Deep Felt Concerns

Letter 2,44 - to Natalis, bishop of Salona. July 592

"However, I was really delighted by your letter, as you say that you are making a study of exhortation. For I know that you are wisely showing the concern of your order in this, it you take care to attract others also to the Creator.
But as in the same place you say you are not the same as I am, after my initial joy, you at once make me sad. For I think that my praises are being sunk for the sake of mockery, and I recognize very little truth in them.
Yet I offer thanks to almighty God that through you even heretics are brought back to the Holy Church. But it is necessary for you to be concerned that those too, who are contained within the bosom of the Holy Church, live in such a way that they do not indulge in the depraved morality of their adversaries. For if they are slaves to the passions and pleasures of the world, and not to divine desire, then alien sons are nurtured within the Church's bosom.
But as for the fact that you admit being able to ignore the ecclesiastical orders, I also know all that concerns you in this matter, and for that reason I am extremely unhappy. For, as you know the order of things, you have offended me with full knowledge, which makes it worse.


Cited from: The Letters of Gregory the Great, trans. John R.C. Martyn (Toronto: PIMS, 2004), I: 223.