41. To William the Abbot and to the community of Bec

OF EEC.

Brother Anselm, called the archbishop, to his masters and brothers the Lord Abbot William and the holy community of Bec serving God under him: may the divine grace and blessing ever lead you to all good and defend you from all evil.

If my heart would display to you at length the love it bears you, much parchment would not suffice; and if I wish to express it briefly that would never satisfy my affection. But in this perplexity I am consoled by your own feelings, whereby you realise in yourselves how often and how much I have missed you, and how as long as I lived with you I sought to be of some use to you: and if you do not all know this by experience, because God has increased your numbers since I left you, learn it from those who know it and have proved it. Accordingly let your love never doubt that as I loved the root, so I do the branches however much they may be multiplied, and all the sons of my mother, both the first-born and those born after me, do I embrace in my heart and love as sons of the same mother. Therefore I beseech and adjure you all not to let the recollection and love of me grow weak in the hearts of those who have it, and to awaken and sustain it in the minds of those who have not known me. For although in the body I am absent with you, yet my nest, I mean the Church of Bec, with all its chickens I bear always about with me in my heart, and in my prayers and in every righteous longing, if any such I have, plead for them before God. But for me let the depth of your charity pray, and may divine goodness cause that the diligence of your prayers for me may not abate. Although your minds are inflamed with good desires, yet since the well-intentioned do not dislike to hear what they love, I pray, adjure, advise, counsel you ever to stretch forth to better things, and never to sink back from those to which God has advanced you. May mutual love in God ever burn within you, may peace and concord, with truth, continually dwell in your mind; may humble obedience in all your actions please God, and observance of your vow and avoidance of every fault ever be actively fervent. Of these things remind each other, hold unfailingly to these. This I pray, I choose, I desire for you; this may He from whom cometh all good Him self give you with His full and perpetual blessing. Amen.