Vigils Reading

THINK OF YOURSELF IN HUMILITY

From a sermon by Blessed Guerric of Igny2

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Now you, blessed sinner, although not blessed because a sinner but

because repentant of sin, what encouragement was yours in your father’s

embrace and his kiss, when he restored his love to you of whom he had almost

despaired, when he made your heart clean again and overwhelmed you with the

joy of your salvation.

“And how,” he says, “shall speech explain what the mind cannot contain?”

Unspeakable are the groans and inexplicable the affections to which the spirit

gives birth as if impregnated by the incomprehensible. The human heart is too

narrow for them and therefore it is torn and pours itself out. The ardor, which

it conceives but cannot contain, it breathes forth and spreads abroad in what

ways it can, by tears, groans, sighs. These things are better known to people who

have tasted them often and abundantly.

Now also, I say, when you have been released after those embraces and

kisses, when you think over what has passed between you and him, when you

consider what your cause was and how it was judged by him, bearing in mind

on the one hand the abundance of your offence, on the other hand the

superabundance of his grace, to what, I ask, does your thought give birth in you?

“Naught but this”, he says, “that an unutterable fire blazes out in my

meditation, on the one hand for sorrow and shame, on the other hand for joy

and love. I would not consider myself a man but a stone if I were so hard-hearted

as not to grieve or be ashamed, or so wicked and ungrateful as not to be wholly

liquefied for joy or love of that father.”

Keep then, O happy sinner, keep carefully and watchfully this spirit of

yours, this most fitting affection of humility and devotion by which you may

always think of yourself in humility and of the Lord in goodness. There is

nothing greater than it among the gifts of the Holy Spirit, nothing more precious

in the treasures of God, nothing more holy among all the charisms, nothing

more health giving in all the sacraments….

2 Guerric of Igny – Liturgical Sermons – vol. 1 – CF #8 _ Cistercian Publications – Spencer, MA – 1970 p 143.5