Letter 243: Augustine tells Laetus to carry his cross and resist family pressure that would draw him back from Christian service.

To Laetus, my beloved and much-desired brother: Augustine sends greetings in the Lord. I read the letter you sent to the brothers, wanting to console you because your first campaigns are being shaken by many temptations. In it you also indicated that you wanted a letter from me. I felt your sorrow, brother, and I could not refrain from writing, lest I deny both your desire and my own what I saw that the duty of love required of me. If, then, you profess yourself a recruit of Christ, do not desert the camp. There you must also build that tower of which the Lord speaks in the Gospel. Standing in that tower and fighting under the arms of the word of God, no temptations can penetrate you from any side. From there the missiles thrown at the adversary fall with heavy weight, and the attacks seen in advance are avoided from a firm defense. Consider also our Lord Jesus Christ. Though he is our king, yet by the fellowship in which he deigned also to be our brother, he called his soldiers kings, and warned each one that he must be equipped with ten thousand to go to war with a king who has twenty thousand. Just before he set out the exhorting comparisons of the tower and the king, notice what he said: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not carry his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple." Then he adds, "Which of you, wanting to build a tower, does not first sit down and count whether he has enough to finish it, lest, after he has laid the foundation and cannot build, all who pass by and see it begin to say, 'This man began to build and could not finish'? Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet the one coming against him with twenty thousand? Otherwise, while the other is still far off, he sends an embassy asking for peace." What these comparisons were pointing to he made clear enough in the conclusion: "So then, every one of you who does not renounce all that belongs to him cannot be my disciple." The cost of building the tower, and the strength of the ten thousand fighting against the king who has twenty thousand, mean nothing other than this: each person must renounce everything that belongs to him. The earlier statement agrees with the final conclusion. For when each person renounces all that is his, this too is included: that he hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life. All these are his own things, and they often entangle and obstruct him from gaining, not those private things which pass away in time, but the common things that remain forever. The woman who is now your mother is not, for that reason, also mine. That relation is temporal and passing, as you can already see that what conceived you, carried you in the womb, bore you, and fed you with milk has passed. But insofar as she is a sister in Christ, she is yours and mine and belongs to all to whom one heavenly inheritance, God as Father, Christ as brother, and the same fellowship of love are promised. These things are eternal. No decay of time wears them down. They are hoped for all the more firmly because they are proclaimed not as private possessions but as things to be obtained by common right. You can recognize this very easily in your own mother. What now wraps you in a net, turns you back, bends you away, and slows you from the course you had begun, if not the fact that she is your own private mother? Insofar as she is the sister of all who have God as Father and the church as mother, she no longer obstructs you, just as she does not obstruct me or all our brothers, who love her not with a private love, as you do in your household, but with public love in the house of God. The fact that you are joined to her by bodily kinship should give you the easier opportunity for familiar conversation and the more open door for counsel, so that this very private love she has for you may be put to death in her. She should not value the fact that she gave birth to you from her womb more than the fact that she was born with you from the womb of the church. What I have said about your mother should be understood about any such kinship. Each person should also think this way about his own soul, so that even in it he hates the private affection which is surely temporal, and loves instead that shared fellowship of which it is written, "They had one soul and one heart toward God." In this way your soul is not your own but belongs to all the brothers; their souls are yours too, or rather their souls with yours are not many souls but one soul, the one soul of Christ, which the psalm sings should be rescued from the hand