De Visitatione Infirmorum [Incertus]

On the Visitation of the Sick, Book One, by an Uncertain Author. Chapter One. When weeping is effeminate, when human. The grace of a visit to my dearest nephew as he lay dying, to bid him a final farewell, I set out yesterday. But touched inwardly by pain of heart, not without some slight moistening of the eyes, I could scarcely release a word from my sobbing mouth, so that I could neither say enough worthy of myself nor worthy of him. For if (as is the case with everyone) the mind, affected by no small grief, were to attempt words, the very attempt at words would be an increase of tears. I was sparing with words, therefore, in order to spare tears. For to shed tears of consolation is effeminate; but to shed none (when we are bidden to rejoice with the rejoicing and weep with the weeping) is both disobedience and inhumanity. And Jesus wept. Therefore I shall weep, my sweetest nephew, lest I be disobedient and inhuman, or not an imitator of my Jesus; I shall also refrain from tears, lest I appear too effeminate.

Chapter Two. Penitence prepares for eternal life. Christ leads; God, here received, receives the one who comes. You too, most beloved nephew, hasten to enter the way of all flesh, where you are to see your parents, the holy Patriarchs, and indeed the highest blessedness of all. Therefore, for so great a journey, lest you fail on the way, a great provision, a viaticum, is necessary for you. You are to be placed as a living stone in the wall of the heavenly city, in whose building no noise or hammer is heard. Here the noise must be borne, here the hammer must be applied to the stone, here all the excess of the stone to be squared must be ground away. Let the noise be the recollection of your sins, over which your most humble confession resounds in the ear of the priest, according to that saying: "Confess your sins to one another" (James 5:16). Let the hammer be the penitence of the heart more than the striking of the breast; and let both, while you still have some strength in this life, be so moderated that they are not necessary in the placing of the building of God. For whither are you going? To life. By which way? Hear the Lord saying: "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6). You cannot err: Christ is the way; you cannot be deceived: Christ is the truth; you cannot fail to live: Christ is the life. Through Christ the way you will go, to Christ the true life. Christ is the way, you are the traveler: carry Christ as your viaticum; he will lead you to himself, the way, the truth, and the life. But where will you find this way? Where will you find the viaticum?

Christ is God; but God is everywhere. If God is everywhere, He is in you, behind you, before you, and around you; all things are full of God. Do not think God far away; wherever you seek Him, you will find Him. If you ascend into heaven, He is there; if you descend into hell, He is present. If you take your wings at dawn to dwell at the ends of the sea, even there His hand will lead you three times, and His right hand will hold you (Psalm 138:8, etc.). Therefore you have God as a guest everywhere. Make the hospitality you receive worthy of such a guest; and then you will safely say to your guest that in going He may lead you, and in leading He may conduct you, and in conducting He may bring you through, and in bringing through He may lodge you. I tell you, if you show Him a pleasing hospitality, He will show you His own hospitality more pleasing and more gladly. How blessed you will be if you are a guest of God, if you take up a dwelling in His city, namely the heavenly Jerusalem; if on some day God, giving thanks to you, says, "I was a guest, and you gathered me in, and as long as you did for one of these least of mine, you did for me" (Matthew 25:35-40): "Come, blessed one of my Father, receive the kingdom!" I had indeed erred, for I had promised the hospitality of God in return for your hospitality: I had called a citizen already enrolled, indeed already co-ruling, a guest. God does not promise you hospitality; He promises a kingdom: you will reign with Christ, you will be an heir of God, a co-heir of Christ (Romans 8:17).

CHAPTER III. Preparation for this: to turn away from evil and to do good. The sum of all good is charity. It is a gift of God. Love of God and of neighbor are two wings toward God. But to attain such great happiness, manifold preparation is necessary for you, dearest one. Concerning confession and penance, it has been briefly noted above. To confess and to do penance is to turn away from evil. To turn away from evil is, in a certain sense, good. But you have heard, "Turn away from evil, and do good" (Psalm 36:27). Turning away from evil is good; but a swift and effective cheerfulness is necessary for doing good. For God loves a cheerful giver (2 Corinthians 9:7). And what is it to do good? The rule for doing good is in public. The Teacher of teachers, speaking of good deeds done to him, said, "I was a stranger, naked and in prison, thirsty and hungry; and you ministered to me. And you did these things for me as long as you did them from your very least possessions" (Matthew 25, etc.). It is a great good, which, when done to the poor, redounds to God. But giving to the poor is not the whole of the exhibition of good. The Apostle says, "If I distribute all my possessions for food for the poor, but do not have charity, it profits me nothing" (1 Corinthians 13:5). Therefore, the sum of all good is charity. The distribution of your possessions to the poor, unless it proceeds from the root of charity, does not redound to God. God is charity (1 John 4:8).

