Vigils Reading

BUILT ON THE COMMON LIFE

By Baldwin of Ford6

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It is by no slight or mean or ordinary authority that the institution of the

common life is supported and sustained. The primitive Church was built on the

common life, and the infancy of the newborn Church began with the common

life. It is from the Apostles themselves that the common life has received its

form and expression, its title of honor, the privilege of its high position, the

testimony of its authority, the protection which defends it, and the foundation

of its hope.

It was the Apostles who were established by God as princes over all the

earth; princes of the people, gathered together with the God of Abraham; strong

gods of the earth who are exceedingly exalted; friends of God, who are greatly

honored and whose principality is greatly strengthened; nobles of heaven,

judges of the earth, to whom was made the promise that they should sit on

twelve thrones and judge the twelve tribes of Israel; members of the [celestial]

senate, who receive swords in their hands to execute vengeance upon the

nations and chastisements upon the people, to bind their kings with fetters and

their nobles with manacles of iron, to execute upon them the prescribed

judgement.

Such men as these, so powerful and so noble, were clothed in virtue from

above, and by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit they undertook to observe the

common life. They confirmed it by their example, sanctioned it by their conduct,

and handed it down to us so that we might also keep it. Thus, through the

common life, we who are set upon the earth can begin to be fashioned in the

6 From Tractate 15 on the Cenobitic or Common Life, by Baldwin of Ford (CF 41:156-157).13

likeness of the angels of God, for in the eternal life to come, we shall be united

with them as their like and their equal. The common life was instituted by

celestial models; it was brought down from heaven and adopted by us from the

heavenly way of life of the holy angels.

If the fact that the common life came down from the angels of God to the

Apostles and from the Apostles to us is still not sufficient to recommend it to

you, then there is a further factor which we can add, something beyond all

praise: the common life flowed out from the Fount of Life itself. I am speaking

now of that fount of which it is written, With you is the fount of life, and in your

light we shall see light. The common life, then, is a sort of radiance from the

eternal light, a sort of emanation from the eternal life, a sort of effluence from

the everlasting fountain, from which flow living waters, springing up into

eternal life.