True Faith And Eternal Life

Letter 1,17 - to all the bishops of Italy. January 591.

"The most wicked Autharit (..) prohibited the children of the Lpmbards from being baptized into the Catholic faith (..) so it is right that your Fraternity should advice all the Lombards in your dioceses that,in view of the grim pestilence which is threatening everywhere, they should reconcile those same children of theirs, who were baptized in the Arian heresy, to the Catholic faith, so as to placate the anger of our almighty Lord.
Therefore, warn those whom you can, with whatever courage you can, bring them to the true faith, and constantly preach eternal life to them (..)."

Cited from: The Letters of Gregory the Great, trans. John R.C. Martyn (Toronto: PIMS, 2004), I: 131.

A Word of Comfort

Letter 1,11 - to the patrician Clementina. December 590.

"And indeed our sadness at the loss of our friends ought to be more tolerable, in as far as the condition of mortality demands that we lose them. And yet he is a powerful consolation for the lost support of mortal life, who in allowing himself to be removed from us, granted that even he himself take the place which has been left empty, as our comforter."

Cited from: The Letters of Gregory the Great, trans. John R.C. Martyn (Toronto: PIMS, 2004), I: 129.