of the dog. From this, contempt for death is reached most easily. Parents should not be angry that the Lord commands us to hate them, since this command is also given concerning our own life. As he commands us here to hate life along with parents for Christ's sake, so what the same Lord says elsewhere about life can very fittingly be applied to parents as well: "Whoever loves his life will lose it." I will even say confidently: whoever loves his parents will lose them. For of life he said "hate" in one place and "lose" in the other. This command to lose our life does not mean that anyone should kill himself, which is an unforgivable crime. It means that each person should kill in himself the fleshly affection for life by which the present life delights him as an obstacle to the life to come. That is what is meant by "hate his life" and "lose it." Yet this is done by loving it, because the same command plainly mentions the fruit of gaining that very life: "Whoever loses it in this age will find it for eternal life." So it is most rightly said of parents that the one who loves them should lose them, not killing them in the manner of parricides, but striking and killing, devoutly and confidently, with the spiritual sword of God's word, their fleshly affection by which they try to bind themselves and the children they have begotten to the entanglements of this age. He should make live in them that by which they are brother and sister, by which, together with their temporal children, they know God and the church as their eternal parents. Look: zeal for the truth and for knowing and grasping God's will in the holy Scriptures pulls you forward. The office of preaching the Gospel pulls you forward. The Lord gives the signal that we should keep watch in the camp and build the tower from which we can see and drive off the enemy of eternal life. The heavenly trumpet summons Christ's soldier to battle, and his mother holds him back. She is plainly not like the mother of the Maccabees, nor even like the Spartan mothers of whom history reports that they stirred their sons to battle so that they might pour out their blood for an earthly fatherland, with more force and fire than the sound of the military standards. A mother who does not allow you to withdraw from worldly cares to learn life shows clearly how she would allow you, if necessary, to renounce the world entirely and face death. But what does she say, what does she plead? Perhaps she recalls the ten months in which you burdened her womb, the pains of childbirth, and the labors of raising you. Kill this, this very thing, by the saving word. Lose this in your mother, so that you may find her for eternal life. Remember this so that you hate it in her, if you love her, if you are a recruit of Christ, if you have laid the foundations of the tower. Otherwise passersby will say, "This man began to build and could not finish." This is fleshly affection, and it still sounds like the old human being. Christian service urges us to destroy this fleshly affection both in ourselves and in our own people. Yet not in such a way that anyone becomes ungrateful to parents or laughs at the benefits by which he was brought into this life, received, and raised, once they have been listed. Rather, let devotion be preserved everywhere. Let these things have their place where greater things are not calling. Mother Church is also the mother of your mother. She conceived you both from Christ. She gave you birth by the blood of the martyrs into eternal light. She nourished and still nourishes you with the milk of faith, and as she prepares stronger food she shudders that you still want to cry like infants without teeth. This mother, spread throughout the whole world, is shaken by so many varied and multiplied assaults of error that her miscarried children do not hesitate to wage war against her with unbridled weapons. She grieves that through the sluggishness and torpor of some whom she holds in her lap, her limbs grow cold in many places and become less fit for warming little ones. From whom, if not from other children? From whom, if not from other members, of whose number you are, does she ask the just and owed help? Will you abandon her needs and turn toward the words of the flesh? Does she not sound in your ears with heavier complaints? Does she not show dearer inward affections and heavenly breasts? Add the assumption of flesh by her husband, so that you would not cling to fleshly things: add the insults, the lashes, the death, and death on a cross, taken up by the eternal Word, against everything your mother reproaches you with, so that you would not be entangled in these things. Conceived by such seed and born into new life by