Letter 7

Ambrosius—by whose supplying of paper, expenses, and copyists Adamantius, truly our own "Man of Brazen Bowels," set forth so countless a number of books—relates in a certain letter, which he had written to that same man from Athens, that he never took a meal in Origen's presence without a reading, that sleep never came upon him unless one of the brethren was sounding out the sacred Scriptures, and that this was his practice by day and by night, so that the reading took up the prayer and the prayer the reading.

And what have we, creatures of the belly, ever done of the kind? If anyone finds us reading at the second hour, we yawn; we rub our faces with our hands and hold back a yawn, and as though after much labor we busy ourselves once again with worldly affairs. I pass over the dinners with which the overloaded mind is weighed down. I am ashamed to speak of the round of calls, in which either we ourselves go each day to others or wait for the rest who come to us. Then it comes to talk; conversation is worn threadbare; the absent are torn to pieces; the lives of others are described; and biting one another, we are devoured by one another. Such is the food that both occupies us and dismisses us. But when our friends have departed, we cast up our accounts. Now anger puts upon us the mask of a lion; now needless care plans ahead for many years to come, and we do not remember the Gospel saying: "You fool, this night they require your soul of you; and the things you have prepared, whose shall they be?" Clothes are sought out not merely for use but for indulgence. Wherever there is a profit to be had, the foot is quicker, the speech swifter, the ear more attentive; if a loss is reported—and this often happens in household affairs—the face is cast down with grief. We rejoice over a penny, we are saddened over a halfpenny. And so, since in one and the same man there is so varied a face of moods, the prophet entreats the Lord, saying: "Lord, in your city you shall bring their image to nothing." For though we were created in the image and likeness of God, by our own fault we put upon ourselves besides a multitude of masks; and just as on the theater's stage one and the same actor now displays a brawny Hercules, now in soft guise breaks into Venus, now quivers as Cybele, so we too—who, were we not of the world, would be hated by the world—have as many likenesses of masks as we have sins.

Therefore, since we have already passed a great span of life in tossing to and fro, and our ship has now been battered by the whirlwind of storms, now holed by collision with the rocks, let us, as soon as we may, enter the seclusion of the countryside as into some harbor. There let common bread, and herbs watered by our own hands, and milk, the dainties of country life, provide us with food that is cheap, indeed, but innocent. Living thus, sleep will not call us away from prayer, nor a full stomach from reading. If it is summer, the shade of a tree will offer seclusion; if autumn, the very mildness of the air and the leaves strewn underfoot point out a place of rest. In spring the field is painted with flowers, and among the plaintive birds the psalms will be sung the more sweetly. If there is cold and the snows of winter, I will not buy wood: I will keep vigil, or sleep, the warmer for it, and at least, so far as I know, I will not shiver at less cost. Let Rome keep her tumults to herself, let the arena rage, the circus run mad, the theaters riot in luxury, and—since something must be said of our own people—let the senate of matrons be visited daily: for us it is good to cleave to God, to put our hope in the Lord, so that, when the kingdom of heaven shall have exchanged this poverty for itself, we may burst into the cry: "For what is there for me in heaven, and what have I desired from you upon earth?" To this end, namely, that when we have found such great things in heaven, we may grieve to have sought small and perishable things on earth.