Vigils Reading – Office for the Dead

LIVING FOR GOD ALONE

From “The Spiritual Exercises” of St Gertrud the Great

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Earnestly wish with the cherished one to become inebriated with the wine

of love and in union with God to become unconscious to the world; in the

embrace of the cherished one to expire from yourself into God; and already

almost totally stripped of your humanness, to go pleasantly to sleep on the

breast of Jesus. Thus, dying daily to yourself in love and living for God alone,

you may, at the hour of death, trustfully run up to death, looking on it as the end

of your exile, the door of the kingdom, and the gate of heaven. And say this with

prayer and verse:

Hide me, most loving Jesus, in the hiding-place of your face from all

those plotting crafty devices against me, and let my soul not be confounded

when it speaks with its enemies at the gate; but fill it full of gladness with your

mellifluous face.

O God, love, you are the consummation and the end of all good: to the

very end, you cherish what you choose; whatever comes into your hand, you do

not toss out but preserve most diligently for yourself. Ah! By right of possession

make all my being and my consummation’s end your own forever. Spare me

now no longer, but wound my heart to the spirit’s very marrow until you leave

no spark of life within me. Rather, take away with you my entire life, reserving

for yourself my soul in you.

Who will grant me to be consummated in you, O charity, and to be

delivered by your death from the prison of this body and to be freed from this

sojourn? How good, O love, to see you, have you, and possess you for eternity.

On the day I depart this life, may you yourself be present, regardful of

great consolation, and may you bless me then in the beautiful dawn of the

manifest contemplation of you. Now, O love, I here leave you behind and

commend to you my life and, at the same time, my soul: allow me, allow me now

to rest and fall asleep in you in peace.