Letter 301

301. To Maximus, a letter of consolation

How we were affected when we heard of your affliction, no words of ours could suffice to convey with any vividness. At one moment we reckon the loss that the whole company of the devout has suffered, having lost the patroness of its own order; at another we consider into what dejection the brightness of your dignity has fallen. When we behold in our mind a household that all men counted blessed brought to its knees, and a married life grown together in perfect harmony dissolved more swiftly than a dream, how should we not be bowed in soul, even were we made of adamant?

For our part, from our very first conversation a certain intimacy arose toward your venerable self, and we were so won to you by your virtue that at every hour we had your affairs upon our lips. And when we came also into familiar acquaintance with that blessed soul, we were truly persuaded that the saying of the Proverb was confirmed in your case, that a wife is fitted to her husband by God—so suited were you to each other in character, each one showing forth in himself, as in a mirror, the disposition of the other. And though a man should say much, he would not attain even to the smallest fraction of her worth.

But what must one feel in the face of a law of God that has long prevailed: that the one who has come into being should in due season depart again, and that every soul, having rendered to life what is needful, should then be released from the bonds of the body?

We are neither the first to suffer this, my admirable friend, nor the only ones; but what our parents have known by experience, and our grandparents, and all our forebears above us in the line, that too we have come to know by experience. The present life is full of such examples. But you, who so surpass the rest in virtue, ought, even in the midst of your sufferings, to keep the greatness of your soul unhumbled—not chafing at the present loss, but grateful to the Giver for the gift that was yours from the beginning. For to die is common to all who share the same nature, but to have lived with a good wife has fallen to only the few who are counted blessed in this life. Indeed, the very fact of bearing the separation with grief is no small one of God's gifts, to those who reckon it with right judgment; for we have known many who received the dissolution of an ill-matched marriage as the laying down of a burden.

Look up to the heaven and the sun, and survey the whole creation round about, and see that these things, great and many as they are, will a little while hence appear no more. And from all this draw this conclusion: that, being a part of a creation that dies, we have received what falls to us from our common nature. For marriage itself is a consolation for dying. Since it was not possible to remain forever, the Creator devised, by the succession of the race, what suffices for the continuance of life. And if we grieve because she set out before us, let us not begrudge her that she was not filled up to the full with the troubles of life, but that, by a kind of grace, like the bloom of flowers, she left us while we still longed for her. Above all, let the doctrine of the resurrection bring comfort to your soul, since you are a Christian and carry your life through in the hope of the good things to come.

Thus, then, it is fitting to think of her as having gone before along a road which we too shall have to travel; and if she has gone before us, that is no cause for lamentation. For a little later our own case may perhaps be the more pitiable, if, being stretched out to greater length, we become liable to greater punishments. Let our reason, then, shake off the weight of grief, and take up instead the care for how we ought henceforth to be well-pleasing to the Lord.