Letter 109: Severus tells Augustine that reading him feels like companionship and asks him to write back.

To Augustine, bishop, venerable, longed for, and to be embraced with the whole embrace of charity: Severus. Thanks be to God, brother Augustine, from whom comes every good joy in us. I confess that it is well with me when I am with you. I read you often. I will say something strange, but entirely true: just as your presence has often been present to me while you were absent, so now your absence has become present to me. No noisy business of temporal affairs comes between us. I do what I can, though not as much as I wish. And what shall I say about how much I wish? You know perfectly how greedy I am for you. Yet I do not complain that I do not do as much as I wish, because I do no less than I can. So thanks be to God, sweetest brother. It is well with me in your company. I rejoice to be joined to you more closely and, if I may say it, to cling to you as one as far as I can. Receiving the abundance of your breasts, I gather strength, if I can become fit to shake and press them, so that what they guard more secretly and inwardly, beneath the coverings still offered for nursing, may pour out their very depths for me if possible. I want your depths poured back to me: your inward depths, rich with heavenly nourishment and seasoned with every spiritual sweetness; your pure and simple depths, except that they are adorned with the double bond of the twofold love; your depths flooded with the light of truth and shining truth back. I place myself under their flowing and echoing, so that my night may fail in your light and we may walk together in the brightness of day. O truly skillful bee of God, building honeycombs full of divine nectar, flowing with mercy and truth. As my soul runs through them, it delights, and with living food tries to repair and strengthen whatever it finds lacking or weak in itself. The Lord is blessed through the proclamation of your mouth and through your faithful ministry. You make your voice harmonize and answer the Lord who sings to you, so that whatever overflows to us from his fullness becomes sweeter and more welcome through your elegant service, your compact purity, and your faithful, chaste, and simple ministry. You make this shine through your quickness and vigilance so that it strikes the eyes and draws them into itself, unless you yourself point us to the Lord. Then, referring whatever shines delightfully in you back to him, we recognize it as belonging to the one by whose goodness you are so good, and by whose purity, simplicity, and beauty you are pure, simple, and beautiful. Giving thanks to him for your good, which is his gift, may he deign to join us to you, or at least in some way place us under you, so that we may be more fully subject to him. Under his guidance and governance we rejoice that you are such as you are, so that you too may happen to rejoice over us. I do not distrust that this may happen, if you help me with your prayers. By imitating you I have already made some progress, at least enough to desire to be such a person. You see what you do by being so good: how you carry us away into love of neighbor, which for us is the first step toward loving God and the last, like a boundary where love of God and neighbor meet. Standing, as I said, on that boundary, we are touched by the warmth of both and burn with the love of both. But the more this fire of neighborly love burns and purifies us, the more it drives us toward that purer love of God. There no measure of loving is imposed on us, because the measure there is to love without measure. We must not fear loving our Lord too much; we must fear loving him too little. The earlier letter, which presents me to you as though my sadness had been wiped away by the happiness of what I was doing, written from the free leisure I was able to spend with you while set in this countryside, was written like the finish line of those joys before the venerable bishop deigned to visit us. What truly amazes me is that it arrived on the same day it was written. What is this, I ask, my soul, unless perhaps something that delights us? Still, even if it is honorable, it is not useful enough, because it is partial. Meanwhile, as much material is yielded to us because of our sins, that is, as much as we ourselves yield ourselves, let us try to fit this very part, ourselves, to the whole, more polished and better joined, if you allow that word. You have a letter longer because of my smallness, not because of your greatness; with it I have challenged you to send me a letter now not according to my smallness, but according to your greatness. However long it is, it will not be long to me, for all time is short when I am reading you. Write back to me when or where I should meet you for the matter about which you ordered me to come. If it remains unchanged, and nothing better has perhaps seemed good, I will come then. If not, I ask you: do not call me back from my course, for that was the only thing I saw that I would put ahead of myself. I greatly long for and greet all the brothers who are fellow servants with us in the Lord.

