As you daily provide food for your bodies to keep them from failing, so let your good works be the daily nourishment of your hearts. The body is fed with food, the spirit sustained with good works. You should not deny to your soul, which will live forever, what you grant to your body which is going to die. If ever a sudden fire destroys a dwelling, and its owner seizes what he values and flees, he counts as gain whatever he takes with him out of the flames. You can see that a fire of calamities is burning up the world, and the end, which is now near, is like a fire, laying waste everything in it that appeared delightful. Therefore, my friend believe it the greatest gain if you carry off anything from it, if you take anything with you as you flee, if, by bestowing it as an everlasting recompense on yourselves, you save what could have perished had it remained. In truth we lose all our earthly possessions if we save them, but we save them by yielding them well. Time is quickly running out. Let us prepare with haste for seeing our Judge soon; our good deeds are impelling us towards him with great urgency.
Saint Gregory the Great (died 604) was one of the most important popes and influential writers of the Middle Ages.
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