Monastic Office of
Vigils, John Tauler
27th Week in
Ordinary Time
Thursday
Thursday
First Reading Isaiah 37:21-35
Responsory Ps
20:7-8; 121:2
Some put their trust in chariots or horses, but our trust
is in the name of the Lord. +They will collapse and fall, but we shall rise and
stand firm.
V. My help shall come from the Lord, the creator of
heaven and earth. + They will collapse ..
Second Reading
From a conference by John
Tauler
Second Reading From
a conference by John Tauler
Spiritual Conferences, Colledge and Jane, 241-242
Our Lord goes on to say: “Would a father give his
children a stone when they had asked him for fish?”
Then he says: “If you, sinful as you are, know how to
give the right thing to your children, how much better will your heavenly
Father do, and best of all for those who ask him?”
He who is the Word of truth said that things will be
given to those who ask. Then how can it be that so many people do ask, and keep
on asking all their lives, and yet are never given this living bread? How can
this be, when God is so unutterably merciful, so unstinting, when he gives and
forgives as no human being knows how, when he is a thousand times more ready to
give than we are to receive? These people say the same holy prayers, the Our
Father, our Lord’s own prayer, many psalms and the holy collects inspired by the
Holy Ghost, and still they are not given what they ask for. Surely this is a
great mystery; but I will explain it to you.
The hearts of these people, the depths of their souls,
their love and their desires, are possessed by the love of something alien from God. It does not matter what it is: the dead
or the living, themselves or other people. Whatever it is, it possesses and
fills the place which the true love of God, the true living bread, should
occupy, so that it cannot come to them however much they ask and pray for it.
Master Hugh said: “People can no more live without loving
that they can live without souls.” It is up to all of us to see for ourselves
what we love, because if one sort of love is to enter our hearts, the other must
go out. Saint Augustine said: “Empty yourselves so that you may be filled.”
In another place our Lord said that he is the door
through which we must pass.
When we pray we must knock on three places on this
door if we are to be truly let in. We must knock with all devotion upon the
Sacred Heart of our Lord Jesus Christ, the heart that was opened to us in love,
the side that was pierced. We must go in there with all devotion, acknowledging
that we are the poorest of the poor, that we are nothing; and like the poor man
Lazarus before the rich man’s gate, we must beg for the crumbs of grace. He will
give us his grace divinely and supernaturally.
Next we must knock upon the holy
open wounds of his sacred hands, and pray to him to give us knowledge of
himself, to enlighten us and lift us up to him.
Lastly we must knock upon the
door of his sacred feet, and ask him for a love that is divine and true, a love
that will unite us with him completely, so that we are submerged and wrapped up
in him.
May our loving God help us all so to ask, seek and knock
that we may be let in.
Responsory Mt
7:7.11
Ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; + knock
and the door will be opened to you.
V. If you who are evil know how to give your children what
is good, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask
him. + Knock ...
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