CHAPTER XXVII. Service to the needy and sick
In his visitations he adhered to the rule set forth by the Apostle and visited only the widows and orphans in their afflictions. Yet whenever it happened that he was requested by the sick to come in person and pray to the Lord for them and lay his hand upon them, he went without delay. But the monasteries of women he visited only in extreme emergencies. |107
Furthermore he said that in the life and habits of a man of God that rule ought to be observed which he had learned from the practice of Ambrose of holy memory, namely, never to seek a wife for another man, nor to urge anyone who desired to go to war to do so, nor to accept an invitation to a feast in his own community. He gave as his reasons for each of these that if the husband and wife should [ever] happen to quarrel with each other, they might revile him who had brought them together; but clearly, if they themselves had previously agreed to marry, the priest to whom they came ought to offer his services so that that which had been agreed upon and was pleasing to them should be confirmed or blessed; in the second case in order that no one who had been recommended to military service might blame the one who encouraged him if he suffered any ill through his own fault; and finally, lest by frequent participation in the customs peculiar to feasts his vow of temperance should be broken.
He also told us that he had heard of the very wise and godly reply of an illustrious man of blessed memory at the end of his life, and he warmly praised and extolled it. For when the venerable man lay abed in his last illness and the chief members of the church were standing around his couch, watching him as he was about to depart from this world to be with God, they were overcome with grief at the thought that the Church could be deprived of so great and glorious a prelate and of his dispensation of the Word and Sacrament of God. And when they begged him with tears that he should ask of the Lord an extension of his life he said to them: "I have not so lived that I should be ashamed to live among you, yet I do not fear to die, for we have a Lord who is good." And our Augustine, in his later days, used to admire and praise these well-weighed words. For he said that we must understand |109 that Ambrose added this second saying—"I do not fear to die, for we have a Lord who is good"—so that no one might believe that from overconfidence in the purity of his own life he had first said, "I have not so lived that I should be ashamed to live among you." Now this he had said in reference to that which men can judge about a fellow-man; but as for his judgment by the divine justice, he trusted rather in the Lord who is good to whom he also said in the daily prayer: "Forgive us our trespasses."
Moreover toward the end of his life Augustine very frequently repeated in this same connection the words of a certain fellow-bishop and very intimate friend. For when he had gone to visit him several times as he drew near to death and he had indicated by a gesture of his hand that he was soon to depart from this world, Augustine had said to him that he might still be of great benefit to the Church if he lived. But that no one should think he was captivated by a desire for this life he had answered: "If I were never to die it would be well; but if I am ever to die, why not now?" This sentiment was much admired by Augustine and he praised him who had given voice to it—a man who feared God, indeed, but who had been born and brought up in a small town and was not much educated in the art of reading. Compare on the other hand the attitude of a certain ailing bishop of whom the holy martyr Cyprian speaks on this wise in his letter which he wrote on Mortality, saying: "When a certain one of our colleagues and fellow-priests, wearied with infirmity and troubled at the near approach of death, prayed for an extension of his life, there stood by him as he prayed and was even now on the point of death, a youth, venerable in glory and majesty, tall of stature and with radiant countenance. And mortal eyes could scarcely have endured to look upon him as he stood there, |111 had not he who was soon to depart from this world already had power to behold such a being. And not without a certain indignation of soul and voice the youth rebuked him and said: 'You fear to suffer, you do not wish to die; what shall I do with you?'"