Vigils Reading

KEEP GUARD

ON YOURSELF

From “The Golden Epistle” by William of St Thierry

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In order that your solitude may not appall you and that you may dwell the

more safely in your cell three guardians have been assigned to you: God, your

conscience and your spiritual father. To God you owe devotion and the entire

gift of yourself; to your conscience the respect which will make you ashamed to

sin in its presence; to your spiritual father the obedience of charity and recourse

in everything…

I will add a fourth and provide you with a monitor for as long as you are

small and have not learned to keep the presence of God before your mind…

Choose for yourself a man whose life is such that it will serve as a model to

impress upon your heart, one whom you will so revere that whenever you think

of him you will rise up because of the respect you feel for him and put yourself in

order. Think of him as if he were present and let the charity you feel for one

another act in you to correct all that needs to be corrected, while your solitude

suffers no infringement of its secret. Let him be present to you whenever you

wish and let him come sometimes when you would have preferred him to stay

away. The thought of his holy severity will make it seem as if he were rebuking

you; the thought of his kindness and goodness will bring you consolation; the

purity and sanctity of his life will set you a good example. For you will be driven

to correct even all your thoughts, as if they were open to his gaze and visited by

his rebuke, when you consider that he is watching.

So, as the Apostle bids: “Keep guard on yourself” with the greatest care

and, in order to have your eyes always on yourself, turn your gaze away from all

else. The eye is a remarkable instrument of the body – if only it could see itself as

it sees other things. Now the inner eye is enabled to do this. If then it follows the

example of the outward eye and neglects itself, giving its attention to the affairs

of others, it will not be able to return to itself, however much it may wish to do

so. Give your attention to yourself; you yourself constitute abundant matter for

solicitude for yourself. Shut out also from your outward eyes what you have

grown unaccustomed to see, from your inner eyes what you no longer love, since

nothing so easily reasserts its claims as love…

Be yourself a parable of edification for yourself. You have one cell

outwardly, another within you. The outward cell is the house in which your soul

dwells together with your body; the inner cell is your conscience and in that it is

God who should dwell with your spirit, he who is more interior to you than all

else that is within you. The door of the outward enclosure is a sign of the

guarded door within you, so that as the bodily senses are prevented from

wandering abroad by the outward enclosure so the inner senses are kept always

within their own domain.