Letter 269

269. A Letter of Consolation to the Wife of Arinthaeus the General

It would have been fitting, and owed to your disposition, that we ourselves should be present and share in what is taking place. For so we should both have soothed our own grief and have rendered to your dignity the due of consolation. But since my body no longer endures the longer journeys, we have come to converse by letter, that we may not seem altogether estranged from what has happened.

Who, then, did not groan over that man? And who is so stony of heart as not to shed a warm tear for him? But me he filled with an especial dejection, when I reckon both the man's own honours toward me and his common patronage of the Churches of God. Yet nevertheless we reasoned that, being a man and having performed in this life the services laid upon him, he has at the fitting times been taken back again by God, who orders our affairs. We beseech your wisdom, considering these things, to be gentle over what has happened, and, so far as may be, to bear the misfortune moderately. Time, indeed, is sufficient to soften your heart and to give passage to reflection; but nevertheless your exceeding love of your husband, and your kindness toward all, make us afraid lest you give yourself over as a prey to grief, having received, through the simplicity of your character, a deep wound of sorrow. Always, indeed, the teaching of the Scriptures is useful, but most of all in such times. Remember, then, the sentence of our Creator, by which all of us who have sprung from the earth return again to earth; and none is so great as to be found superior to dissolution.

Noble, then, and great was that admirable man, and matching the strength of his body with the virtue of his soul — I too say it — having indeed no excess in either direction; but nevertheless a man, and he has died, as Adam, as Abel, as Noah, as Abraham, as Moses, as any you might name of those who shared the same nature. Let us not, then, because we have been deprived of him, be indignant, but, because at the first we lived together with him, let us give thanks to Him who joined us. For to be bereft of a husband is common to you with other women; but for such a partnership I do not think any other of women can boast equal honour. For truly our Creator fashioned that man as a single example of human nature, so that all eyes were turned toward him, every tongue recounted his deeds; but painters and sculptors fell short of his worth, and historians, recounting his brave deeds in the wars, fall into the incredibility of fables. Hence the many could not even endure to believe report when it carried round that sorrowful tidings, nor to accept at all that Arinthaeus had died. But nevertheless he has suffered what shall befall heaven and sun and earth.

He has departed, having ended his course brilliantly, not bowed down by old age, not having let fall any of his splendour; great in the present life, and great in the life to come; in no way harmed, by his present brilliance, with respect to the glory that is hoped for, because he washed away every stain of the soul, at the very departure from this life, by the laver of regeneration. And that you yourself became to him the procurer and helper of these things gives you the greatest consolation. And transfer your soul from the present to the care of the things to come, so that you may be counted worthy, through good works, to attain a place of rest like to his. Spare your aged mother, spare your young daughter, to whom you alone are left for consolation. Become an example of courage to the rest of the women; and so measure your grief that you neither cast it out of your heart nor be swallowed up by your sorrow. In all things look toward the great reward of endurance, promised by our Lord Jesus Christ in the recompense for the lives we have lived.