A Friendly No

Quote from Letter 4,38 to Marcellus, a scholastic. July 594.

Our love of your Glory is always so alive in our heart that the absence of your body does not keep you away at al. For although you are far from our earthly eyes you are never out of our mind's sight. For our wish frequently drives us eagerly to writing letters, but our occupation does not allow it. And so, while your Nobility's experience may not be ignorant of the weighty occupations in which out office is involved, you should consider it due to necessity, not to our wishes, that we sometimes have a break from the duty of writing letters.
But because your Glory in your letter wants to hear from us later, we do not see with what excuse we can defend ourselves. Therefore, in this matter I should have defended myself with silence alone, but the ardor of my love did not let my tongue keep quiet.
Therefore, we greet you with all our affection and sweetness, and admit that we are greatly saddened. For you have wished to seek from us those things over which, while we are unable to satisfy your wish since reason disapproves, we may seem to sadden you, which we do not wish.

Cited from: The Letters of Gregory the Great, trans. John R.C. Martyn (Toronto: PIMS, 2004), I: 318