Vigils Reading

From the Fourth and Fifth Meditations of the Blessed and Ever Glorious Virgin Mary
by Stephen of Sawley

God the Father, in his exceeding love, sent us his only begotten Son in the flesh. The Son, in his unspeakable mercy, took upon himself our weaknesses, our labors and sorrows and all the burdens of our misery, with the exception of sin. The Holy Spirit, lovingly overshadowed the Virgin with a tenderness indescribable and set her alight and ablaze so that, absolutely beautiful in body and soul, her whole being was aflame with love, like red hot gold in a red hot furnace. Once the surging flood of divine power had placidly entered her virginal womb, she no longer thought the thoughts of man. Gone from her was every carnal thought; all she experienced was grace in its fullness.

Enchanted with the sweetness, think in your ecstasy and jubilation of the singular intervention of the Holy Spirit, when our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was conceived in this virginal womb. Think how the Holy One was conceived from the stainless Virgin, the one and only Son from the one and only Virgin.

…bear in mind that the more exalted the blessed Virgin became as the Mother of the only-begotten Son of God, the queen of heaven and the mistress of the world, the more she humbled herself. She crossed the mountain [of Judaea] to greet and serve Elizabeth in greatest humility. This is why Elizabeth, filledwith the Holy Spirit, cried out, ‘Who am I that the Mother of my Lord should come to me?’

Visualize the nature and greatness of this joy when upon the mere salutation of the Virgin the mother [of John] began to prophesy, the Precursor, still enclosed in her womb, leapt for joy, and the soul of the sweet Virgin magnified the Lord.

In the sanctuary of her most holy body, the source of all creatures, the glory and splendor of the Father, true light from true light, chose to dwell for nine months. How happy is she who experienced fully within herself what the whole world could not understand. Who can fully measure the joy and the love, the loving thoughts, and the pure ecstasy of the blessed Virgin when she felt the movement of her beloved Son in her virginal womb? Or her delight that the fountain of sweetness deigned to be a guest in her womb over a nine month period? In her dwelt – so to say, corporeally, – ‘the fullness of deity’. Thoughtssuch as these will place you in a joyful disposition.

3 Stephen of Sawley. Treatises. CF 36. Trans. Jeremiah F. O’Sullivan. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1984. 33-37.