Philosophy—A Preparation for Death?

The things that are painful for you are truly painful for us, too. For we make common property of all that belongs to friends, whether good or otherwise—this, surely, is the definition of friendship. Still, if we must philosophize a little about these things and discuss with you what seems right (and surely we must, as the law of friendship demands!), then I do not wish—I do not suppose it is a good thing—that you, Philagrius, a person unusually well schooled in the things of God, should experience the same feelings as ordinary people, or succumb to the weakness that affects your body, or that you should lament over your suffering as something incurable. You must find in your vulnerability a place to philosophize, and purify your mind now more than ever, and show yourself stronger than the things that hold you in check, and consider this illness a profitable training—namely, to look down on the body and bodily things, and on all that is fleeting and disturbing and passing away, and so to become completely focused on what lies above, to live not for this present world but for the world to come, making this life here what Plato calls “a preparation for death,” and loosing the soul, as far as possible, from what, in his words, we call either its body or its prison. If you are a philosopher about these things, my good friend, and live in this frame of mind, you yourself will draw the greatest profit; and you will put our mind at ease about you, and will teach ordinary people to become philosophers about their sufferings. In addition, you will make no small gain—if this should matter to you at all—in being admired by everyone.

An excerpt from Gregory the Theologian’s To Philagrius (Letter 31). Translated by Brian E. Daley in Gregory of Nazianzus (London: Routledge, 2006), 176.