Vigils Reading

THE DEEPEST NEED OF ALL

From “The Eternal Promise” by Thomas Kelly2

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Is God your passion? Do you long for Him and rejoice in Him and find

life meaningful only to the degree you are in His Presence and He is in your life?

Do you keep close to the Divine Center, the Inner principle counting all else as

loss? For a depth of commitment such as mild men do not know, I speak in

order that you may hear Him speak in you the same message. Out of such lives

will the world be reborn, will the church be reborn… There will you find rest for

your souls, and power, and peace, and joy unspeakable and full of Glory. Hasten

unto God.

I have spoken with deep feeling, for I am convinced this is the deepest

need of all. We…have become earthy. We are more at home with humans than

we are with God. We have men of burning social passion, but not so many that

burn for God, who long for God, who go down deep into the Waters of His life,

who call to us, “O taste and see that the Lord is good.” Social reformers we have

now, men who are great in their contribution to social thinking… But this epoch

of history is weak in great prophets of the inner life, great voices who cry in the

wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord within your hearts.”…

Strip monasticism; strip it of its retreat behind walls from much human

need… and there is left, in Bernard of Clairvaux and Francis of Assisi, a God-

hunger, and completeness of renunciation of all else in the world in comparison

with the life that is hid with Christ in God. Such a passion for God as leads

men…to leave father and mother and all the world…until deep relations with

God have been found… Such men and women, not with social techniques, but

with God-motivations born out of deep immersion in the ocean of the Love of

God… Down at the base of life, for all such people, would be a fellowship in a

common Life which is the Light within every man who is kindled and enflamed

by God.

Do not misunderstand me. There is a practice of the presence of God

which is done on the run, in the busiest of days… Little prayers and

communion; ejaculation of surrender and joy and exaltation… And most of our

lives can be lived this way, as divine conversation of our soul with God, going

on behind the scenes all the time. But then come crucial periods in life when the

quest for God grows hot, when the hot breath of the Hound of Heaven is at our

heels, when the heart cries out, “Give me the Presence or I die.” And these are

the times when we get beneath the conventional mildness of average religiosity,

and find Him more fully, who is dearer than life itself. From these men and

women will come the profound return to religion…the love of God and neighbor,

which is so desperately needed.

2 Kelly, Thomas. The Eternal Promise. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1966. 116-118.5