Letter 42: Could this have been hoped or expected by us, that now by our brother Severus we should have to claim the answer which your love has not yet written to us, so long and so impatiently desiring your reply? Why have we been doomed through two summers (and these in the parched land of Africa) to bear this thirst? What more can I say?

Augustine to Paulinus and Therasia, greetings. My heart overflows writing to you — and I say this knowing that the words themselves can never carry the full weight of what I feel. We have never met face to face, and yet I love you. How is that possible? Because the bond between us is not built on shared meals or shared walks or the ordinary currency of human friendship. It is built on something deeper: a shared love of the one who loved us first. I have heard of you — your renunciation of wealth, your embrace of the ascetic life, your devotion to the poor, your love of Christ so fierce that it consumed everything else. And hearing this, my heart recognized a kinsman. We are members of the same body, and the Spirit who dwells in you is the same Spirit who stirs in me. Do not think me forward for writing so boldly to a man I have never seen. The communion of saints is not a metaphor. It is the deepest reality there is. You and I are closer, in Christ, than two strangers who live next door and share nothing but a wall. Write to me. I beg you — write to me. Your words will be like water in a dry land. And if the Lord should ever grant that we meet in the flesh, the joy of that day will be doubled because we first met in the Spirit. My brother Alypius sends his warmest greetings. We speak of you often — always with admiration, always with love. Farewell in Christ, dear brother and sister. [Context: Paulinus of Nola was a wealthy Gallic-Roman aristocrat who, along with his wife Therasia, renounced his vast fortune and retired to a life of asceticism at Nola in southern Italy, where he served the shrine of St. Felix. His dramatic conversion electrified the Christian world. Augustine, who had never met him, wrote this letter initiating one of the great friendships of late antiquity — a friendship conducted almost entirely by correspondence across the Mediterranean.]

Letter 42 (A.D. 397) To Paulinus and Therasia, My Brother and Sister in Christ, Worthy of Respect and Praise, Most Eminent for Piety, Augustine Sends Greeting in the Lord. Could this have been hoped or expected by us, that now by our brother Severus we should have to claim the answer which your love has not yet written to us, so long and so impatiently desiring your reply? Why have we been doomed through two summers (and these in the parched land of Africa) to bear this thirst? What more can I say? O generous man, who art daily giving away what is your own, be just, and pay what is a debt to us. Perhaps the reason of your long delay is your desire to finish and transmit to me that book against heathen worship, in writing which I had heard that you were engaged, and for which I had expressed a very earnest desire. O that you might by so rich a feast satisfy the hunger which has been sharpened by fasting (so far as your pen was concerned) for more than a year! But if this be not yet prepared, our complaints will not cease unless meanwhile you prevent us from being famished before that is finished. Salute our brethren, especially Romanus and Agilis. From this place all who are with me salute you, and they would be less provoked by your delay in writing if they loved you less than they do. About this page Source. Translated by J.G. Cunningham. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 1. Edited by Philip Schaff. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. <https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1102042.htm>. Contact information. The editor of New Advent is Kevin Knight. My email address is feedback732 at newadvent.org. (To help fight spam, this address might change occasionally.) Regrettably, I can't reply to every letter, but I greatly appreciate your feedback — especially notifications about typographical errors and inappropriate ads.