Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vol. LIV: Augustini Epistulae Pars I

a sudden burning of fevers carried off Innocentius, a part of my soul. Now I enjoy my time with our Evagrius, the only and entire light left to me, to whose labor I, always an invalid, have added as a burden. Hylas was with us, the servant of holy Melania, who by the purity of his morals had washed away the stain of servitude; and he is still tearing open a wound that has not yet healed. But because we are forbidden by the voice of the apostle to grieve for those who are asleep, cf. 1 Thessalonians 4:12 and an excessive power of sorrow has been tempered by the arrival of joyful news, we inform you, so that if you do not know, you may learn, and if you knew before, we may rejoice together.

4. Your Bonosus, or rather mine, and to speak more truly, ours, is already ascending the ladder foreseen by Jacob in his dream: he carries his cross and does not think of tomorrow, nor does he look behind him. cf. Genesis 28:12; Matthew 16:24; 6:34 He sows in tears so that he may reap in joy, and by the sacrament of Moses, he has suspended the serpent in the desert. cf. Numbers 21:9 Let miracles invented by fictions of the Greek and Roman style yield to this truth. Behold, a boy educated with us in the arts of an honest age, to whom wealth was abundant and dignity foremost among his peers, has settled—having spurned his mother, sisters, and a brother most dear to him—on an island surrounded by the sounding sea, shipwrecked, where harsh crags and bare rocks and solitude are a terror, as a kind of new settler of paradise. No farmer is there, no monk...