What proceeds from God returns to God; what does not return to God does not proceed from charity; therefore, procession from God and return to God are gifts of God. So distribute your goods to the poor in such a way that the distribution returns to God. But what will you distribute? Perhaps you lack what to distribute. Hear Tobias: "Son, if you have much, give abundantly; but if you have little, strive to share even that little" (Tob. 4:9). If you give someone a cup of water, at least cold water, you will not lose your reward (Matt. 10:42). Perhaps even water is lacking: but you have something to distribute. You have yourself: give yourself to God, and you will have God Himself. How will you give yourself to God? Set your house in order, because you will die, and you will not live. Perhaps you have no house: set yourself in order, if you do not set your house in order (Isa. 38:1). What will that ordering be? Love God, and God will love you. Take up the wings with which you will fly to God. The wings with which you will fly are the love of God and of neighbor. Love of God and of neighbor is the fitting ordering of yourself. You will love your neighbor as yourself. Love of neighbor does no evil (Rom. 13:9-10). What shall I say about the love of God? You will love your Lord God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with all your strength (Deut. 6:5). Let your eye love God, your mouth, your hand, your foot, every sense of yours, whatever you are, whatever love is in you, let you love God entirely.

These are the two wings by which you will fly to the heavens, be carried across to the saints, and be inserted among the Angels. If the hand is idle from work, the foot from walking, yet the holy soul or the mind fearing God can never be idle from love. CHAPTER I, 5. That correction, as a gift of God, is to be loved. But you say, "I love God." Good; would that what you have promised in word were in you. The proof of the love of God is the fulfillment of his commandments; the voluntary fulfillment of his works is to love what God loves, to embrace with ardent desire what God does. Therefore, if you love God, you love what God does; and if you love what God does, you love the discipline of God that scourges you. Do you endure the scourge of God? Do you suffer from a cough? Are you weak in the lungs? Does your stomach reject food? Are you consumed by consumption? Do you loathe wine? Are you afflicted with dysentery? Are you troubled by many kinds of diseases? But these too, if you have an eye, if you are prudent, are gifts of God. Do not cast aside the discipline of the father, son. No son is one whom the father does not correct. But do not fail from the discipline of the Lord, and do not struggle while you are being rebuked by him (Heb. 12:5). For whom the Lord loves, he corrects, and as a father he is pleased with himself in the son (Prov. 3:12). Do you wish to know that bodily infirmity gives birth to the health of the soul? Hear the Lord answering the Apostle, "Strength is perfected in infirmity" (2 Cor. 12:9): as if he were saying, Embrace the infirmity you suffer, for thus you will advance from strength to strength.

If in sickness virtue is increased, and virtue is the health of the soul, then bodily infirmity, since through the virtue of the soul it produces health, is a gift of God; for the health of the soul comes from nowhere else but from God. Therefore, do not despise the scourge of God: but when scourged, say thanks to God. Love the one who reproves, love the one who corrects, love the one who rebukes, not in fury, not in anger, but in mercy. Open to the one who knocks, be devoted to the one who calls, give thanks to the one who shows mercy. Return to yourself, reflect a little, think about God, consider if you can, since above all his works are his mercies (Ps. 144:9). He himself is God, he himself is judge; nor does he wish you to be condemned, he would not wish you to be judged wrongly, he wishes to have mercy on you, he scourges in you mercifully what you have persistently committed against him. Chapter V. The mercy of God as if unjust. My God, my God, I will dare to say, with your peace I will say, since filled with great joy I will say, in a certain ecstatic exultation presuming about you I will say: Except that you are God, you would be unjust, because we have sinned grievously, we persist in sin stubbornly, we rejoice in sin, after sin we walk about, with outstretched neck we proclaim our sin, nor do we hide it: and you are appeased. We provoke you to anger, but you lead us to mercy: we irritate you to fury, but you defer vengeance. With just destruction you could have punished the sinners, overthrown the negligent: and your patience waits for us to be corrected as penitents.

