Vigils Reading

NOW IS THE TIME

OF SALVATION

From a sermon by St Aelred of Rievaulx

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Shake yourself from the dust, rouse yourself, sit up, O Jerusalem. Break

the chains off your neck captive daughter of Zion. Behold how sweetly, how

affectionately the heavenly spouse desires to reconcile the church to himself.

The loving father exhorts his daughter to salvation, her who was prostrate in the

dust for a long time. Therefore she is admonished by the prophet to rise from the

dust, break her chains, go out from captivity.

Dust is human frailty when no virtue has been strengthened, Dust is also

temporary wealth which lightly passes away and flies as though from the face of

the wind. Wretched human beings seek and do not find blessedness in this dust.

It takes away our eyesight, because the cupidity of temporary wealth blinds our

minds… We cannot rise while we are heavy with dust. Sins weigh down a soul;

temporary desires also weigh us down. Those who are weighed down are

overwhelmed. Those who are burdened try in vain to rise up… Therefore, Shake

yourself from the dust, Jerusalem; rouse yourself and sit up. We must sit, not

upright through pride, not prostrating through ruin, according to the saying of

David: Beside the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept. Certainly beside the

transitory and temporary things of this world, not mixed up with them but

trampling them under foot, we must sit repenting and weeping for all our sins.

In the first creation, the human was made free, but afterwards he sold

himself to the devil. The devil’s money with which he buys humans is sin… The

devil deceived humankind by promising what he did not pay, saying, You shall

be as gods, knowing good and evil. The human obeyed; he ate the forbidden

fruit, and he received no other recompense except sin. And so he was sold for

nothing. After the human surrendered, the devil…put chains on his neck.

Chains are sins, and the unfortunate sinner adds sin to sin… That is why Isaiah

says, Woe to you who drag iniquity with ropes of vanity, and drag sin like the

chain of a cart. These are the ropes with which sinners shall be bound in the

end…

Break the chains off your neck, captive daughter of Zion. Break them by

repentance, destroy them by making satisfaction. Shake your neck from the

devil’s yoke and submit yourself to the yoke of Christ, whose yoke is light and

burden sweet. Escape from the prison. The price has been given for you. The

enemy cannot hold you back any longer, if you are willing to escape. Destroy the

rope that trails behind you, lest the devil have the means to draw you…

As the Lord would say, “You had not merited that I should redeem you,

because you have sold yourself to the devil gratis and for nothing, and yet I shall

redeem you, not with money, because the money of the whole world cannot

redeem you, but rather with the price of my blood…” You are that bride

redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. You are those lying in the dust, to whom it

is said, Rise up! You are those captives who are ordered to escape. Behold now is

the time of salvation.

Therefore so that we might quickly and easily obtain pardon and find

mercy, let us seek God more attentively and carefully in this sacred fasting

through true contrition and through pure confession and worthy satisfaction.