that profound darkness, my mother, Thy faithful one, weeping to Thee
for me, more than mothers weep the bodily deaths of their children.
For she, by that faith and spirit which she had from Thee, discerned
the death wherein I lay, and Thou heardest her, O Lord; Thou
heardest her, and despisedst not her tears, when streaming down,
they watered the ground under her eyes in every place where she
prayed; yea Thou heardest her. For whence was that dream whereby
Thou comfortedst her; so that she allowed me to live with her, and
to eat at the same table in the house, which she had begun to shrink
from, abhorring and detesting the blasphemies of my error? For she saw
herself standing on a certain wooden rule, and a shining youth
coming towards her, cheerful and smiling upon her, herself grieving,
and overwhelmed with grief. But he having (in order to instruct, as is
their wont not to be instructed) enquired of her the causes of her
grief and daily tears, and she answering that she was bewailing my
perdition, he bade her rest contented, and told her to look and
observe, "That where she was, there was I also." And when she
looked, she saw me standing by her in the same rule. Whence was
this, but that Thine ears were towards her heart? O Thou Good
omnipotent, who so carest for every one of us, as if Thou caredst
for him only; and so for all, as if they were but one!

Whence was this also, that when she had told me this vision, and I
would fain bend it to mean, "That she rather should not despair of
being one day what I was"; she presently, without any hesitation,
replies: "No; for it was not told me that, 'where he, there thou
also'; but 'where thou, there he also'?" I confess to Thee, O Lord,
that to the best of my remembrance (and I have oft spoken of this),
that Thy answer, through my waking mother, -that she was not perplexed
by the plausibility of my false interpretation, and so quickly saw