My God, my mercy, is this not injustice? But is there injustice before God (Rom. 9:14)? Far be it! For what the just judge God patiently endures, what just severity mercifully bends, all is God. For you would not otherwise be God, unless you were bent, unless you suffered, unless you had mercy: nor would you otherwise be bent, suffer, have mercy, unless you were God. Therefore, whatever you do, is yours. So do, God, what you do: because what you do is yours. What is yours is good: therefore what you do is good, my God, my mercy. CHAPTER VI. To receive sickness and the scourges of God joyfully. Death to be preferred to the present life. Therefore you, illustrious one, about to depart shortly from the world, do not spurn such great and so ineffable kindness of your Lord God; receive his scourge joyfully. He scourges in you what you do not know, and not unjustly; for his judgments are just: this bodily sickness is a spiritual medicine. Moreover, consider that your sickness, as the physicians say, is incurable; and reflect with yourself that if you presume to murmur against God, you will endure the sickness whether you will or not, nor will you be healed by murmuring: rather, you will weaken your soul, while you murmur against your God, your father, your physician, your most gentle and tranquil master, in that most sinful scourge, who is never angry, and when he is angry remembers mercy.

Trust my advice, therefore, and since you would endure two evils by murmuring, be peaceful, and make the bodily burden a spiritual remedy for yourself. For if you wish to recognize God in the scourge, you will be scourged in body and soul: God does not scourge twice for the same thing. With how joyful a breast, with how happy a heart ought you to prefer the divine visitation! Certainly, if you were entirely strong in body, you ought to have sought medicinal infirmity from God with all your vows, and to fear that health of body might be infirmity of soul. I know nothing else, but because you are infirm, you ought to rejoice usefully: because the divine call is near, you ought to be present to it with all your efforts, gladly. Come, if God had granted you a bishopric or some other honor, as desirable as health to the sick, would you not receive that gift of God with all joy? Certainly with greater exultation, with more affectionate will, and even with thanksgiving, you ought to consider this divine chastisement as unique to you, because this too is a most useful gift of God. Moreover, if you were to think about the shipwreck of this life and the profitable exchange of a speedy death, how inexpressibly you would loathe living, how eagerly you would desire to die in the Lord! For blessed are the dead who die in the Lord (Apoc. 14:43).

For let us briefly make a comparison, if you please, concerning the present life, which is the beginning of sorrows, and, as if through a friendly dispute, let us discuss what is rather to be sought: to live badly, or to die well. For no one can live well in the present: "Every man is a liar" (Psalm 115:11). And the Apostle, a man above other men, seeing another law in his members repugnant to the law of the mind (Romans 7:23), desires to be dissolved and to be with Christ (Philippians 1:23). And we know that every creature groans and is in travail (Romans 8:22), until it is freed from the servitude of corruption through him who subjected it in hope. Finally, who can count the troubles of the present life: hunger, thirst, cold, heat, weariness? They are innumerable; from custom itself they are familiar to us. Yet these are the beginning of sorrows. But to turn more deeply to what is within us: to desire, to love, to hate, to fornicate, to commit adultery, to kill or be killed, to seize, to steal—are these not hostile passions to us? Yet who is immune, who is free from all these? And who, subject to so many and such great passions, will be free from sin? And who, living under sin, lives well? Therefore every man lives badly, because sin is evil. Finally, I declare boldly that the beginning of a man's life is the beginning of sorrows.

There were philosophers not ignorant of this, who wept at the birth of children but rejoiced at death, signifying thereby that man is born for labor, but dies for rest. Holy David also was so grieved both at the birth and the life of the son he had received from Bathsheba that, while the boy still lived, he remained fasting and in mourning; but when the little boy died, he both rejoiced and took food (2 Sam. 12:16, etc.). O desirable death! O death, end of all present evils! O death, close of toil, beginning of rest! Who can conceive your benefits and beatitudes? For to die badly is not for Christians; but to die well is to live with Christ. And who can sufficiently set forth its benefits, which join man to Christ, which, as has been said, is the end of evils, the nurse and beginning of secure happiness? Farewell, my most beloved death; I confess that if I could, I would gladly embrace you, gladly taste you, willingly undergo you; and I testify that all my thought, and the frequent reading of the present letter, incites me to love of you, only that you may not come untimely. But you, my flesh and my bone, whom my letter visits, and whom, about to die, you receive as the last, take consolation from this same letter and from the other copies which are in you, lest, placed at the end, you come as one desolate to the court of your God.

