Letter 5

5. To Nectarius, a letter of consolation

I had not yet passed the third or fourth day since I was struck by the report of this unbearable affliction, and I was still in doubt, both because the messenger of these grievous tidings was not even able to relate to me clearly what had happened, and because, in praying that it might not be true, I was loath to accept what was being noised abroad—when I received a letter from the bishop accurately confirming the unwished-for news. At this, how greatly I groaned and how many tears I shed, what need is there to say? For who is so stony of heart, or so wholly outside human nature, as to bear such a thing without feeling, or to have his soul seized by only moderate grief?

The heir of an illustrious house, the prop of a family, the hope of a fatherland, the offspring of godly parents, reared under countless prayers, in the very flower of his age, snatched away from the midst of his father's hands, is gone. What nature of adamant would these things not be enough to dissolve and bring to fellow-feeling? So it is no great matter if the calamity has touched us too to the depths, since from the first we have been wholly attached to you, making both your joys and your sorrows our own. And yet it seemed, at least up to the present time, that your griefs were few, and that in most things your affairs were carried along with the current; but suddenly, by the malice of a demon, all that prosperity of the house and that brightness of soul has vanished, and we have become a grim tale to the world. If, then, we should wish to lament and weep over what has befallen, the whole span of life will not suffice us; and all men groaning with us will not be able to match our mourning to the affliction; but even if the streams of the rivers should become tears, they will not suffice to fulfil the dirge over what has happened.

If, however, we are willing now to bring forth the gift of God which He has laid up in our hearts—I mean the temperate reasoning which knows how, even in prosperity, to set bounds to our souls, and in more sombre circumstances to bring us to remembrance of our human lot, and to suggest to us what we have seen and heard: that life is full of such afflictions, that the examples of human calamities are many, and above all, that it is a command of God that those who have believed in Christ should not grieve over those who have fallen asleep, because of the hope of the resurrection, and that for great endurance great crowns of glory are laid up with the Judge of the contest—if we permit reason to chant these things over us, perhaps we may find some moderate release from the evil. Therefore I exhort you, as a noble contestant, to stand firm against the magnitude of the blow, and not to fall beneath the weight of grief, nor to let your soul be swallowed up, convinced of this: that even though the reasons for the things ordered by God escape us, yet what is ordered by the Wise One who loves us is certainly to be accepted, even if it is painful. For He Himself knows how He apportions to each what is profitable, and why He sets unequal limits to our lives. For there is some cause, incomprehensible to men, for which some are taken from here sooner, while others are left to toil on longer in this painful life.

Therefore in all things we ought to revere His love for mankind and not be vexed, remembering that great and celebrated utterance which the great athlete Job sent forth, when he saw at a single table ten children crushed in a brief moment of time: "The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away; as it seemed good to the Lord, so also has it come to pass." Let us make this wonder our own. Equal is the reward from the just Judge to those who display equal deeds of valour. We have not been robbed of the boy, but we have given him back to the One who lent him; nor has his life been destroyed, but it has been exchanged for the better; nor has earth hidden our beloved, but heaven has received him. Let us wait a little, and we shall be with him whom we long for. Nor is the time of separation long, since all in this life, as on a road, are pressing on toward the same lodging; in which one has already halted, another has just come, another is hastening on, but one end will receive them all. For even if he halted upon the road sooner, yet we shall all journey the same way, and the same resting-place awaits us all. Only let it be granted us, through virtue, to be made like to his purity, that by the guilelessness of our character we may attain the same rest as those who are infants in Christ.