Vigils Reading – St Lucy

An excerpt from ON THE TWOFOLD COMING AND THE WINGS COVERED IN SILVER3
by St Bernard of Clairvaux

That you celebrate the Lord’s coming with your full devotion – delighting in such consolation, amazed at such condescension, and inflamed by such love – is appropriate, brothers. Yet you must ponder not only that coming at which he came to seek and to save what was lost, but also and no less the one at which he will come and take us to himself. If only you would constantly mull over these two comings, ruminating in your hearts how much he performed in the first and how much he promised in the second! If only you would sleep between the middle allotments! These are the Bridegroom’s two arms; between them thebride was sleeping when she said, His left hand is under my head, and his right hand will embrace me.

Therefore, if we want to sleep between the middle allotments – that is, between the two comings – we must let our wings be covered with silver. Thus can we preserve the appearance of the virtues that Christ enjoined by both word and example when he was present in the flesh. By silver then it is not inappropriate to understand his humanity, as by gold his divinity.

All our virtue is as far from true virtue as it is from the appearance, and all our wings are good for nothing if they are not covered with silver. Great is the wing of poverty by which we fly so swiftly to the kingdom of heaven! But in the case of the virtues that follow, the use of the future tense indicates a promise; poverty is not so much promised as given. So we are told in the present tense that theirs is the kingdom of heaven, while in other cases, they will inherit, they shall be comforted, and so on.

We see other poor people who if they had true poverty would appear, not so weak-willed and sad, but instead, like kings – and kings of heaven at that! Others want to be poor, on condition that they lack nothing, and they love poverty in such a way as to suffer no want. Others still are meek but only so long as nothing is said or done without their approval. Their distance from true meekness will become obvious at the slightest provocation…I see mourning, but if those tears came from the heart they would not so easily change into laughter…Others show such furious zeal against the faults of others that they may seem to hunger and thirst for righteousness if they were to pass the same judgement on their own sins.

Still others so confess their sins that they can seem to be doing it from a desire to purify their hearts – everything is washed clean in confession – but what they say freely to others, they are incapable of hearing patiently from others.

Let us cover our wings with silver, then, in our way of life in Christ, just as the holy martyrs washed their robes in his passion. As much as we can, let us imitate him who so loved poverty that, although the ends of the earth were in his hand, he had yet no place to lay his head…he who did not hesitate to die for his enemies and who prayed for those who crucified him; who committed no sin and who listened patiently to what was laid on him by others; who endured so much to reconcile sinners to himself