CHAPTER VII. Prayer of the Dying. When all these things have been completed, prayer is necessary for you. Therefore, address God, and unless you act otherwise, being secure concerning Him, speak thus: My God, my God, my mercy, my refuge, I desire you, I hasten to come to you; do not despise me placed in this dreadful crisis, be propitious to me in these my great necessities: I cannot redeem myself by my own works, but do you redeem me and have mercy on me. I distrust my merits, but I trust in your mercies; and I trust more in your mercies than I distrust my evil deeds. You are my hope, my God: I have sinned against you alone by my own fault. He who was dear to you for redeeming, let him not be worthless for perishing. And now I come to you, who fail no one: I desire to be dissolved and to be with you. Into your hands I commend my spirit, O Lord. Look upon me, O Lord God of truth; and grant me, my God, that I may sleep and rest in peace. You who live and reign in the perfect Trinity, O God, through all the ages of ages. Amen.

BOOK TWO. CHAPTER I. Occasion of This Argument. I had thought I had concluded the course of the previous treatise, when some of the brethren, receiving it, clung to it more attentively, praised it accurately, and, as they testified, reread it gratefully for their own benefit, and judged it necessary for the common consolation of those departing from this world. But I, considering it my fraternal joy, embraced it in such a way that my little work would find pleasure in their delight, and that what I had dictated unpremeditatedly, I would complete in solitary scrutiny. Now, what had been written was simple, but, as I think, catholic in expression. Hence, I spared the simplicity of the words because of the benevolence of the brethren, who had already praised it thus. They themselves, although the volume was small, called it the *Visitation of the Sick*; I, however, allowed the earlier parts to remain as they were. But since I had aimed at epistolary brevity, I had omitted certain things that would have been necessary for the same visitation of the sick. Therefore, what I had omitted for the sake of conciseness, as well as what was later requested of me on the same matter, I have committed to the following pen. They were also in order preceding, but a not useless speed toward other matters reversed them.

CHAPTER II. The Faith Necessary for One Departing This Life. It Must Be Chiefly Concerned with Christ. Christ Raised Man Above the Angels. This, dearest one, is for you, who are about to depart from us (for your last day compels you): be faithful; for without faith you cannot please God; nor is an unbeliever acceptable to God. Therefore, there are many things to be believed concerning God that are necessary for the health of the soul. Thus, in divine sacraments, faith is to be employed more than argumentation by words. For we cannot comprehend, one by one, the things to be believed about God through rational arguments, but we can and ought to believe them. For we do not speak of God without in some measure departing from our own minds; where there is, therefore, an ecstasy of the mind, there is a fitting succession of faith. Therefore, that wonderful mystery of the unity of the Trinity, of the deifying Trinity of unity, is more to be believed than expounded. Indeed, let it be believed on the testimony of sacred Scripture. There are also other things concerning God the Son which are, as it were, near and contiguous to us, and from that very nearness and contiguity familiar to us, and from that familiarity delightful to us. For it is delightful and salutary for a dying man to speak and be filled with the humanity of Christ. For that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14) is of man; that man was made God is of man: therefore both of these, this ineffable mystery, is of man.

Since, therefore, the weak intellect of man, weighed down and dulled by its own humanity, now seeing through a mirror in an enigma (1 Cor. 13:12), cannot comprehend the divinity of God as is fitting, let him turn his intellectual eye back to that which is his own, the humanity of Christ. In that let him delight, from that also let him be satiated, let him turn his face to that very wall, as it is said of Hezekiah: "Hezekiah turned his face with tears to the wall" (4 Kings 20:2). The wall is the humanity of Christ. Hence Solomon says: "Behold, he stands behind our wall" (Song 2:9): that is, his divinity, never turned or to be turned to any sin, lay hidden under our flesh. For he was seen on earth, and he conversed with men (Baruch 3:38). Indeed, to this wall Hezekiah, at the point of death which the prophet had foretold to him by the Spirit, turned his face; and thus he recovered. With this expectation of recovery, the secure Jacob thus rejoices: "I saw the Lord, face to face with divinity, in which was God, to the face of humanity, which he was about to assume; and thus my soul was saved" (Gen. 32:30). All the saints burned with desire for this incarnation; for it was manifest to them that the human race could not be saved otherwise than through the incarnate Son of God. For there is no salvation in any other; nor is there any other name given under heaven to men in which a man ought to be saved (Acts 4:12).