such a union, are you weakening and wasting away into the old human being? Did your Commander not have an earthly mother? Yet when she was announced to him while he was doing heavenly things, he answered, "Who is my mother, or who are my brothers?" Stretching his hand toward his disciples, he said that no one belonged to his kinship except those who did the will of his Father. In that number he certainly included Mary herself in kindness, for she too did the Father's will. Thus the best and divine Teacher rejected the name of mother when it was announced to him as something private and personal, because it was earthly in comparison with heavenly kinship. By recalling that heavenly kinship in his disciples, he showed in what fellowship of birth that virgin also was joined to him with the rest of the saints. And so that this most wholesome teaching, by which he taught that fleshly affection in parents should be despised, would not support the error by which some deny that he had a mother, he elsewhere warned his disciples not to call anyone on earth father. Just as it is clear that they had fathers, so he showed clearly that he had a mother; yet by despising earthly kinship with her, he gave his disciples an example of despising such relations. Are these things interrupted by your mother's words? Among these things does the memory of pregnancy and nursing find a place, so that you might be born and nourished from Adam and Eve into another Adam? Look instead, look to the second Adam from heaven, and now bear the heavenly image as you have borne the earthly one. Better yet, let those maternal benefits that are being listed to weaken your heart have their place. Let them absolutely have their place. Do not be ungrateful. Repay your mother. Repay spiritual things for fleshly, everlasting things for temporal. But if she does not want to follow, let her not obstruct. If she does not want to be converted to something better, beware that she not turn you to something worse and overturn you. What difference does it make whether in wife or mother, so long as Eve is guarded against in whatever woman? This shadow of devotion comes from the leaves of that tree with which our first parents covered themselves in their damnable nakedness. Whatever duty of love her words and suggestion put forward, as though to turn you aside from the most genuine and sincere love of the Gospel, belongs to the craft of the serpent and to the double-mindedness of that king who has twenty thousand, whom we are taught to overcome by the simplicity of the ten thousand, that is, of the heart in which we seek God. Attend to these things instead, dearest one, and take up your cross and follow the Lord. When I saw you in person, delayed from divine study by household cares, I felt that you were being carried and led by your cross rather than carrying and leading it. What else is our cross, which the Lord commands us to carry so that we may follow him most freely, but the mortality of this flesh? It tortures us until death is swallowed up in victory. This cross itself must therefore be crucified and pierced with the nails of the fear of God, so that with its limbs loose and free it does not resist us and become impossible to carry. You cannot follow the Lord at all unless you carry it. How will you follow him if you are not his? "Those who belong to Jesus Christ," says the apostle, "have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires." If your family estate has any money, whose business it is neither fitting nor proper for you to be entangled in, it should truly be given to your mother and your household. Their need should hold first place with you if, in order to be perfect, you have decided to distribute such things of yours to the poor. "If anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household," says the apostle, "he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." If you came to us in order to arrange these matters and to slip your neck out of one yoke so that it might be placed under the bonds of wisdom, what harm do your mother's tears, flowing from the flesh, do you? Or the flight of a slave? Or the death of slave women? Or the sickness of brothers? If ordered love is in you, knowing how to put greater things ahead of lesser, and mercy moves you so that the poor are evangelized, lest the Lord's abundant harvest lie as prey for birds through lack of workers, and if your heart is ready to follow the Lord's will in what he has decided to do with his servants, whether by striking or by sparing, then meditate on these things, be in these things, so that your progress may be evident to all. I beg you, beware of giving good brothers greater sadness by your sluggishness than the joy you had already given by your eagerness. As for commending you by the letters you wanted, I thought it as unnecessary as if someone had wanted to commend you to me in the same way.

