Letter 17: To the Deaconess Casiana.

To the Deaconess Casiana. Had I thought only of the greatness of your sorrow, I would have waited a little before writing, making time my ally in the attempt to heal it. But I know the good sense of your piety — and so I venture to offer you some words of consolation, drawn partly from our human situation and partly from divine Scripture. Our nature is frail, and life is full of these calamities. The universal Governor and Ruler — the Lord who wisely orders our affairs — has in his divine words provided us with consolation of every kind, and the writings of the holy evangelists and the divine utterances of the blessed prophets are full of it. But I know it would be unnecessary for me to gather those passages and offer them to your piety, nurtured as you have been from the beginning in the inspired word, living by it, and needing no teaching from outside it. What I beg you to do is to hold in your mind those words that charge us to master our passions, and that promise us eternal life and proclaim the destruction of death and announce the resurrection of us all. And before everything else, I ask you to reflect on this: that the one who commands these things is the Lord himself — a Lord who is all-wise and all-good, who knows precisely what is best for us and guides our lives to that end. Sometimes death is better than life, and what seems painful is in reality sweeter than imagined pleasures. Accept the consolation that my poor capacity is offering you, that you may serve the Lord of all by bearing your pain with nobility, and by giving all who see you — men and women alike — an example of genuine wisdom.

Letter 17