Vigils Reading

A reading from the Spiritual Conferences of

JOHN TAULER

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“You shall be witnesses unto me in all Judea.” Judea means “to confess

God” or “to praise God.” We are to be God’s witnesses by confessing God in all

our actions, behavior, and intentions. And this not merely when all goes well

with us, when we are full of joy and delight and natural enthusiasm. People find

it easy enough at such times to think that they are confessing God very well.

They seem to know and love God well enough as long as things go according to

their own will; but as soon as they meet with terrible assaults, they begin to

wonder what they have been about.

They have completely lost their bearings now that suffering has come

upon them. Now we can see clearly what has been at the root and foundation of

their confession: not God, but their feelings. This is an unstable foundation built

on shifting sands. God’s true witnesses, on the other hand, stand firm, rooted in

God and in God’s will, in love and in suffering, no matter what God gives or what

God takes away. Nor do they set great store by practices of their own.

It often happens that when people have successfully undertaken some

pious practices, they give much thought to the business of planning them and

carrying them out; and so they place great reliance on them and exercise their

own activity to the utmost. But God, in an inalienable love, often breaks down

whatever rests on such a foundation as this by frequently arranging things

which run contrary to our desires.

If we want to keep vigil, we are obliged to sleep, against our will; if we like

to fast, we are made to eat; if we would like to be quiet and at rest, we have to do

quite otherwise. In this way everything that we cling to crumbles at our touch, so

that we may be brought face to face with our own bare and naked nothingness.

Thus we should learn to place all our reliance upon God, confessing God

alone in a simple and uncompromising faith, and resting upon nothing else at

all. For just as worldly and sinful persons are seduced by sensual pleasures, so

these people are held back by a complacency in what they do or what they feel,

and are thus hindered from an absolute and simple surrender to God and from

the true poverty of spirit which God wants of them.