The Ladder of Divine Ascent - Chapter XX: On Bodily Vigil, Part I

The healing of the soul! So often we lose sight of the meaning of the spiritual life and the disciplines that we embrace. We often look at them as being punitive or requiring us to give up something that we enjoy or take pleasure in. We can lose sight very quickly of the presence of God even in the practice of prayer.

This came forward when we discussed this evening something such as vigils. Rarely is the practice of vigil (breaking one’s sleep to rise and pray at night) ever discussed as a valuable exercise for those not only living in a monastery. To order our appetite for sleep and to break the night for prayer is seen as nonsensical or something that could jeopardize one’s health and well-being or one’s capacity to work.

What we find in the spiritual tradition, however, is a far different vision. Bodily vigil leads to spiritual vigil; that is, spiritual vigilance or alertness. Arising during the quiet of the night, humbled in mind and body, one is able to enter into the deep silence of prayer and receive more freely what God desires to give us. Not experiencing the impediment of worldly distractions or the distractions of a multitude of thoughts we are able to open the mind and the heart to God fully. And in doing so we can also experience the deepest healing.

We begin to lose the desire to escape from reality in the things of this world or in sleep. The opening of the mind and the heart to God through deep prayer can bring about the repairing even of the deepest trauma caused by our own sin or the sins of others. God can pass freely into the deepest recesses of the human heart that learns how to become vulnerable to Him over time through the experience of His love and compassion. Trust emerges and with it hope.

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Text of chat during the group:

00:12:48 Nathan: (Thx Father, I'm using the Paulist Press CWS edition so that's helpful)

00:22:34 sharonfisher: I thought it was my dog whining! Lol

00:31:01 Maureen Cunningham: Page please, Thank You

00:31:29 Kevin Burke: 161

00:31:51 Maureen Cunningham: Thank you

00:35:59 John: Would practicing vigils have a positive effect on being subject to deceptive dreams? I've gone down numerous dead ends in the past trying to interpret dreams, or thinking that they were pre-cognitive, but most of them turned out to be mirages.

00:56:56 John: Sounds like vigils are a gateway to "the meat ye know not of."

00:58:43 Louise: Maybe the Beloved has given people insomnia (waking up in the middle of the night) so we can turn to ward Him during this quiet time.

01:00:56 Maureen Cunningham: sleep does not become your master,

01:02:20 Anthony: On vigils, prayers, rosaries, looking at God as the other

imposing an obligation on me makes these annoying. But maybe looking at God as the Other Who gave me His image as an integral part of myself would make vigils, etc desirable.

01:03:19 Kate: Father, would you have any advice on how to begin the practice of vigils for someone who does not have a spiritual director who could help incorporate this practice in the interior life?

01:06:09 Anthony: The cell becomes hell

01:13:13 Anthony: The 3 Apostles slept in the Garden out of sorrow. I'll have disordered sleep out of sorrow.

01:15:29 Lee Graham: Prayer changes us

01:18:12 Ren Witter: Yea. The “type and number” narrative about confession really makes the sacrament so transactional, and more like a bad experience with your doctor than an encounter with God.

01:18:15 Bonnie Lewis: Father, I had a priest say that to me in the confessional. It did hurt and surprise me. I've never forgotten it, obviously.

The Ladder of Divine Ascent - Chapter XX: On Bodily Vigil, Part I

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