Letter 2011: I returned from the feast to which I had traveled with the greatest haste.

I returned, indeed with the utmost haste, from the festival to which I had set out. But because you had already, with Christ as your guide, gone forth, I am made glad, as we trust in God, by your return, yet I am rendered immoderately stunned by your departure, since, namely, at the very return of the prosperity that is to follow, I was not found worthy to fall at my lord's knees, to be soothed by the kisses of your hand, and to adore in that holy breast the seat of our faith. Nor, however, would I dare to say that this slipped away from me through some defrauding sin: lest I be rendered ungrateful to the divine grace which presents your person to me in such a way. For although it is a general and just thing for all to strive after what we owe to the honoring of your glory, I rejoice that I have received this in particular: that, since the impossibility of the thing keeps with itself the debt of service owed by me toward the effecting of your wishes, that debt need not be discharged in person, if devotion judges that it be expended in your presence. But I alone am struck with loss, as often as I am not found worthy to share in my consolation: as often as the kindled heat of tribulations is shut up within me alone, excluded from the refreshment of your conversation: as often as the proven hand of that physician does not soothe my inner griefs. He who, zealous in devotion to guard His servant amid such things, persisting in power, when it would be enough for Him, if He wished to offer Himself as a helper, deigns also to add the labor. But I presume upon the divine majesty that regard for me will cling the more tenaciously to your thoughts, in the measure that the love of the catholic law has poured Him into you. Under the holy increase of this occasion it will be as impossible for you to cast off the servant whom you have taken up, as not to love the Lord whom you have come to know. As for what remains: go forth fortunate, march safe, return as victors. Set your faith among the weapons; admonish the divine promise by promising; demand the aids of heaven with prayers; arm your javelins with vows. God will grant that the trophies of the wars, which He Himself will bestow upon you, I may heap up with the homage of whatever speech, under the theme of that more precious triumph which I have long awaited.