To Leander, Bishop of Seville, on King Reccared and the Immersions of Baptism

Gregory to Leander, and so on. [a]

I would have liked to answer your letters with my mind fully on them, if I were not so worn down by the labor of my pastoral charge that I feel more like weeping than saying anything. Your reverence will take care to understand this, and to make allowance for it in the very wording of my letters, when I write carelessly to one whom I love so much. For in this place I am tossed by such waves of this world that I cannot by any means steer into port the old and rotten ship whose helm, by the hidden arrangement of God, I have taken. Now the waves rush in from in front, now heaps of foaming sea swell up at the side, now the storm follows on from behind. Troubled in the midst of all this, I am forced sometimes to steer straight into the face of the oncoming waters, and sometimes to turn the ship aside and dodge the threatening waves at a slant. I groan, because I feel that through my negligence the bilge water of vices is rising, and as the storm strikes the vessel violently, its rotten planks already sound of shipwreck. With tears I remember how I have lost the calm shore of my rest, and with sighs I look at the land which, with the winds of business blowing against me, I still cannot reach. If, then, you love me, dearest brother, stretch out to me the hand of your prayer in the midst of these waves, so that by helping me in my labors you may, in return for the kindness, be the stronger in your own.

I cannot fully put into words, however, my joy on learning that our common son, the most glorious King Reccared, has been converted with complete devotion to the catholic faith. By describing his character to me in your letters you have made me love him, though I do not know him. But since you know the wiles of the ancient enemy, how he prepares a still fiercer war against those who have conquered, let your holiness watch over him all the more carefully. May he complete what he has begun so well, and not lift himself up for the good works he has done. May he keep, by the merits of his life as well, the faith he has come to know, and show by his works that he is a citizen of the eternal kingdom, so that after a course of many years he may pass from kingdom to kingdom. [c]

As for triple immersion in baptism, no truer answer can be given than what you have yourself felt to be right: that where there is one faith, a difference of custom does no harm to holy church. When we immerse three times, we signify the sacraments of the three days’ burial, so that when the infant is lifted out of the water the third time, the resurrection after a space of three days is expressed. Or if anyone should perhaps think that this is done out of reverence for the supreme Trinity, even so there is no objection to immersing the person being baptized in the water once. For since there is one substance in three hypostases, it cannot be blameworthy in any way to immerse the infant in baptism either three times or once, since three immersions can signify the Trinity of persons, and one the oneness of the Godhead. But since up to now it has been the custom of heretics to immerse infants three times in baptism, I am of the opinion that this should not be done among you. Otherwise, while they count the immersions, they may divide the Godhead, and while they go on doing as they have been used to doing, they may boast that they have got the better of our custom. I am also sending to your fraternity, so very dear to me, the volumes listed in a note below. You say in your letter that you would like to have what I spoke in exposition of the blessed Job. Since it was weak in both thought and language as I delivered it in homilies, I have tried as best I could to change it into the form of a treatise, and the scribes are now writing it out. If I were not hampered by the haste of the bearer of this letter, I would have liked to send you the whole of it with nothing missing, especially since I have written this very work for your reverence, so that I may be seen to have sweated in my labors for the one I love above all others. Besides, if you find time free from your church duties, you already know how it is with me: though absent in body, I see you always present with me, for I carry the image of your face stamped deep within my heart. Given in the month of May. [d]