75. And in truth what reason is there to lament Malachy immoderately, as though his _death_ was not _precious_,[908] as though it was not rather sleep than death, as though it was not the port of death and the portal of life?[909] _Our friend_ Malachy _sleepeth_;[910] and I, must I mourn? such mourning is based on custom, not on reason. If the Lord _hath given His beloved one sleep_, and such sleep, in which there is _an heritage of the Lord_, even _children, and the reward, the fruit of the womb_,[911] which of these things seems to call for weeping? Must I weep for him who has escaped from weeping? He rejoices, he triumphs, he has been brought _into the joy of his Lord_,[912] and I, must I lament for him? I desire these things for myself, I do not grudge them to him. Meanwhile the obsequies are prepared, the sacrifice is offered for him,[913] all is performed according to custom with the greatest devotion. There stood some way off a boy whose arm hung by his side dead, rather burdensome to him than useful. When I discovered him I signed to him to come near, and taking his withered hand I laid it on the hand of the bishop, and it restored it to life. For in truth _the grace of healings_[914] lived in the dead; and his hand was to the dead hand what Elisha was to the dead man.[915] The boy _had come from far_[916] and the hand which he brought hanging down, he carried back whole to his own country. Now, all things having been duly accomplished in the very oratory of Saint Mary, Mother of God, _in which he was well pleased_,[917] Malachy is carried to his burial[918] in the eleven hundred and forty-eighth year from the Incarnation of the Lord, on the fourth of the Nones of November.[919] Thine, good Jesus, is _the deposit_ which has been committed to us,[920] Thine is the treasure which is laid up with us.[921] We _keep_ it[922] to be given back at the time when Thou shalt see fit to recall it; only that he may not go forth without his comrades, but that him whom we have had as our guest we may have also as our leader, when we _shall reign_ with Thee, and with him also, _for ever and ever_.[923] Amen. FOOTNOTES: [821] _I.e._ "If I die in Ireland." [822] In Armagh. See §§ 19, 65. [823] All Souls' Day, November 2. [824] Matt. v. 18. [825] Ps. xlviii. 8. [826] Note that the pall is called a sacrament. [827] See § 38. [828] Bernard Paganelli, a monk of Clairvaux, was sent to Rome by St. Bernard at the request of Innocent II. and was appointed abbot of the monastery of St. Anastasius. On the death of Lucius II. he was elected Pope, February 15, 1144, and assumed the title of Eugenius III. (H. K. Mann, _Lives of the Popes_, ix. 131 ff.) [829] Eugenius left Viterbo at the beginning of 1147. He was at Lyons in March, and at Troyes on April 10 (Jaffé, p. 624 ff.; Mann, ix. 185).