Letter 1018: You command — and it is my heart's desire — that I attend both the new and the customary celebrations with the...

You command, and it is my wish, that I attend the new celebrations and the customary ones alike with the zeal of a twofold affection. But I fear that we may be held back by the very thing by which you held the authorities too long. Pray, nevertheless, that an outcome equal to the desire may follow. Unless perhaps you had reckoned that expenditure the greater which, while the larder is still cold, grows warm in your heart. And so, although you say that you have laid out but little, although you rejoice that you have been relieved now that the throng of courtiers has been dismissed: yet if any opportunity of slipping away comes to me, you will invite even the unwilling who turn up. God will provide the feasts: for you, a banquet for the multitude; for himself, a banquet of the poor. The food will be heaped up, with the jar of oil and the vessel of meal still enduring [as for the widow of Zarephath, 1 Kings 17:14-16]. There, even if there be but five loaves, it will suffice to have provided the pair of fish [the feeding of the multitude, Matthew 14:17]. But this you may trust after these proofs of miracles: since Christ will by no means fail the gathering of his own poor, when you have gathered the greater thousands of peoples, you will carry back the more baskets of fragments. With our son, however, who, as you write, deigns to seek a mutual reconciliation, be you the surety. And if he is minded to act with peaceful intent, I will act as a friend; if he asks that the discord be done away with, I desire that the concord be made everlasting. Yet let a man of my order, whom it is not fitting to deceive, when he is about to put his trust in a catholic senator, not begin to feel secure on this score alone — only to end up being caught off his guard.