Turn, therefore, your face more intimately toward this wall of ours, our mediator, and approach what is yours more securely. He knows how to suffer with your infirmities, who was made a partner in your weakness by sharing in it. He raised the prerogative of our flesh higher into the heavens, because a man of flesh was exalted above the heavens. He participated in our humanity, so that we might participate in his divinity. Dare, therefore, my son, to make a certain participation from your God who is man; because God first made a participation for himself from your pure man. Salvation proceeded from divinity, redemption from humanity; yet both from each. But because what is mine is mine, and because from me I bind to myself by a certain thought and kinship, and by a secret affection, I claim for myself by a certain right of consanguinity: I speak more safely and more joyfully to my Jesus than to any of the holy spirits. Christ owes more to me than to any of the celestial spirits. What you are, God deigned to become; the Angel, even if he be the Angel of great counsel, did not become what he is. He exalted you above the Angels; for you will judge the Angels. I would not wish to have the place of an angel, if I could have the place due to a man.

He has gone before to the court of his God, your God, your God, your man, your tunic, a tunic of many colors, which he has most fittingly put on for himself: there he continually intercedes for us, no longer diminished by the angels, but rather crowned with glory and honor, set over the works of the hands of God (Psalm 8:6). Therefore, whom you have as intercessor, you have as mediator; set him for yourself as a propitious helper. And if God is for you, who is against you (Romans 8:31)? Therefore, the incarnation, passion, resurrection, and ascension above the heavens of God must be firmly and faithfully believed, as well as your own future reformation. These things, my son, let your faith hold, let your heart examine and retain: let nothing sweeter be tasted, let your mouth boldly confess and sing in harmony. For it is with the heart that one believes for righteousness, but with the mouth that confession is made for salvation (Ibid., 10:10). CHAPTER III. On certain external signs to be applied to the sick. On the cross. And although these things may suffice for salvation, yet there are certain external signs that sometimes stir even a sluggish faith, and as it were, fix a certain compunction in its inmost parts: which the religion of Christianity wishes to be observed, and the devotion of friends coming to the sick rejoices to fulfill. Do not neglect these, my son; they will indeed be salutary for you yourself, and consoling for me and your dear ones.

For the secrets of that Lordly cross have something like a venerable monument, which they call a cross from the very image of the cross itself: this we also declare most worthy of all veneration, and we venerate it for the remembrance of our Crucified One. For upon the cross is added an image of a man suffering there, through which the salutary passion of Jesus Christ is renewed for us: embrace this humbly, venerate it supplicatingly, yet bring this to your memory: "Neither God nor man is present, this figure I see: But God and man is present, whom the sacred figure signifies, True man and true God, yet each one both. He endures the insults of the cross, undergoes death, and is buried: The same one lives, triumphs over the enemy through these signs of the cross." The letter of this cross renders this known to us, namely the cross and the crucified are known signs of it. I also venerate these, and always adore Jesus. But you, good Jesus, who hanging for me have suffered thus, deign to have mercy on me, and grant that you who died for me, and died for this purpose, that dying to the world I may live for you, good Jesus.

CHAPTER IV. On the Sacraments to Be Received by the Sick. That It Is Not Sufficient to Confess Only to God. Nor should the precept of the apostle James be omitted: "If anyone among you is sick, let him bring in the presbyters of the Church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with holy oil in the name of the Lord Jesus, and the prayer of faith will save the sick man" (James 5:14-15). Therefore, you should ask that this be done for you and on your behalf, just as the apostle James said—indeed, as the Lord said through his apostle. That anointing with consecrated oil is understood as a typical anointing of the Holy Spirit. Also, my son, do not refuse to receive that life-giving supplement of the Lord's body; rather, seek it most eagerly and consume it faithfully. For that incomparable, ineffable food will be for you a most salutary viaticum: the price of your redemption, the memorial of the Redeemer, and the protection of the redeemed. In the previous treatise, I briefly reminded you about confession, as urgent necessity drove me to proceed to other matters. Now, I also intend to make a compendious recapitulation on the same chapter of confession.

