Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Not even that species of impatience is excused which arises over the loss of our own dead, where some plea of grief seeks to defend it. For the apostle's warning must be given priority, where he says: Do not grieve over the falling-asleep of anyone, as the nations do, who have no hope. And rightly so: for believing in Christ's resurrection, we believe also in our own — that very resurrection for the sake of which he underwent both death and rising again. So, once the resurrection of the dead stands settled, grief over death has no place, and impatience of grief has none either. Why should you grieve, if you do not believe he has perished? Why bear it with impatience that one you believe will return has meanwhile been withdrawn from you? What you think is death is really a journey. He who goes ahead is not to be mourned, but plainly to be missed — and even that longing must be tempered by patience: why should you take it immoderately hard that one has gone on ahead whom you will shortly follow? Besides, impatience in such a case casts an ill omen on our hope and betrays our faith, and we do wrong to Christ himself when we cannot calmly accept that those he has summoned away are, as it were, objects of pity. I long, says the apostle, to be received already, and to be with the Lord. How much better a wish that shows! If, then, we grieve with impatience when others attain it, we are refusing, in effect, the very thing Christians wish for themselves!