Letter 156: A letter from Alexandria makes John present despite bodily distance.

Wise indeed was the man who said that the wise person, even if he lives far from the land and I never see him with my eyes, I judge to be a friend. Something like this has taken hold of me, excellent friend: I do not know your appearance, but I am powerfully held by longing. All honor to reputation, through which separated things are joined and what is far away seems present. Through it I have often seen you, have embraced with naked mind your blessed zeal for higher things, and, joined to you by bodiless love, I have little need of bodily signs. When I received your letter sent from Alexander's city, I thought I possessed you yourself. The character of the words and their stern judgment against not making the divine one's concern did not refute the earlier reputation as a sign of your friendship toward me, but showed you to be exactly the man I expected to see: someone who deals with courts by the law of his art and yet can sober up amid the intoxication of affairs. May you also reach the end you expected to obtain. For those who think well, this is the end: return to one's own beginning. It is a terrible thing to abandon the people within us and fail to return well to the source from which we badly flowed away.