EPISTOLA 109 Incerti temporis. Severus, Milevitanus antistes, maximam delectationem fructumque ex Augustini lectione se percipere profitetur summisque laudibus illum extollit (n. 1-2) ac demum provocat ad rescribendum (n. 3). VENERABILI AC DESIDERABILI ET TOTO SINU CARITATIS AMPLECTANDO EPISCOPO AUGUSTINO, SEVERUS. Summis laudibus celebratur A. 1. Deo gratias, frater Augustine, cuius donum est quidquid in nobis bonorum gaudiorum est. Fateor, bene mihi tecum est; multum te lego: mirum dicam, sed verum plane, quam mihi absens solet esse praesentia, tam praesens facta est absentia tui. Nullae se nobis interponunt turbulentae actiones temporalium rerum. Ago quantum possum, etsi non tantum possum quantum volo: quid ego dicam, quantum volo? Nosti optime quam avarus sim tui: nec tamen murmuro, quia non tantum ago quantum volo, quoniam rursus non minus ago quantum possum. Deo ergo gratias, frater dulcissime, bene mihi tecum est, gaudeo tecum arctius coniunctus; et ut ita dicam, unissime quantum potest adhaerens tibi, redundantiam uberum tuorum suscipiens vires comparo, si possim idoneus effici ad ea concutienda et exprimenda, ut quidquid secretius et interius, clausum custodiunt remotis pellibus quas adhuc lactenti sugendas inserunt, ipsa mihi viscera si possibile est, dignentur effundere. Viscera, inquam, mihi ut refundantur cupio: viscera tua, viscera pinguia sagina coelesti, et condita omni dulcedine spiritali; viscera tua, viscera pura, viscera simplicia, nisi quod duplici sunt vinculo redimita geminae charitatis; viscera tua, viscera perfusa lumine veritatis, et refulgentia veritatem. Horum me manationi vel resultationi subicio, quo nox mea in lumine tuo deficiat, ut in diei claritate simul ambulare possimus. O vere artificiosa apis Dei, construens favos divini nectaris plenos, manantes misericordiam et veritatem, per quos discurrens deliciatur anima mea, et vitali pastu quidquid in se minus invenit, aut imbecillum sentit, resarcire et suffulcire molitur. Augustini scripta Dei proximique amorem fovent. 2. Benedicitur Dominus per praeconium oris tui, et fidele ministerium: quod sic concinere et respondere facis canenti tibi Domino, ut quidquid de eius plenitudine ad nos usque redundat, iucundius efficiatur et gratius per tuum elegantem famulatum, et succinctam munditiam, et fidele ac castum simplexque ministerium: quod ita resplendere facis per argutias tuas et vigilantiam tuam, ut perstringat oculos, et in se rapiat; nisi tu idem innuas Dominum, ut quidquid in te delectabile lucet, referentes nos ad illum, ipsius esse agnoscamus de cuius bonitate tam bonus es, et de cuius puritate et simplicitate ac pulchritudine purus, simplex et pulcher es; et illi agentes gratias de bono tuo, dono suo dignetur nos tibi adiungere, vel quoquo modo subiungere, ut plenius subiciamur illi, cuius te ductu ac moderatione talem gaudemus, ut et tibi contingat gaudere de nobis: quod non diffido ore, si tuis me orationibus adiuves, cuius imitatione nonnihil iam profeci, ut talis esse desiderem. Vides quid facias, quod sic bonus es, quam nos rapias in amorem proximi, qui nobis primus ad dilectionem Dei et ultimus gradus est, et quasi limes quo sibi uterque annectitur Dei et proximi; in quo nos, ut dixi, quasi limite stantes amborum calore tangimur, et amborum flagramus amore. Sed quantum nos iste ignis exusserit et purgaverit proximi, tantum nos in illum puriorem Dei ire compellit. In quo iam nullus nobis amandi modus imponitur, quando ipse ibi modus est sine modo amare. Non ergo verendum est ne plus amemus Dominum nostrum, sed ne minus, timendum. Augustini rescriptum flagitatur. 3. Haec epistola superior, quae tibi me quasi abstersa tristitia felicitate actionum, de liberali otio quod tecum mihi agere licuit in hoc rure posito (nam ita licere potuit) laetiorem offert, antequam sane venerabilis episcopus nos visitare dignaretur, quasi meta illorum gaudiorum scripta est, et quod vere mirer, eodem die venit quo scripta est. Quid hoc est, quaeso, anima mea, nisi forte quod nos delectat; tamen etsi honestum est, non tamen satis utile, quia in parte est? Interim licet universo hanc ipsam partem, id est nos ipsos, quantum pro peccatis nostris nobis cedit materia, id est nos ipsi cedimus, nobis elimatiores et compaginabiliores, si tamen admittis hoc verbum, aptare moliamur. Habes epistolam non pro tua magnitudine, sed pro mea parvitate longiorem, qua te provocaverim, ut iam non pro mea parvitate, sed pro tua magnitudine mihi epistola mittatur. Quae tamen quantacumque erit, mihi longa non erit, cui totum tempus breve est ad te legendum. Rescribe mihi quando, aut ubi occurrere debeam, propter illam causam qua me iussisti occurrere. Quod si est integra, et non forte aliud melius placuit, tunc occurram; sin minus, rogo te, nolo me a cursu revoces meo: illa enim sola visa est, quam praeponerem mihi. Fratres omnes qui nobis in Domino conservi sunt, et desidero multum, et saluto.