EPISTOLA 243 Scripta post a. 395. A. Leto, qui, perfectionis iter ingressus, a Satana sollicitari videbatur ad repetenda quae reliquerat, in mentem revocat quid Christi tirones facere debeant (n. 1) secundum ipsius Christi doctrinam (nn. 2-5; 9) illum hortans ut, affectibus cognatorum contemptis (nn. 4; 6-8; 10), fortiter pergat in cruce ferenda, familiae necessitatibus antea consulens (nn. 11-12). DOMINO DILECTISSIMO ET DESIDERANTISSIMO FRATRI LAETO, AUGUSTINUS, IN DOMINO SALUTEM Christi tironum officia. 1. Legi epistolam quam misisti fratribus, consolari te cupiens quod multis tentationibus tua tirocinia quatiantur; in qua etiam insinuasti desiderare te litteras meas. Condolui, frater, et cessare ab scribendo non potui, ne non solum tuo, sed etiam meo desiderio negarem quod me videbam officio debere caritatis. Si te igitur tironem Christi profiteris, castra ne deseras; in quibus tibi etiam aedificanda turris est illa, de qua in Evangelio Dominus loquitur 1. In ea quippe stantem, et sub armis verbi Dei militantem, nulla ex parte penetrare ullae tentationes valent: inde et iacta in adversarium tela gravi pondere veniunt, et prospecta firmo munimine devitantur. Considera etiam Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum, cum sit rex noster, tamen ea societate qua etiam frater esse dignatus est, reges appellasse milites suos, et unumquemque ad bellandum cum rege qui habet viginti millia, instructione decem millium idoneum esse debere praemonuit 2. Quid Christus doceat sui sectatores 2. Sed paulo antequam de turre et de rege exhortatorias similitudines praeponeret, attende quid dixerit: Si quis venit ad me, et non odit patrem suum, et matrem, et uxorem, et filios, et fratres, et sorores, adhuc et animam suam, non potest meus esse discipulus. Et si non tulerit crucem suam et venerit post me, non potest meus esse discipulus. Deinde subiungit: Quis ex vobis volens turrim aedificare, non primo sedet, et computat si sumptus habet ad consummationem, nequando, cum posuerit fundamentum, non possit aedificare; et omnes qui transeunt et vident, incipiant dicere: "Hic homo coepit aedificare, et non potuit perficere"? Aut quis rex vadens committere bellum cum alio rege, non primum sedet, et cogitat si potens est cum decem millibus ei occurrere, qui cum viginti millibus venit ad illum? Caeterum dum adhuc longe est, mittit legationem, rogans pacem 3. Quo autem pertinerent istae similitudines, ipsa conclusione satis aperuit: ait enim: Sic ergo omnis ex vobis qui non renuntiat omnibus quae sunt eius, non potest meus esse discipulus 4. Cognatos bonaque mundi Deo postponenda. 3. Itaque et sumptus ad turrim aedificandam, et bellantium valentia decem millium adversus regem qui viginti habet, nihil est aliud quam ut renuntiet unusquisque omnibus quae sunt eius. Praelocutio autem superior cum extrema conclusione concordat. In eo enim quod unusquisque renuntiat omnibus quae sunt eius, etiam illud continetur, ut oderit patrem suum, et matrem, et uxorem, et filios, et fratres, et sorores, adhuc et animam suam. Omnia enim haec propria eius sunt, quae plerumque implicant et impediunt ad obtinenda, non ista propria temporaliter transitura, sed in aeternum mansura communia. Quo enim tibi nunc quaedam mulier mater est, hoc ipso utique non est et mihi. Quapropter hoc temporale ac transitorium est: sicut transisse iam vides quod te concepit, quod gestavit utero, quod peperit, quod lacte nutrivit. Quod autem soror in Christo est, et tibi est et mihi, et omnibus quibus una coelestis haereditas, et pater Deus, et frater Christus, in eadem caritatis societate promittitur 5. Haec aeterna sunt; haec nulla temporis labe deteruntur; haec tanto firmius tenenda sperantur, quanto minus privato, sed communi potius iure obtinenda praedicantur. Carnalis matris amor ne impediat Christi discipulum. 4. Potes hoc facillime in ipsa tua matre cognoscere. Nam unde te nunc irretitum involvit, et ab instituto cursu retardatum reflectit et curvat, nisi ex quo tua propria mater est? Nam ex quo soror est omnium, quibus est pater Deus et mater Ecclesia, iam te non impedit, quam neque me, neque omnes fratres nostros, qui eam non privata, sicut tu in domo vestra, sed publica in domo Dei caritate diligimus. Quod ergo tu illi etiam carnali necessitudine annecteris, ad sortem valere debet familiarius colloquendi, et apertiore ianua consulendi ut hoc ipsum, quo te privatim diligit, interficiatur in ea, ne quod ex utero suo te genuit, pluris pendat, quam quod ex utero Ecclesiae genita est tecum. Quod autem de matre