John Tauler "We must knock at the Father's heart and beg for bread. This bread is God's love."

 Monastic Office of Vigils, John Tauler

 

Seal of the Dominican Order

27th Week in Ordinary Time
Wednesday

First Reading                          2 Kings 18:37; 19:1-19.35-37

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

Spiritual Conferences, Colledge and Jane, 240-241

God is ready to give if we will only ask him properly; and he has been at pains to tell us and urge us and teach us how to ask him properly. All the same, his gifts are only given to those who beg and pray and keep on praying, never to idlers and loungers.

We should observe what we must ask for, and how. If we want to be wholehearted in our prayer, above everything else we must bring our hearts home, call them back from their wanderings among created things, from their distractions, and then with deep humility we must prostrate ourselves at God's feet and ask him to be merciful and generous to us. We must knock at the Father's heart and beg for bread. This bread is God's love. If we have no bread, then we have no appetite for any other food, however rich it may be; we cannot enjoy it, it does not nourish us. God's love is like that; it is the one thing we really need.

So we must ask God to give to us, and ask him to teach us in our prayer and in our spiritual exercises, how to ask him in the way most pleasing to him and most profitable to us. Then we must use whatever methods of prayer come to us, whether they are directed to God's divinity or to the Holy Trinity or to the passion or the sacred wounds of our Lord.

So "ask" means ask the Lord for something. It is not given to everyone to use purely mental prayer; some people have to use words. If you need to do this, speak to our dear Lord lovingly and tenderly with all the most loving words you can think of. This will raise up your love and your heart. Ask the heavenly Father to give you a foretaste of himself through his only Son in whatever way is most pleasing to him; and when you have found the form of prayer that suits you best, even if it is the remembrance of your sins and your faults, persevere in it and make it your own.

"Seek" means seek out whatever is most pleasing to God and most profitable to you. And "knock" means apply yourself with zeal and persistence; because the prize is given to the person who persists to the end

Responseory   Mt 7:7.11

Spiritual Conferences. Trns. & Edit.
by Eric Colledge and Sister M. Jane
(Cross and Crown Series of Spirituality... by John TAULER (1961)