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Letter CCLXIII.
To the Eminently Religious Lady and
Holy Daughter Sapida, Augustin Sends Greeting in the
Lord.
1. The gift prepared by the just and pious
industry of your own hands, and kindly presented by you to me, I
have accepted, lest I should increase the grief of one who needs,
as I perceive, much rather to be comforted by me; especially
because you expressed yourself as esteeming it no small consolation
to you if I would wear this tunic, which you had made for that holy
servant of God your brother, since he, having departed from the
land of the dying, is raised above the need of the things which
perish in the using. I have, therefore, complied with your desire,
and whatever be the kind and degree of consolation which you may
feel this to yield, I have not refused it to your affection for
your brother.3024
| 3024 The hesitation which Augustin here indicates in
regard to accepting this gift may be understood from the following
sentences of one of his sermons:—“Let no one give me a present
of clothing, whether linen, or tunic, or any other article of
dress, except as a gift to be used in common by my brethren and
myself. I will accept nothing for myself which is not to be of
service to our community, because I do not wish to have anything
which does not equally belong to all the rest. Wherefore I request
you, my brethren, to offer me no gift of apparel which may not be
worn by the others as suitably as by me. A gift of costly raiment,
for example, may sometimes be presented to me as becoming apparel
for a bishop to wear; but it is not becoming for Augustin, who is
poor, and who is the son of poor parents. Would you have men say
that in the Church I found means to obtain richer clothing than I
could have had in my father’s house, or in the pursuit of secular
employment? That would be a shame to me! The clothing worn by me
must be such that I can give it to my brethren if they require it.
I do not wish anything which would not be suitable for a presbyter,
a deacon, or a sub-deacon, for I receive everything in common with
them. If gifts of more costly apparel be given to me, I shall sell
them, as has been my custom hitherto, in order that, if the dress
be not available for all, the money realized by the sale may be a
common benefit. I sell them accordingly, and distribute their price
among the poor. Wherefore if any wish me to wear articles of
clothing presented to me as gifts let them give such clothing as
shall not make me blush when I use it. For I assure you that a
costly dress makes me blush, because it is not in harmony with my
profession, or with such exhortations as I now give to you, and ill
becomes one whose frame is bent, and whose locks are whitened, as
you see, by age.”—Sermon 356, Bened. edition, vol. v.
col. 1389, quoted by Tillemont, xiii. p. 222. | The tunic
which you sent I have accordingly accepted, and have already begun to wear it before
writing this to you. Be therefore of good cheer; but apply
yourself, I beseech you, to far better and far greater
consolations, in order that the cloud which, through human
weakness, gathers darkness closely round your heart, may be
dissipated by the words of divine authority; and, at all times, so
live that you may live with your brother, since he has so died that
he lives still.
2. It is indeed a cause for tears that your
brother, who loved you, and who honoured you especially for your
pious life, and your profession as a consecrated virgin, is no more
before your eyes, as hitherto, going in and out in the assiduous
discharge of his ecclesiastical duties as a deacon of the church of
Carthage, and that you shall no more hear from his lips the
honourable testimony which, with kindly, pious, and becoming
affection, he was wont to render to the holiness of a sister so
dear to him. When these things are pondered, and are regretfully
desired3025
| 3025 For requiritur the Benedictine editors
suggest recurrit, as a conjectural emendation of the text.
