Psalms 120:5

"Alas, that my sojourning has become far off!" [Psalm 120:5]. It has departed far from You: my pilgrimage has become a far one. I have not yet reached that country, where I shall live with no wicked person; I have not yet reached that company of Angels, where I shall not fear offenses. But why am I not as yet there? Because sojourning is pilgrimage. He is called a sojourner who dwells in a foreign land, not in his own country. And when is it far off? Sometimes, my brethren, when a man goes abroad, he lives among better persons, than he would perhaps live with in his own country: but it is not thus, when we go afar from that heavenly Jerusalem. For a man changes his country, and this foreign sojourn is sometimes good for him; in travelling he finds faithful friends, whom he could not find in his own country. He had enemies, so that he was driven from his country; and when he travelled, he found what he had not in his country. Such is not that country Jerusalem, where all are good: whoever travels away from thence, is among the evil; nor can he depart from the wicked, save when he shall return to the company of Angels, so as to be where he was before he travelled. There all are righteous and holy, who enjoy the word of God without reading, without letters: for what is written to us through pages, they perceive there through the Face of God. What a country! A great country indeed, and wretched are the wanderers from that country.

But why should that be hard to bear which we must one day ourselves endure? And why do we grieve for the dead? We are not born to live forever. Abraham, Moses and Isaiah, Peter, James and John, Paul, the "chosen vessel," and even the Son of God have all died; and are we vexed when a soul leaves its earthly tenement? Perhaps he is taken away, "lest wickedness should alter his understanding … for his soul pleased the Lord; therefore he hastened to take him away from the people"—lest in life's long journey he should lose his way in some trackless maze. We should indeed mourn for the dead, but only for one whom Gehenna receives, whom Tartarus devours and for whose punishment the eternal fire burns. But we who, in departing, are accompanied by an escort of angels and met by Christ, should rather grieve that we have to tarry yet longer in this tabernacle of death. For "while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord." Our one longing should be that expressed by the psalmist: "Woe is me that my pilgrimage is prolonged, that I have dwelled with them who dwell in Kedar, that my soul has made a far pilgrimage." Kedar means darkness, and darkness stands for this present world (for, we are told, "the light shines in darkness; and the darkness comprehends it not"). Therefore we should congratulate our dear Blaesilla, that she has passed from darkness to light, and has in the first flush of her dawning faith received the crown of her completed work. Had she been cut off (as I pray that none may be) while her thoughts were full of worldly desires and passing pleasures, then mourning would indeed have been her due, and no tears shed for her would have been too many. As it is, by the mercy of Christ she, four months ago, renewed her baptism in her vow of widowhood, and for the rest of her days spurned the world and thought only of the religious life.