Office of Readings

  Remember; never forget how you provoked the Lord your God in the wilderness. From the day you came out of the land of Egypt you have been rebels against the Lord. At Horeb you provoked the Lord, and the Lord was so angry with you that he was ready to destroy you. I had gone up the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant that the Lord was making with you. I stayed forty days and forty nights on the mountain, eating no bread, drinking no water. The Lord gave me the two stone tablets inscribed by the finger of God, and all the words on them that the Lord had spoken to you on the mountain from the midst of the fire on the day of the Assembly. At the end of the forty days and forty nights, after he had given me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant, the Lord said to me, “Leave this place, go down quickly, for your people whom you brought out of Egypt have broken faith. They have been quick to leave the way I marked out for them; they have made themselves an idol of cast metal.” Then the Lord said to me, “I have seen this people, and what a headstrong people they are! Let me destroy them, and wipe out their name from under heaven, and make out of you a nation mightier and greater than they.”

  So I went down the mountain again and it was blazing with fire, and in my hands were the two tablets of the covenant. And I looked and there you were, you had been sinning against the Lord your God. You had made yourself a calf of cast metal; you had been quick to leave the way the Lord marked out for you. I seized the two tablets and with my two hands threw them down and broke them before your eyes. Then I fell prostrate before the Lord; as before, I passed forty days and forty nights eating no bread and drinking no water, for all the sin you had committed in doing what was displeasing to the Lord, thus arousing his anger. For I was afraid of this anger, of the fury which so roused the Lord against you that he was ready to destroy you. And once more the Lord heard my prayer. The Lord was enraged with Aaron too and was ready to destroy him, and I pleaded for Aaron also. That work of sin, the calf you had made, I took and burned and broke to pieces, and grinding it to fine dust I threw its dust into the stream that comes down from the mountain.

  So I fell prostrate before the Lord and lay there these forty days and forty nights, for the Lord had said he would destroy you. And I pleaded with the Lord. My Lord, I said, do not destroy your people, your heritage whom in your greatness you have redeemed, whom you have brought out of Egypt with your mighty hand. Remember your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; take no notice of this people’s stubbornness, their wickedness, and their sin, so that it may not be said in the land from which you brought us, “The Lord was not able to bring them to the land he promised them. It was because he hated them that he brought them out, to die in the wilderness.” But they are your people and your heritage whom you brought out by your great power and your outstretched arm.

  Vincent had received both these gifts; he had received them, and he kept them. After all, if he had not received them, what would he have had? But he did have faithfulness in his words, he did have endurance in his sufferings.

  So do not any of you be too self-assured when offering a word; do not be too confident in your own powers when suffering trials or temptations; because it is from him that we have the wisdom to speak good things wisely, from him the patience to endure bad things bravely.

  Call to mind the Lord Christ warning and encouraging his disciples in the gospel; call to mind the king of martyrs equipping his troops with spiritual weapons, indicating the wars to be fought, lending assistance, promising rewards; first saying to his disciples, In this world you will have distress; then immediately adding words that would allay their terrors: But have confidence: I myself have vanquished the world.

  So why should we be surprised, dearly beloved, if Vincent was victorious in him by whom the world was vanquished? In this world, he says, you will have distress; such that, even if it distresses, it cannot oppress you; even if it knocks you down, it cannot knock you out. The world mounts a double attack on the soldiers of Christ. It wheedles in order to lead them astray; but it also terrifies, in order to break them. Let us not be held fast by our own pleasures, let us not be terrified by someone else’s cruelty, and the world has been vanquished.

  At each attack, Christ comes running to the defence, and the Christian is not vanquished. If, in this passion of Vincent’s, one only gave thought to human powers of endurance, it would begin to look unbelievable; but if one acknowledges divine power, it ceases even to be wonderful.

  Such hideous cruelty was being unleashed on the martyr’s body, and such calm serenity was displayed in his voice; such harsh, savage punishments being applied to his limbs, but such assurance echoing in his words, that we would have imagined that in some marvellous way, while Vincent was suffering, that it was someone else and not the speaker that was being tortured.

  And indeed, my dearest brethren, that is how it was; undoubtedly that is how it was: someone else was speaking. Christ, you see, promised even this to his witnesses in the gospel, when he was preparing them for this sort of contest. For he said: Do not think beforehand about how or what you are to speak. For it is not you that are speaking, but the Spirit of my Father who is speaking in you.

  So the flesh was suffering, and the Spirit was speaking. And while the Spirit was speaking, not only was ungodliness being confounded and convicted, but weakness was even being strengthened and comforted.