We propose, and adopt in the translation, a simpler and perhaps
more probable alteration, and read requiruntur. | with all
the vehemence of long-cherished affection, the heart is pierced,
and, like blood from the pierced heart, tears flow apace. But let
your heart rise heavenward, and your eyes will cease to weep.3026
| 3026 Sursum sit cor et sicci erunt oculi. | The things
over the loss of which you mourn have indeed passed away, for they
were in their nature temporary, but their loss does not involve the
annihilation of that love with which Timotheus loved [his sister]
Sapida, and loves her still: it abides in its own treasury, and is
hidden with Christ in God. Does the miser lose his gold when he
stores it in a secret place? Does he not then become, so far as
lies in his power, more confidently assured that the gold is in his
possession when he keeps it in some safer hiding-place, where it is
hidden even from his eyes? Earthly covetousness believes that it
has found a safer guardianship for its loved treasures when it no
longer sees them; and shall heavenly love sorrow as if it had lost
for ever that which it has only sent before it to the garner of the
upper world? O Sapida, give yourself wholly to your high calling,
and set your affections3027
| 3027 In the Latin word sapere here employed,
there is an allusion to her name (Sapida), which he has with a view
to this repeated immediately before. | on things above, where, at the
right hand of God, Christ sitteth, who condescended for us to die,
that we, though we were dead, might live, and to secure that no man
should fear death as if it were destined to destroy him, and that
no one of those for whom the Life died should after death be
mourned for as if he had lost life. Take to yourself these and
other similar divine consolations, before which human sorrow may
blush and flee away.
3. There is nothing in the sorrow of mortals
over their dearly beloved dead which merits displeasure; but the
sorrow of believers ought not to be prolonged. If, therefore, you
have been grieved till now, let this grief suffice, and sorrow not
as do the heathen, “who have no hope.”3028
For when the Apostle Paul said
this, he did not prohibit sorrow altogether, but only such sorrow
as the heathen manifest who have no hope. For even Martha and Mary,
pious sisters, and believers, wept for their brother Lazarus, of
whom they knew that he would rise again, though they knew not that
he was at that time to be restored to life; and the Lord Himself
wept for that same Lazarus, whom He was going to bring back from
death;3029
wherein
doubtless He by His example permitted, though He did not by any
precept enjoin, the shedding of tears over the graves even of those
regarding whom we believe that they shall rise again to the true
life. Nor is it without good reason that Scripture saith in the
book of Ecclesiasticus: “Let tears fall down over the dead, and
begin to lament as if thou hadst suffered great harm thyself;”
but adds, a little further on, this counsel, “and then comfort
thyself for thy heaviness. For of heaviness cometh death, and the
heaviness of the heart breaketh strength.”3030
4. Your brother, my daughter, is alive as to
the soul, is asleep as to the body: “Shall not he who sleeps also
rise again from sleep?”3031
God, who has already received his
spirit, shall again give back to him his body, which He did not
take away to annihilate, but only took aside to restore. There is
therefore no reason for protracted sorrow, since there is a much
stronger reason for everlasting joy. For even the mortal part of
your brother, which has been buried in the earth, shall not be for
ever lost to you;—that part in which he was visibly present with
you, through which also he addressed you and conversed with you, by
which he spoke with a voice not less thoroughly known to your ear
than was his countenance when presented to your eyes, so that,
wherever the sound of his voice was heard, even though he was not
seen, he used to be at once recognised by you. These things are
indeed withdrawn so as to be no longer perceived by the senses of
the living, that the absence of the dead may make surviving friends
mourn for them. But seeing that even the bodies of the dead shall
not perish (as not even a hair of the head shall perish),3032
but shall,
after being laid aside for a time, be received again never more to
be laid aside, but fixed finally in the higher condition of
existence into which they shall have
been changed, certainly there is
more cause for thankfulness in the sure hope for an immeasurable
eternity, than for sorrow in the transient experience of a very
short span of time. This hope the heathen do not possess, because
they know not the Scriptures nor the power of God,3033
who is
able to restore what was lost, to quicken what was dead, to renew
what has been subjected to corruption, to re-unite things which
have been severed from each other, and to preserve thenceforward
for evermore what was originally corruptible and shortlived. These
things He has promised, who has, by the fulfilment of other
promises, given our faith good ground to believe that these also
shall be fulfilled. Let your faith often discourse now to you on
these things, because your hope shall not be disappointed, though
your love may be now for a season interrupted in its exercise;
ponder these things; in them find more solid and abundant
consolation. For if the fact that I now wear (because he could not)
the garment which you had woven for your brother yields some
comfort to you, how much more full and satisfactory the comfort
which you should find in considering that he for whom this was
prepared, and who then did not require an imperishable garment,
shall be clothed with incorruption and immortality!
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