There are some who think it sufficient for their salvation if they confess their crimes to God alone, to whom nothing is hidden, from whom no one's conscience lies concealed. For they are unwilling, or they blush, or they disdain to show themselves to priests; whom, nevertheless, the Lord established through the lawgiver to discern between leprosy and leprosy (Deut. 17:8-9). But I do not wish you to be deceived by this opinion, so that you are confounded to confess before the Lord's vicar, wasting away from shame, or stiff-necked from disdain: for the judgment of him whom the Lord does not disdain to have as his vicar must be humbly undergone. Therefore, ask the priest to come to you, and make him a participant in your most hidden consciences. Let not that superstition of dreamers seduce you, which in visiting confirms that the confession of sinners to God saves without consulting a priest. Now, we do not deny that the confession of sins is frequently to be referred to God. For blessed is he who will hold and dash his little ones or his greatest ones against the rock (Ps. 136:9). But the rock is Christ (1 Cor. 10:4). But we testify, and that sound doctrine testifies, lest you favor the ears of those applauding you, that you first need a priest, who is a mediator to your God, with saving judgment: otherwise, under both the Law and Grace, how would the divine response, "Go and show yourselves to the priests" (Luke 17:; Lev. 14:2), be fulfilled? How would "Confess your sins to one another" (James 5:16) be completed?

Therefore, let the lord priest be brought in as the arbiter of your wounds, in the place of God, and reveal your ways to him; and he will present you with the antidote of reconciliation. Chapter V. A certain deceptive practice of confession. What it ought to be. Let repentance and hatred of sin accompany confession. For you should not, as some do, address the priest with a certain cunning; for such an address would be a deception of yourself. For deceitful persons approach priests, confessing in their presence in this way: "I am a sinner, lord priest, I have sinned by perjuring, adulterating, fornicating, killing a man, lying, committing sacrilege, stealing, plundering. I have committed all these things, through my fault, either by deed or by will." Thus these persons, mocking God—though He is not mocked—confess things they have not done, intermingling them, veiling what is revealed; so that it is the same person who has both laid bare a sin and overshadowed it when laid bare, from which the priest then departs more uncertain, having heard certain things uncertainly. How well and justly that priest would provide for such deceits, if he were to apply his judgment to all these things he heard, and, as if the accused were guilty of all, penalize him with appropriate correction—the one who, by accusing himself of everything, omitting nothing, revealing nothing by name, has assailed himself by defaming himself!

He also distributed good things in a disordered manner, and there was no place for them then, and there would have been a more fitting place where he ought to have revealed a general sickness to the physician, if he had first laid open the wounds, bruises, and swelling sores one by one, as they pressed more grievously upon his vitals. But you, my son, will not act thus, since you are to trust in a sounder counsel. Consider the priest standing before you as an angel of God. For the lips of the priest, says Malachi, guard knowledge, and they seek the law from his mouth. For he is the angel of the Lord of hosts (Malachi 2:7). And as befits both God and his angel, address the minister of God with reverence. Open to him the most hidden recesses of your inner chambers, reveal the more secret fastenings of your shameful consciences. Do not be ashamed to say before one what you were perhaps not ashamed to do before many and with many. For it is human to sin, Christian to desist from sin, diabolical to persevere. Therefore, reveal to the angel of God those deeds that more grievously exasperate your mind: saying nothing obscure, wrapping the fault in no ambiguities, covering what is true with no circumlocutions.

Also to be pointed out are the things in which you sinned, the places, if you recall, and the times; the persons with whom you sinned, not their names, but also that they be secretly corrected so that they may desist from sin; the familiarity in which you sinned; the age of liability; the rank in the Church you were already serving; whether you fell once or from habit; whether from necessity or from will: for all these have their own judgments. For if in secular judgments places are distinguished from places—one penalty is exacted for homicide in the king’s court, another on a public road, another in a country village; sometimes pardon is granted for time to infancy, sometimes deference is shown to old age, while the middle age, which boils over, is restrained by a severe rein; crimes perpetrated on the solemn birthdays of princes are punished with harsh destruction—so also the rest are to be purged by how much stricter penalties, in places consecrated to God, in festal times dedicated to God, in a more discerning age, in persons specially delegated to God, in higher ranks committed. Is not more demanded from him to whom more is entrusted? Is it not a lesser thing to have killed a man than to have killed men? Is it not lighter to have sinned once than a hundred times? Does not one who fell from necessity obtain pardon more quickly than one who fell from will?

