Vigils Reading

A reading from

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… If you will take my advice, you will 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… 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, especially in younger and more

tender souls.

Make bold also to be wise at times and desire the better gifts. 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…

Let the outward cell shelter you, not hide you away; its purpose is not to

let you sin without being seen but to enable you to live in greater safety. For you

do not know, you, its untaught inmate, what you owe to your cell if you fail to

consider not only how you are cured of your vices in it but also that you are

preserved from quarreling with people outside. You are ignorant also of the

respect which you owe to your conscience if you do not in your cell experience

the grace of the Holy Spirit and the joy of interior sweetness.