Vigils Reading

From a commentary by

WILLIAM OF ST THIERRY

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“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the

God of Jacob, and He will teach us his ways.”

Yearnings, strivings, thoughts and affections, and all that is within me,

come and let us go up to the mountain or place where the Lord both sees and is

seen! But worries and anxieties, concerns and toils, and all the sufferings

involved in my enslaved condition, all of you must stay here with the donkey – I

mean my body – while I and the lad – my intellectual faculties – hasten up the

mountain; so that when we have worshiped, we may come back to you.

For we shall come back, and that unfortunately, all too soon. Love of the

truth does indeed lead us far from you; but for the brethren’s sake, the truth of

the love forbids us to abandon or reject you. But, though you need thus call us

back, that sweet experience must not be wholly forgotten on your account.

But alas, O Lord, alas! To want to see God when one is unclean in heart is

surely quite outrageous, rash and presumptuous, and altogether out of order

and against the rule of the word of truth and of your wisdom! Yet you are he who

is supremely good, goodness itself, the life of our hearts and the light of our

inward eyes. For your goodness’ sake, then, have mercy on me, Lord; for the

beholding of your goodness is of itself my cleansing, my confidence, my

holiness…

Since it happens only by your gift, you know how from the inmost depths

of my being and after I have put away from me all striving after worldly honors

and delights and pleasures, and everything else that can – and often does –

arouse in me the lust of the flesh, or of the eyes, or that stirs me in a wrong

ambition – you know how my heart then says to you: “My face has sought you;

your face will I seek. Do not turn your face from me; do not turn away in anger

from your servant.”…

Let your voice testify deep down within my soul and spirit, shaking my

whole being like a raging storm, while my inward eyes are dazzled by the

brightness of your truth, which keeps on telling me: “No man shall see you and

live.” For I indeed am as yet wholly in my sins, I have not learned yet how to die

to myself in order to live to you.

And yet it is by your command and by your gift that I stand upon the rock

of faith in you, the rock of the Christian faith, and in the place where truly you

are present. On that rock I take my stand meanwhile, with such patience as I can

command, and I embrace and kiss your right hand that covers and protects me.

And sometimes, when I gaze with longing, I do see the “back” of him who sees

me; I see your Son Christ “passing by” in the abasement of his incarnation.