And although wherever sin is committed, sin is always sin, and no time, no age, no person, no place protects the sinner from sin; nevertheless, all these things are to be examined in their own way, since all these things are to be reproved and corrected in their own way. But all these things, if they are kept silent, or if they are cunningly concealed when spoken, they strangle the soul; if they are laid bare, they vanish with penance. Pursue them in due order to reduce them to nothing, set forth the sins without circumlocution to the best of your ability, and indeed strive manfully to root them out. Alas! Why are you ashamed to confess what you were by no means ashamed to do? It is better to endure a little shame before one person than to waste away on the day of judgment, marked by grievous disgrace before so many thousands of people. Let penance accompany your confession: for thus your iniquity will be remitted to you. And, "Blessed are those whose iniquities are remitted, and whose sins are covered" (Psalm 31:1). Moreover, confession of sin is the condemnation of the sinner; but penance produces useful confession. Hatred is also to be applied to sins, for a friend of sins is an enemy of his own soul. And sins are to be hated with perfect hatred, since they have become hostile to us. But their momentary allurements, which can be annulled by a momentary striking of the heart, through whose annulment you will possess eternal rest, through whose hoarding you will go to infernal torment—to be unwilling to destroy them when you can is the height of madness.

Confess, therefore, my dear one, the crimes that gnaw at you, naming them one by one; uncover specifically those which you know to be specific; add the daily sins from which you were not clean, at least in thought, in a general confession; and thus trust in indulgence. Now, indeed, after consulting a priest, your offenses are to be referred to God; they will then be presented to Him: for such a presentation will no longer be fruitless. And what perhaps I forgot and omitted, forgive your debtors their debts from the heart, and love all men in God for the sake of God. CHAPTER VI. That these things have been written for the less learned. Our little pages seem like cheap and contemptible instructions, because they are not adorned with rhetorical flourish and pomp; they seem superfluous as well, since for the more learned all these things were obvious. But it sometimes happens that the learned know many things about which they have not doubted, and they think that everyone has learned the same things by the same method of learning. But we were among the less capable, and we know clearly how the weary man puts on his shoes. A great multitude of those desiring counsel for their souls also came to us: and some spoke from simplicity, others from design. We counseled them as it pleased us. But for you, over whom our heart watches more closely, and whom the regard of this letter visits, since most impatient grief takes away the grace of conversation, from those things which we ourselves drew from the more experienced, we have directed this treatise.

It is therefore yours, yours, and also most necessary for you, who are placed at the point of death and, if it could be seen, would already see death, that, as far as by our instruction you are more vigilant, or by the necessity of the end itself more circumspect, you watch over yourself, provide for yourself, consult for yourself. But if in our treatises I have pointed out things you did not know, or have again impressed upon you things you did know, yet in both, from the utmost diligence toward you, our labor has sweated. And if it will not profit you, since you knew all these things, the admonitory connection of these words will at least profit some who are less learned, and also me, to whom it is a pleasure to have admonished you, because I have satisfied myself. CHAPTER VII. Before which priests sins are to be declared. But lest some superstition of certain priests be passed over by us as if unknown and untouched, now the conclusion of our discourse, since confession is to be made before them, shall look to the priests. However, it would be superfluous to write this, were it not to be set in the way of a certain error already creeping into many. It is also better to consult the ignorance of priests than to leave the ignorant unrebuked in their ignorance; moreover, it could harm you, since it has harmed many. As was indicated above, you are to confess before a priest and undergo his judgment. But just as one star differs from another in brightness, so one priest differs from another in his conduct.

For many indeed are called priests, but not all are priests. For the dispensation of the presbyterate is entrusted to many, but not all equally serve the ministry of the entrusted dispensation. One, indeed, insatiably gapes after present advantages, which are his own, not those of Jesus Christ; another is hindered by negligence; another is stifled by ignorance, and yet the ignorant one will be ignored (1 Cor. 14:38); another, however, competently explores the place and time entrusted to his care, and the life of a proven minister answers to the necessities of the enjoined ministry. From among these, if you know them, the more skilled and more diligent are to be called. For if more proven physicians are sought for diseases of the body, how much more subtle, and, if one may say so, more spiritual physicians ought to be employed for the spiritual putrefactions of souls? I do not say, however, that you should condemn or reproach the Lord’s priests: for the Lord knows who are his (2 Tim. 2:19). But I say, if you receive a prophet in the name of a prophet, a just man in the name of a just man, you will receive the reward either of a prophet or of a just man (Matt. 10:41). Therefore, such men are to be called.

