but not as
a propitiatory sacrifice to deliver them out of purgatory, which
the mass is now only meant for.”—W. W. See also note 13, p.
141. | was offered
up unto Thee for her,—the dead body being now placed by the side
of the grave, as the custom there is, prior to its being laid
therein,—neither in their prayers did I shed tears; yet was I
most grievously sad in secret all the day, and with a troubled mind
entreated Thee, as I was able, to heal my sorrow, but Thou didst
not; fixing, I believe, in my memory by this one lesson the power
of the bonds of all habit, even upon a mind which now feeds not
upon a fallacious word. It appeared to me also a good thing to go
and bathe, I having heard that the bath [balneum] took its
name from the Greek
βαλανεῖον, because it drives trouble from the mind.
Lo, this also I confess unto Thy mercy, “Father of the
fatherless,”788
that I
bathed, and felt the same as before I had done so. For the
bitterness of my grief exuded not from my heart. Then I slept, and
on awaking found my grief not a little mitigated; and as I lay
alone upon my bed, there came into my mind those true verses of Thy Ambrose,
for Thou art—
“Deus creator omnium,
Polique rector, vestiens
Diem decora lumine,
Noctem sopora gratia;
Artus solutos ut quies
Reddat laboris usui,
Mentesque fessas allevet,
Luctusque solvat anxios.”789
| 789 Rendered
as follows in a translation of the first ten books of the
Confessions, described on the title-page as “Printed by J.
C., for John Crook, and are to be sold at the sign of the
‘Ship,’ in St. Paul’s Churchyard. 1660”:—
“O God, the world’s great Architect,
Who dost heaven’s rowling orbs direct;
Cloathing the day with beauteous light,
And with sweet slumbers silent night;
When wearied limbs new vigour gain
From rest, new labours to sustain,
When hearts oppressed do meet relief,
And anxious minds forget their grief.”
See x. sec. 52, below, where this hymn is
referred to. |
33. And then little by little did I bring back my
former thoughts of Thine handmaid, her devout conversation towards
Thee, her holy tenderness and attentiveness towards us, which was
suddenly taken away from me; and it was pleasant to me to weep in
Thy sight, for her and for me, concerning her and concerning
myself. And I set free the tears which before I repressed, that
they might flow at their will, spreading them beneath my heart; and
it rested in them, for Thy ears were nigh me,—not those of man,
who would have put a scornful interpretation on my weeping. But now
in writing I confess it unto Thee, O Lord! Read it who will, and
interpret how he will; and if he finds me to have sinned in weeping
for my mother during so small a part of an hour,—that mother who
was for a while dead to mine eyes, who had for many years wept for
me, that I might live in Thine eyes,—let him not laugh at me, but
rather, if he be a man of a noble charity, let him weep for my sins
against Thee, the Father of all the brethren of Thy Christ.
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