dixi, hoc de tali caetera propinquitate intellegendum est. Hoc etiam quisque de anima sua cogitet, ut etiam in ipsa privatum affectum oderit, qui procul dubio temporalis est: diligat autem in ea communionem societatemque illam, de qua dictum est: Erat illis in Deum anima una et cor unum 6. Sic enim anima tua non est propria, sed omnium fratrum; quorum etiam animae tuae sunt, vel potius quorum animae cum tua non animae, sed anima una est, Christi unica, quae de manu canis ut eruatur, cantatur in Psalmis 7. Inde ad contemptum mortis facillime pervenitur. Quid sibi velit illud Christi: Qui non odit vitam etc. 5. Nec succenseant parentes hoc praecipere Dominum ut eos oderimus, quando nobis hoc de anima nostra praecipitur 8. Nam sicut nunc de anima iubetur, ut eam propter Christum cum parentibus oderimus; ita quod alio loco de anima idem Dominus dicit, in parentes quoque potest congruentissime convenire: Qui amat, inquit, animam suam, perdet eam 9. Dicam etiam fidenter: Qui amat parentes suos, perdet eos. De anima quippe hoc ibi dixit, oderit, quod hic, perdet. Sicut autem hoc praeceptum, quo perdere iubemur animam nostram, non ad id valet ut se quisque interimat, quod inexpiabile nefas est; et tamen valet ut interimat in se carnalem animae affectum, quo cum impedimento futurae vitae praesens vita delectat; hoc est enim quod dictum est: oderit animam suam, et, perdet eam: quod tamen diligendo fit; quandoquidem apertissime fructum eiusdem animae acquirendae, in eodem praecepto commemorat dicens: Qui perdiderit eam in isto saeculo, in vitam aeternam inveniet eam: ita de parentibus rectissime dicitur ut qui eos amat, perdat eos; non more parricidarum interficiens, sed spiritali gladio verbi Dei carnalem affectum eorum, quo et seipsos, et eos quos genuerunt implicamentis huius saeculi obligare conantur, pie fidenterque percutiens et occidens, illud in eis vivere faciat, quo fratres sunt, quo cum filiis suis temporalibus, parentes aeternos Deum Ecclesiamque cognoscunt. Quomodo in filios se gerere debeat pia mater. 6. Ecce rapit te studium veritatis, et cognoscendae atque percipiendae voluntatis Dei in Scripturis sanctis; rapit evangelicae praedicationis officium. Dat signum Dominus ut vigilemus in castris, ut aedificemus turrim, de qua hostem sempiternae vitae et prospicere et propellere valeamus. Rapit militem Christi tuba coelestis ad praelium, et retinet mater! non plane talis, qualis Machabaeorum fuit, nec saltem similis Lacedaemoniis matribus 10, de quibus memoriae proditum est quod filios suos, ut pro terrena patria sanguinem funderent, multo amplius atque ardentius in certamina bellica, quam signorum sonitus excitabant 11. Nam mater quae te ad discendam vitam removeri a curis saecularibus non permittit, satis ostendit quemadmodum te, si opus esset, ad obeundam mortem penitus saeculum repudiare permitteret. Quosque carnales parentes amandi. 7. Sed quid dicit, aut quid allegat? Forte decem illos menses quibus viscera eius onerasti, et dolores parturitionis, ac labores educationis. Hoc, hoc interfice verbo salutari; hoc perde matris, ut in vitam aeternam invenias eam 12. Hoc memento ut oderis in ea, si diligis eam, si tiro Christi es, si turris fundamenta posuisti; ne dicant transeuntes: Hic homo coepit aedificare, et non potuit perficere 13. Carnalis enim affectus est iste, et adhuc veterem hominem sonat 14. Hunc carnalem affectum, et in nobis et in nostris, militia christiana ut perimamus hortatur; nec tamen ita ut ingratus sit quisque parentibus, et eadem ipsa beneficia quibus in vitam hanc editus, susceptus atque nutritus est, enumerata derideat. Servet potius ubique pietatem: habeant haec locum ubi maiora non vocant. Quae matris terrenae, quae Ecclesia sint iura. 8. Mater Ecclesia, mater est etiam matris tuae. Haec vos de Christo concepit, haec martyrum sanguine parturivit, haec in sempiternam lucem peperit, haec fidei lacte nutrivit et nutrit, cibosque maiores praeparans, quod adhuc parvuli et sine dentibus vagire vultis, horrescit. Haec mater toto orbe diffusa, tam variis et multiplicibus errorum infestationibus agitatur, ut abortivi iam filii eius adversus eam infrenis armis belligerare non dubitent. Ignavia etiam atque torpore quorumdam quos gremio continet, membra sua frigescere plurimis locis et fovendis parvulis minus idonea fieri dolet. Unde nisi per alios filios, unde nisi per alia membra, quorum e numero es, iustum ac debitum poscit auxilium? Huiusne tu necessitates deserens, ad carnalia verba converteris? Nonne haec gravioribus querelis insonat auribus? nonne haec cariora viscera, et coelestia ubera ostentat? Adde viri eius susceptionem carnis, ne carnalibus inhaereres, et a Verbo aeterno universa quae tibi mater improperat, ne his implicareris