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Ninth Saturday After Pentecost
- Adam Paige
- Aug 15
- 3 min read
Ninth Saturday after Pentecost. On Betaking Ourselves to Rest.
Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation
We will meditate to-morrow upon the last action of the day, which is that of betaking ourselves to rest, and we shall consider: 1st, the exterior manner of performing this action; 2d, the interior dispositions with which it must be undertaken. We will then make the resolution: 1st, to betake ourselves to our repose in a holy manner, by thinking of death, of which sleep is the image, and by means of this thought detaching ourselves from everything which is not God; 2d, to go to sleep as though in the arms of Jesus Christ, uniting our sleep to His sleep. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the words of the Psalmist: “peace in the selfsame I will sleep and I will rest” (Ps. iv. 9).
Meditation for the Morning
Let us adore Our Lord Jesus Christ lying down as we do, taking rest like us, sleeping like us. “I have slept and have taken My rest,” He says by His prophet (Ps. iii. 6). Let us admire and thank our divine Saviour, who willed, God though He be, to submit to sleep in order to sanctify it in His person and to merit for us the grace of sanctifying it in ours (St. Gregory Nazianzen, Oral. xxxi.)
The Exterior Manner of Performing Holily the Action of Betaking Ourselves to Rest.
1st. It is a dictate of wisdom that we should take our rest at the hour laid down in our rule, without anticipating it through idleness, effeminacy, or too great a love of rest, as well as without retarding it under the pretext that we neither desire nor are in need of sleep, and that we want to pray, or to read, or to do something else. 2d Modesty requires that we should undress ourselves decently; that we should lie down in the same manner, remembering that we are in the presence of God and of our guardian angel. 3d. Religion demands on its side that we should never lie down without having first offered our evening prayer and made our examination of conscience, followed by an act of contrition; that we should take holy water and sprinkle it over our bed to keep away the devil during the night; that, having laid ourselves down, our last action should be the sign of the cross; our last words, Jesus, Mary, Joseph; and that we should then abandon ourselves into the arms of Jesus, that we may sleep upon His bosom and take in Him our repose (Ps. iv. 9). Have we observed these rules ?
The Interior Dispositions for Performing Holily the Action of Taking our Repose.
1st. When undressing, we must have a lively desire to despoil ourselves of ourselves and of all our attachments (Coloss. iii. 9), despising ourselves as sinners unworthy to have any clothing after having lost that of innocence. 2d. On lying down we must: 1st, honor Our Lord, who performed the same action, and render homage to the mystery of His death and of His sepulchre; 2d, we must look upon our bed as our sepulchre, our sheets as our shroud, and upon sleep as the image of death, and be inspired, in consequence, with the sentiments we should desire to have at our last sigh; to accept death with the state of decay which will follow upon it; and we should desire that the world should separate itself from us as we separate ourselves from a corpse, and forget us even as the dead are forgotten. 3d. Having laid ourselves down, we must offer our repose to God in honor of the repose of Jesus Christ whilst He was on earth, and still more in honor of the eternal repose which the heavenly Father takes in Himself, in His Son, in the Most Blessed Virgin, and in all the saints; then we must enter into the abandonment which Our Lord made of His soul to His Father, and say, when going to sleep, what He said when He was dying: “Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit” (Luke xxiii. 46), after which we must endeavor to go to sleep with some good thought in our hearts, so that we may also have good thoughts when we awake and that even our sleep may be a prayer in the presence of God (St. Jerome, Ep. xxii.). Are we faithful to these practices ?
Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.
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