Vigils Reading

OF TOMBS AND GARDENS

From the writing of Blessed Guerric of Igny

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Whose voice is fittingly heard in the assembly of brethren and friends,

that is, in the Church of the saints, the Bridegroom himself indicates when he

says: “You who dwell in the gardens, friends are listening; let me hear your

voice.”

It is not I to whom this should be said; I am not one who dwells in gardens

—I seem to myself rather to be of those who dwell in tombs. For what are the

bodies of sinners but tombs of the dead. Therefore they who are devoted to their

bodies dwell not in gardens, but in tombs and exasperate God until he who leads

forth prisoners in strength cries with a loud voice: “Lazarus, come forth”; and he

gives his disciples the command: “Loose him and let him go free.”

To be sure there is a great difference between tombs and gardens. The

former are full of every filth and of dead men’s bones, the latter are full of

flowers or fruits in all their sweetness and grace. What if tombs are sometimes

seen in gardens – for the Lord was buried in a garden?

If there are tombs in a garden surely there are not gardens in tombs. Yet

perhaps there are, but in the tombs of the just. There indeed a certain most

agreeable pleasantness which belongs to gardens will flourish as in spring, the

springtime, that is, of their resurrection when their flesh will blossom again.

Not only the bones of the just man will sprout like grass, but also the whole of the

just man will sprout like a lily and bloom forever before the Lord.

Not so the godless, not so. They are buried with the burial of an ass.

Without any hope of a better resurrection, they are subject to corruption, as a

foretaste of their future fate. Concerning their tombs I had begun to say that as

great as is the difference between their filth and the beauty of gardens in flower,

incomparably greater is the difference between the delight of spiritual men and

the pleasure of carnal joys.

It is you then, if I am not mistaken, who dwell in gardens, you who

meditate on the law of the Lord day and night” and walk about in as many

gardens as you read books, pick as many apples as you select fine thoughts. And

blessed are you for whom all the apples, both old and new, are kept, that is, for

whom the words of the prophets, evangelists and Apostles are laid up, so that to

each of you those words of the Bride to the Bridegroom seem to be said: “All the

apples, new and old, my Beloved, I have kept for you.”