assumpta; adde contumelias, flagella, mortem, mortem autem crucis 15. Quomodo Christus se gesserit erga matrem suam. 9. Talibus concepte seminibus, talique in vitam novam connubio procreate, languescis et contabescis in veterem hominem 16! Itane matrem terrenam non habebat Imperator tuus? Quae tamen cum ei nuntiaretur agenti coelestia, respondit: Quae mihi mater, aut qui fratres? Et extendens manum in discipulos suos, dixit non pertinere ad cognationem suam, nisi qui facerent voluntatem Patris eius 17. In quo numero profecto etiam ipsam Mariam benignus inclusit; faciebat enim et illa voluntatem Patris. Ita optimus Magister atque divinus, et maternum nomen, quod ei quasi privatum propriumque nuntiaverant, quia terrenum erat, in comparatione coelestis propinquitatis abiecit: et eamdem coelestem propinquitatem in discipulis suis commemorans, quo sibi rursum consortio generis cum caeteris sanctis virgo illa cohaereret, ostendit. Et ne isto saluberrimo magisterio quo contemni carnalem affectum in parentibus docuit, adminiculum error acciperet, quo matrem habuisse a quibusdam negatur, alio loco discipulos monuit ne se patrem in terris dicant habere 18, ut quomodo illos manifestum est habuisse patres, sic se habuisse matrem manifestaret, cuius tamen terrena cognatione contempta, contemnendarum talium necessitudinum discipulis praeberet exemplum. Malus matris amor ex originali peccato. 10. Haec ergo interrumpuntur vocibus matris tuae, et inter haec locum invenit commemoratio praegnantis atque lactantis, ut de Adam et Eva, alius Adam nascereris et nutrireris? Respice potius, respice Adam secundum de coelo, et porta iam coelestis imaginem, sicut terreni portasti 19. Imo et hic habeant locum materna ipsa beneficia, quae tibi ad enervationem cordis enumerantur: habeant prorsus locum; noli esse ingratus, repende gratiam matri tuae, repende spiritalia pro carnalibus, pro temporalibus sempiterna. Sed non vult sequi? non impediat. Non vult converti in melius? cave ne te in deterius pervertat, et evertat. Quid interest utrum in uxore, an in matre, dum tamen Eva in qualibet muliere caveatur 20? Nam ista umbra pietatis de foliis illius arboris venit, quibus se primum parentes nostri in illa damnabili nuditate texerunt. Et quidquid in illis verbis atque suggestione quasi officium tibi caritatis obtendit, ut a germanissima atque sincerissima Evangelii caritate te detorqueat, ad astutiam serpentis 21 pertinet, et ad duplicitatem regis illius qui habet viginti millia, quam nos docemur decem millium, hoc est, cordis, in qua Deum quaerimus, simplicitate superare 22. Quae sit crux quam portare iubemur. 11. His potius intende, carissime, et tolle crucem tuam, et sequere Dominum 23. Nam cum te praesens animadverterem domesticis curis a divino studio retardari, ferri te potius et duci a cruce tua, non eam te ferre ac ducere sentiebam. Crux enim nostra quam Dominus portari a nobis iubet, ut eum expeditissimi sequamur, quid aliud quam mortalitatem carnis huius significat? Ipsa enim nos cruciat donec absorbeatur mors in victoriam 24. Crux ergo haec ipsa crucifigenda est, et transfigenda est clavis timoris Dei 25, ne solutis et liberis membris reluctantem portare non possimus. Sequi enim Dominum nisi eam portans, omnino non vales: nam quomodo eum sequeris, si non es eius? Qui autem Iesu Christi sunt, ait Apostolus, carnem suam crucifixerunt cum passionibus et desideriis 26. Saeculo renuntians familiae necessitatibus provideat. 12. Si quid sane pecuniae res tua familiaris habet, cuius te implicari negotio nec oportet nec decet, revera tribuendum est matri et domesticis tuis. Horum quippe indigentia, si pauperibus, ut sis perfectus, instituisti distribuere talia tua, primum apud te locum obtinere debet: Si quis enim suis et maxime domesticis, ait Apostolus, non providet, fidem negavit, et est infideli deterior 27. Quibus ordinandis rebus, si, ut collum exueres induendum sapientiae vinculis, profectus a nobis es; quid tibi nocent, aut quo pacto te pervellunt matris lacrymae fluentes carne, aut servi fuga, aut mors ancillarum, aut fratrum morbosa valetudo? Si est in te caritas ordinata, sciens praeponere maiora minoribus, et misericordia moveri, ut pauperes evangelizentur 28, ne messis Domini copiosa, operariorum inopia, in praedam volucribus iaceat, et paratum habere cor ad sequendum Domini voluntatem 29, in eo quod vel flagellando vel parcendo agere statuerit cum servis suis: haec meditare, in his esto, ut provectus tuus manifestus sit in omnibus 30. Obsecro te ut caveas ne maiorem tristitiam des bonis fratribus torpore tuo, quam laetitiam alacritate iam dederas. Commendare te autem litteris quibus voluisti, tam superfluum putavi, quam si quisquam te mihi eodem modo commendare voluisset.