Letter 267: Augustine writes Fabiola about absence, friendship, and the heavenly homeland.

To the most religious and excellent lady Fabiola, a daughter praiseworthy in the love of Christ: Augustine sends greetings in the Lord. Although you returned a reply, I read the letter of Your Holiness in such a way that I thought I owed an answer. You grieved over pilgrimage, by which it happens that we may rejoice forever with the saints, and you rightly preferred the desire for the homeland above, where we will no longer be divided by the space of lands but will always rejoice in the contemplation of one thing. You are happy to think such things faithfully; happier to love them; and therefore you will also be most happy when you attain them. But even now, look more carefully at why we are more truly said to be absent from one another: is it because we do not see one another's bodies, or because we do not give and receive the signs of our minds, which is conversation? For I think that even if we were separated in body by distant regions, if we could know one another's thoughts, we would be more with one another than if, in one place, we sat silently looking at each other, bringing out nothing of the inner person in words and showing our minds by no movements of the body. You understand, then, that each person is more present to himself than one person is to another, because each is better known to himself than to anyone else. He sees not his face, which is carried around and hidden unless a mirror is present, but his conscience, which he sees even with closed eyes. How great, then, is even this life of ours, which is considered so great?

EPISTOLA 267 Scripta post a. 395. A. Fabiolae, nobili feminae, terrestrem peregrinationem moleste ferenti, admonens animos non separari spatio dum amicitiae nexum vinciantur. DOMINAE RELIGIOSISSIMAE ET PRAESTANTISSIMAE, ET IN CHRISTI CARITATE LAUDABILI FILIAE FABIOLAE, AUGUSTINUS, IN DOMINO SALUTEM. 1. Quamquam rescripta reddideris, sic tamen legi litteras Sanctitatis tuae, ut eis respondere debitum duxerim. Doluisti enim peregrinationem, qua contingit perpetuo gaudere cum sanctis; et desiderium supernae patriae, ubi iam non terrarum spatio dividemur, sed semper unius contemplatione laetabimur, merito praetulisti, Felix es talia fideliter cogitando; amando felicior; et ideo eris etiam felicissima consequendo. Sed etiam nunc diligentius intuere unde magis dicamur absentes; utrum quia nostra invicem corpora non videmus, an quia signa non damus et recipimus animorum, quod est colloqui. Puto enim quod, licet longinquis regionibus corpore separati, si nostras cogitationes nosse possemus, magis essemus nobiscum, quam si uno in loco alter alterutrum conspicantes taciti sederemus, nulla in vocibus intimi proferentes, nullis corporum motibus nostros animos indicantes. Quocirca intellegis ideo unumquemque sibi esse praesentiorem quam alterum alteri, quod unusquisque sibi magis quam alteri notus est; non faciem suam, quae, nisi adsit speculum, gestatur et latet, sed conscientiam contuendo, quam et clausis oculis videt. Quanta est igitur etiam vita, quae pro magno habetur, nostra?