VI.  As you see, He offers you a Shepherd; for this is what your Good Shepherd, Nicetas says that this refers to S. Gregory’s Father, who had ordained him Priest, to assist him in the Cure of Souls, and whose one desire was that his Son might succeed him in the Bishopric. who lays down his life for his sheep, is hoping and praying for, and he asks from you his subjects; and he gives you himself double instead of single, and makes the staff of his old age a staff for your spirit.  And he adds to the inanimate temple a living one; to that exceedingly beautiful and heavenly shrine, this poor and small one, S. Gregory’s father had, according to the same authority, rebuilt the Church at Nazianus with great splendour.  He thinks that the expression “heavenly” may refer to the great dome.  The “living temple” is of course S. Gregory himself. yet to him of great value, and built too with much sweat and many labours.  Would that I could say it is worthy of his labours.  And he places at your disposal all that belongs to him (O great generosity!—or it would be truer to say, O fatherly love!) his hoar hairs, his youth, the temple, the high priest, the testator, the heir, the discourses which you were longing for; and of these not such as are vain and poured out into the air, and which reach no further than the outward ear; but those which the Spirit writes and engraves on tables of stone, or of flesh, not merely superficially graven, nor easily to be rubbed off, but marked very deep, not with ink, but with grace.