Letter 8004: Among the apostolic ranks and the holy prophets,
Among the apostolic ranks and the holy prophets,
nearest to the martyrs, the virgin holds her reward.
Resplendent, she goes forward surrounded by starry light,
joining the choir where the angels sing.
You have chosen the better part, as the Gospel says —
better than the world and its distractions,
better than the anxieties of household and husband,
better than the long uncertainty of ordinary life.
I do not say this as a man who finds ordinary life unattractive.
I find it very attractive, actually.
But I recognize that there is another kind of life —
the kind you have chosen — that is beautiful in a different way:
quiet, directed, stripped of excess, full of a particular peace
that the world cannot give and cannot take away.
When I visit the monastery at Poitiers I feel it:
the quality of the silence in the chapel,
the way the hours of prayer give the day its shape,
the faces of women who have found their vocation.
I am not worthy to say much about this.
But I can say, from the outside, that it looks like a good life.
And I can pray that God will keep you in it.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
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Æmona was a Roman colony not far from Stridon, Jerome's birthplace. The virgins to whom the note is addressed had omitted to answer his letters, and he now writes to upbraid them for their remissness. The date of the letter is 374 A.D.
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