Letter 2055: Just as I received the letter of Your Holiness through the venerable Elogius with great joy, so I am glad to send...

55. Ruricius to Bishop Aprunculus, greetings. Just as I received the letter of your Holiness with rejoicing through the venerable man Elogius, so I gladly send off this one as he returns. By these lines I pay to your Apostleship the due service of a wish for your well-being, and at the same time I beg that you would deign to pray for us, and to ask this of our common Lord with special earnestness: that at last, at long last, we may be found worthy to come together into one place and to see each other, so that the charity which-according to the Lord's own sentence-has, in our breasts, grown cold through absence (which is the worse thing), may through presence be roused up again from its slumbering ashes, and that by living voices, as though by fresh breaths, the revived fire of our old love may be rekindled-which, after the manner and power of that fire which the Lord sent upon the earth, may both burn away the thorns of our negligence and sloth by the force of its mighty nature, and illuminate the darkness of our sleeping heart.

LV. RURICIUS APRUNCULO EPISCOPO SALUTEM. Sicut litteras sanctitatis uestrae per uirum uenerabilem Elogium cum gratulatione suscepi, ita has eodem redeunte libenter emisi. quibus apostolatui uestro debitum dependo sospitationis officium simulque deposco, ut pro nobis orare dignemini et id a communi domino peculiarius postulare, ut iam tandem aliquando in unum uenire et nos uidere mereamur, ut caritas, quae secundum sententiam dominicam in pectoribus nostris per absentiam, quod peius est, refrixit, per praesentiam iterum in sopitis cineribus suscitetur et uiuis uocibus quasi nouis flatibus ueteris amoris rediuiuum reparetur incendium, quod more atque uirtute ignis illius, quem dominus misit in terram, et spinas neglegentiae nostrae atque desidiae ui naturae potentis exurat et tenebras dormientis cordis inluminet.