CHAPTER VIII. The Error of Priests Who Bind Even After Death. Whether Their Judgment Harms. These Are to Be Taught. That Satisfaction Is to Be Imposed on Those Who Have Confessed. That No Crime Is Graver Than Despair. That Those Placed in Extremis Are to Be Absolved If They Ask. That If They Recover, They Ought to Undergo the Censure of the Canons. Now see what arises from the ignorance of the ignorant. A certain one of the less learned priests heard your confession, saw your infirmity, yet does not know how to weigh such matters with an equal balance; he is ignorant that swift medicine is most necessary for sudden infirmities or for those placed in extremis, and he answers the sick man, "Brother, if you survive, fast thus, give alms thus, pray thus" (he said all these things well, but note the impious error): "but if you die from this infirmity, lest your soul appear impenitent to God, by obedience I enjoin upon you that your soul, for either a whole week, or an entire year, or for as much time as suffering the punishment you have merited, be purged in penance after your death." O blindness of heart to be exterminated! He had come to console the sick man: and when a greater and more urgent necessity of absolving presses upon him, he adds a particle of binding, having forbidden absolution. O occasion of the perdition of souls! Whether this speech of the priest harms the one confessing (it is certain that it does not help), let it be reserved to the judgment of God.

But what should be said in response to this comforter, or rather desolator, if you should perhaps ask, I say plainly: he is to be taught, not followed. For there is no disobedience where there is the humble dutifulness of learning. But if you wish to know what plaster should be applied to such rottenness, so that at least on the occasion of your visit the priests may be taught, and that even what I would say to those placed at the end and yet confessing may also contribute to their salvation, I subjoin: Nothing is to be imposed on anyone which either impossibility denies to him, or vanishing time prevents him from fulfilling. But if something that might benefit the poor comes into his hands, or his friends wish to give from their own, it is lawful that his sins be redeemed by alms; we also believe that the prayers of friends will benefit him. But if any amount of money, however small, is lacking, or the religious devotion of friends praying for him is absent, and he is able to do nothing at all except confess and repent, and the enormity of his sins also weighs him down, what shall I do for him? Shall I lead him, or be led by him, into despair? But who, O good Jesus, would despair of your mercy? I declare boldly, that despair of you is a more heaped-up sin than any offense of human frailty whatsoever. Why did tears benefit the chief of the Apostles, if they do not also benefit me? Why is the memory of that thief in the Gospel so venerably recounted to us?

To what alms, or to what works, or to what prayers have you responded, my most kind, most sweet, most merciful Jesus, as if under oath—I say Amen to you, today you will be with me in paradise—except to his faith and his very brief prayer, "Remember me, Lord, when you come into your kingdom" (Luke 23:42-43)? Therefore I say to all, I say finally to those confessing, I say to those who have confessed and are seeking counsel, that the confessed should not despair, that priests should not bind anyone after death; rather, with their Jesus they should say, "Unbind him, and let him go" (John 11:44). For it is better that such an absolution benefit, or at least not harm, than that an indiscreet binding harm. Nor should priests pretend an occasion of false security: since it is better to commit the dying person into the hands of the most merciful God than to exclude a despairing person from the kingdom of God with certain fables of postponement. For how will the priest say for the deceased whom he himself bound, "Absolve, Lord, the soul of your servant," or the other eulogies of absolution? Therefore all are to be absolved, provided they ask for absolution, and they are not to be suspended from the communion of the faithful, those for whom death is feared without delay, and whom either the bitter recollection of sins stirs to tears, or the fear of death leads to pardon, as Scripture testifies, "And those terrified will be purified" (Job 41:16). Yet if such persons should recover, let them not neglect to undergo the long-standing censure of the canons.

Therefore, while it is no longer permitted to delay, this counsel is to be applied to those placed in extremity. This also, dearest, I give to you, my friend: ascend, about to pray, into the temple of the Lord with your heart, if you cannot with your body. Say, as one about to be justified, with that already justified sinner, "O God, be propitious to me, a sinner" (Luke 18:13): so that you may ascend just to God, justified by Him who lives and reigns for all ages of ages. Amen. ADMONITION ON THE TWO SERMONS IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING. These two sermons exist in an old Corbeian codex, written, as it seems, a thousand years ago. The first is indeed noted with this heading: "Here begins the sermon of Saint John on the Consolation of Death." The second, however, joined most closely to the first without a title, has nothing else at its end except, "Here ends On the Resurrection." Moreover, this second sermon, in its third part, which was lacking in previously printed editions, now for the first time emerges enriched from the aforementioned Corbeian exemplar; and that part contains a recapitulation of what was said in the first sermon, and is known by other not uncertain arguments to pertain to this little work. Furthermore, we consider John to be none other than Chrysostom, designated at the head of the first sermon. Compare his forty-first homily on 1 Corinthians 15, and his first homily on 2 Corinthians, and his sixty-first homily on John, and finally his seventieth homily to the people of Antioch, etc.