Vigils Reading

THE SOUL’S ENCOUNTER WITH GOD

From the writings of Blessed Madeleine Delbrêl3

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We do not need to find silence; we already have it. The day we lack silence is the day we have not learned how to keep it. All the noises around us cause much less disturbance than we ourselves do. The real noise is the echo things make within us… Silence is the place where the Word of God dwells; if we limit ourselves to repeating this word, then we can speak without ceasing to be silent… We make our souls into so many caves of silence wherein the word of God can dwell and resound…

Encountering him in all places is what creates our solitude. For us, being truly alone means sharing in God’s solitude. God is so great that nothing can find room anywhere else but within him. For us, the whole world is like a face-to-face meeting with the one whom we cannot escape… We encounter his imprint on the earth. We encounter his Providence in the laws of science. We encounter Christ in all these “little ones who are his own”… We encounter Christ rejected, in the sin that wears a thousand faces. How could we possibly have the heart to mock these people or to hate them, this multitude of sinners with whom we rub shoulders? The solitude of God in fraternal charity; it is Christ serving Christ, Christ in the one who is serving and Christ in the one who is being served…

We know that only obedience can root us in his death… The tiny circumstances of life are faithful… they do not leave us alone for a moment; and the “yeses” we have to say to them follow continuously, one after the other. When we surrender to them without resistance we find ourselves wonderfully liberated from ourselves. We float in Providence like a cork on the ocean waters…

When we live with others, obedience also means we set aside our own tastes and leave things in the place others have put them. In this way, life becomes an epic film in slow motion. It does not make our head spin. It does not take our breath away. Little by little, thread by thread, it eats away at the old man’s frame, which cannot be mended and must be made new from the ground up. When we thus become accustomed to giving up our will to so many tiny things, we will no longer find it hard… And our hope is that death, too, will be easy. It will not be a big ordeal, but rather the outcome of small ordinary sufferings, to which we have given our assent as they passed, one after the other…

We believe that doing little things with God and as God does is as much a way of loving him as doing great deeds for him. Besides, we’re not very well in- formed about the greatness of our acts. There are nevertheless two things we know for sure: first, whatever we do can’t help but be small; and second, whatever God does is great. And so we go about our activities with a sense of great peace. We know that all our work consists in not shifting about under grace; in not choosing what we would do; and that it is God who acts through us… Each docile act makes us receive God totally and give God totally, in a great freedom of spirit.

And thus life becomes a celebration. Each tiny act is an extraordinary event, in which heaven is given to us, in which we are able to give heaven to others. It makes no difference what we do, whether we take in hand a broom or a pen. Whether we speak or keep silent. Whether we are sewing or holding a meeting, caring for a sick person or tapping away at the typewriter. Whatever it is, it’s just the outer shell of an amazing inner reality: the soul’s encounter with God, renewed at each moment, in which, at each moment, the soul grows in grace and becomes ever more beautiful for her God