To the Deaconess Casiana, on the Death of Her Son

If I had considered only how great your sorrow is, I would have put off writing for a little while, to make time my ally in trying to heal it. But I know the good sense of Your Piety, and so I venture to offer you some words of comfort, drawn partly from human nature and partly from divine Scripture. For our nature is frail, and all of life is full of such calamities. And the Governor and Ruler of the whole world, the Lord who wisely orders our affairs, gives us comfort of many kinds through his divine oracles; the writings of the holy evangelists and the divine sayings of the blessed prophets are full of it. But I am sure there is no need to gather these passages and put them before Your Piety. You have been brought up from the beginning on the inspired word, you rule your life by it, and you need no other teaching. Yet I do implore you to remember the words that charge us to master our feelings, that promise us eternal life, that proclaim the destruction of death, and that announce the resurrection of us all together. Besides all this, or rather before all this, I ask you to reflect that the one who ordered these things to be so is the Lord, and that he is a Lord all-wise and all-good, who knows exactly what is best for us and guides all our life to that end. Sometimes death is better than life, and what seems distressing is really more pleasant than imagined joys. I beg Your Piety to accept the comfort offered by my humble self, so that by bearing your pain nobly you may serve the Lord of all, and give men as well as women an example of true wisdom. Everyone will admire the strength of mind that has bravely borne the attack of grief, and broken the force of its violent assault by the greatness of its resolve. And we are not without great comfort in the living likenesses of your departed son, for he has left behind children worthy of deep affection, who may be able to check the excess of our sorrow. [a] Finally, I implore you to remember in your grief how much your bodily weakness can bear, and not to add to your sufferings by mourning too much. And I implore our Lord, out of his boundless riches, to give you reason for comfort.