Vigils Reading

A reading from “On Contemplating God” by

WILLIAM OF ST THIERRY6

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Thus far I have perceived and seen, faintly enough indeed; and yet that

slight experience has sufficed to kindle my longing afresh, so that I can scarcely

now contain myself for hoping that one day you will remove your covering hand

and pour out your illuminating grace, so that at last, dead to myself and alive to

you, according to the answer of your truth with unveiled face I shall begin to see

your face, and by that seeing shall be united to you. O face, face, happy face that

merits thus to be united to yourself through seeing you!.. Here with truth and

fittingly it sings: “My heart has said to you,’My face has sought you; your face,

Lord, will I seek.’”

So, as I said: by a gift of your grace looking at all the nooks and limits of

my conscience, I desire only and exclusively to see you, so that all the ends of my

earth may see the salvation of their God; and that, when I have seen him, I may

love him whom to love is to live indeed…

But he who longs for you…is at once confronted with the qualities that

make you lovable; for from heaven and earth alike and by means of all your

creatures these present themselves to me and urge me to attend to them. And

the more clearly and truly these things declare you and affirm that you are

worthy to be loved, the more ardently desirable do they make you appear to me.

But alas! This experience is not one to be enjoyed with unmitigated

pleasure and delight; rather it is one of yearnings, strivings, and frustration,

though not a torment without some sweetness. For just as the offerings I make

to you do not suffice to please you perfectly unless I offer you myself along with

them, so the contemplation of your manifold perfections, though it does give us

a measure of refreshment, does not satisfy us unless we have yourself along with

it. Into this contemplation my soul puts all its energies; in the course of it I push

my spirit around like a rasping broom. And using these qualities of yours that

make you lovable like hands and feet on which to lift my weight, with all my

powers I reach up to you, to you who are Love supreme and sovereign Good. But

the more I reach up, the more relentlessly am I thrust back, and down into

myself, below myself…

So when my inward eyes grow blurred like this, and become dim and

blind, I pray you with all speed to open them, not as Adam’s fleshly eyes were

opened, to the beholding of his shame, but that I, Lord, may so see your glory

that, forgetting all about my poverty and littleness, my whole self may stand

erect and run into your love’s embrace, seeing him whom I have loved and

loving him whom I have yet to see. In this way, dying to myself, I shall begin to

live in you.

 

6 On Contemplating God – William of St Thierry.13