Why They Do Not Go Back to Sleep After the Night Office

They keep up these labors for two reasons, besides this further one: they believe that when they exert themselves diligently they are offering God a sacrifice of the fruit of their hands. And if we are aiming at perfection, we too ought to observe this with the same diligence. [a]

First, so that our envious adversary, who is jealous of our purity, always plotting against it and ceaselessly hostile to us, may not defile, by some illusion in a dream, the purity gained by the Psalms and prayers of the night. For after the amends we have offered for our negligence and ignorance, and the absolution we have begged with many sighs in our confession, he eagerly tries to defile us if he finds some time given to rest. Above all he tries then to overthrow and weaken our trust in God, when he sees from the purity of our prayers that we are making our most fervent efforts toward God. So it happens that sometimes, when he has been unable to harm some people the whole night long, he does his utmost to disgrace them in that one short hour.

Second, because even if no such dreaded illusion of the devil arises, even a pure sleep in the interval makes the monk lazy, when he ought soon to be up again. It brings a sluggish torpor over the mind and dulls his vigor through the whole day. It deadens the keenness of perception and drains the energy of heart that would be able to keep us, all day long, more watchful and more robust against all the snares of the enemy.

That is why these private watches are added to the canonical vigils, and why they submit to them with all the greater care: both so that the purity gained by Psalms and prayers may not be lost, and so that a more intense carefulness, to guard us diligently through the day, may be secured in advance by the meditation of the night.