September Reflection of our Easter Saturday Vigil
If you are breathing this very moment, it is certain that at least once in your life, though most probably many times, someone or some group of people have held a vigil for you. They have waited in love for you to be healed, to be well, to come home – to an actual home, or home to yourself. And it is also most likely that you have done the same for another – you have held a vigil for someone you loved to be healed, to be well, to come home, to themselves, to you, to where they belonged. And you did that because you loved them.
Love, make no mistake, is the single more powerful force in all the world. There is nothing else like it.
I invite you into the practice of vigil now. Take whoever you like into your heart. Any of the characters in the passion story that speak to you, any one in your own story that speaks to you, any one in your community who needs your special attention, anyone who comes to your heart and mind, and perhaps yourself as well…..
Just hold them, in love, and hold steady….
As we revisit our service of vigil from last April’s Saturday Vigil Podcast, listen again to Macrina Wiederkehr’s wise instruction on the value of vigil. Listen to the music. Quiet your heart. And offer up forgiveness where it is needed, in the passion story, to those in your life, to the darkness in your own heart.
it is healing. And we need healing now.
At these special times when I rise from my sleep for prayer, I keep vigil with Christ, who is always keeping vigil. I keep vigil with my heart’s eternal questions and deep longings and with those places in my being where the light as grown dim. I keep vigil with those whose tired hearts have lost hope. The angel of night embraces my prayer and lights a candle in my soul. Keeping watch at my side, she listens to my dreams for the world and my prayers for all who suffer. . . It is a prayer of surrender…..It is a prayer of intent. I make my intention and I wait. I become deep yearning. The silence and the darkness are healing. My prayer is now a prayer of trust. I keep vigil with the mystery.
Macrina Wiederkehr, Seven Sacred Pauces, Living Mindfully Through the Hours of the Day
“The mysticism of everyday life is the deepest mysticism of all.”