THE INNER WAY
THIRTY-SIX SERMONS
FOR FESTIVALS BY
FR. JOHN TAULER
FRIAR PREACHER OF STRASBURG
A
NEW TRANSLATION FROM THE
GERMAN EDITED WITH
AN
INTRODUCTION BY ARTHUR
WOLLASTON, HUTTON,
M.A.
RECTOR
OF ST MARY-LE-BOW
CHEAPSIDE
METHUEN
& CO.
36
ESSEX ST. W.C.
LONDON
SECOND
EDITION
FIRST
PUBLISHED MAY 1901
SECOND
EDITION NOVEMBER 1909
Typed
by: Kathy Sewell, ksewell@gate.net, April 21, 1997
This book is in the public domain
Table of
Contents
INTRODUCTION
I.
Scope of the Present Publication
II.
Some Notes on Tauler’s Life
III.
Some Notes on Tauler’s Teaching
IV.
Tauler and Mysticism
V.
The Versions of Tauler’s Sermons
SERMONS
I.
*St Andrew1
Rabbi, ubi habitas? etc
II.
St Barbara2
Dilectus mens loquitur mihi, etc
III.
Conception of the B.V.M. Transite ad me, etc
IV.
*St Stephen or St Lawrence Nisi granum frumenti, etc
V.
St John Evangelist Hic est discipulus ille, etc
VI.
*St Agnes Virgo cogitat, etc
VII.
Candlemas Ecce ego mitto angelum meum, etc
VIII.
*St Agatha Regnum mundi, etc
IX.
Annunciation of the B.V.M.
Ave gratia plena, etc
X.
Nativity of St John Baptist, I. Johannes est namen ejus
XI.
Nativity of St John Baptist, II. Hic venit in testimonium
XII.
*St Timothy, or Memorial of St Peter Argue, obsecra, etc
XIII.
St Paul Vivo autem jam non ego, etc
XIV.
Visitation of the B.V.M. Transite ad me comnes, etc
XV.
*St Mary Magdalene Martha, Martha, solictis es, etc
XVI.
St Lawrence Qui mihi ministrat, etc
XVII.
Assumption of the B.V.M. In omnbus requiem quaivi, etc
XVIII.
St Augustine Vigilate, quia nescitis, etc
XIX.
Nativity of the B.V.M. Transite ad me omnes, etc
XX.
Exaltation of the Holy Cross, I. Ego si exaltatus furro
XXI.
Exaltation of the Holy Cross, II. Ego si exaltatus furro
XXII.
Exaltation of the Holy Cross, III. Quasi cedrus exaltata
sum, etc
XXIII.
St Matthew Sequere me
XXIV.
Michaelmas Angeli corum, etc
XXV.
All Saints, I. Videns Jesus turbas, etc
XXVI.
*All Saints, II. Beati pauperes spiritu, etc
XXVII.
*All Saints, III. or St Ursula Beati mundo corde, etc
XXVIII.*St
Catherine Inventa una preciosa margarita, etc
XXIX.
*The Twelve Apostles Si diligitis me, etc
XXX.
*Holy Martyrs Galicem Domini biberunt, etc
XXXI.
*A Holy Martyr Beatus vir qui suffert tentationem, etc
XXXII.
*A Holy Bishop In nomine meo, etc
XXXIII.*Holy
Confessors Lucerna corporis tui, etc
XXXIV.
*Holy Virgins Quinque ex eis erant fatuae, etc
XXXV.
Dedication of a church, I. In domu tua oportet me manere
XXXVI.
Dedication of a church, II. Domus mea domus orationis
vocabitur
XXXVII. Three
Instructions on Confession
Footnotes
INTRODUCTION
Scope of the Present
Publication
In this volume are contained
the thirty-seven Sermons of John Tauler, which form the Third Part of the
complete editions published at Frankfort in 1826 and at Prague (ed. Hamberger)
in 1872. These are the Sermons for Festivals (de sanctis), while the
First and Second Parts contain the Sermons for the Christian Year (de
tempore); the total number being 145. Should this volume of the Festal
Sermons meet with a favourable reception, the Sermons for the Christian Year
may follow in two or three volumes. Up to the present time only twenty-seven of
Tauler’s sermons have appeared in English, these being contained in Miss
Susanna Winkworth’s well-known but now scarce volume, to which Charles Kingsley
contributed a preface. Of the thirty-seven Festal Sermons Miss
Winkworth translated only three (nos. 4, 12, and 31 in the present volume) so
that thirty-four of those now presented to the reader appear here for the first
time in English. The Sermons for the Christian Year were translated into French
by M. Charles Sainte-Foi, and were published in Paris in 1855; but he did not
include the Sermons de sanctis. They are to be found, however, together
with all else that is rightly or wrongly ascribed to Tauler, in the Latin
version, or rather paraphrase, by Laurentius Surius, a Carthusian, which was based on the Cologne German edition
of 1543, and which was reprinted at least twelve times before the end of the
seventeenth century, while it was also translated into Italian, French and
Dutch.
Until the appearance of
Hamberger’s edition (Prague, 1872), the standard German edition of the Sermons
was that published at Frankfort, in 1826, without an editor’s name. This was
used by Miss Winkworth, and also by M. Sainte-Foi; and it forms the basis of
the present publication, as I have only been able to refer to Hamberger’s
edition in the British Museum. In the anonymous Introduction are indicated the
MSS. sources on which the earlier standard German editions (Leipzig, 1498; Augsburg,
1508; Basle, 1521; Halberstadt, 1523; Cologne, 1543; Frankfort, 1565;
Amsterdam, 1588; Antwerp, 1593; and Hamburg, 1621) were based. The original
Leipzig edition (1498) was printed from MSS. at Strasburg, said to be
contemporary with Tauler, and to have been corrected by him. The eighty-four
sermons in this edition may therefore be reckoned as authentic, with the
exception of four, which are known to have been Eckhart’s. To the Basle edition
of 1521 forty-two sermons were added, the editor, John Rymann, saying of them
that “they have been more recently discovered and collected with great care and
diligence. Although there may be a doubt about some of them, let not that
offend thee, for it is certain that they have been written by a right learned
man of that age, and are all based on one foundation, namely, true
self-surrender and the preparation of the spirit for God.” Some of these are
probably to be ascribed to Eckhart, Suso or Ruysbroek. Such of them as are
found in this volume are distinguished by the mark * in the Table of Contents.
Of this Basle edition it should be noted that it was issued in the interests of
the Reformation; and the article on Tauler in the new edition of the Kirchenlexicon
(1899) seems to ignore these forty-two additional sermons altogether, and to
admit as authentic only five of those added to the Cologne edition presently to
be referred to. Something is said below as to the sense in which alone Tauler
can be described as “a Reformer before the Reformation”; but it may be convenient
here to note that Luther, who in 1517 put forth an edition of the Theologia
Germanica, the work of one of Tauler’s contemporaries, had in the previous
year written to Spalatin a commendation of Tauler’s sermons, of which, as a
recognition of their Protestant tendency, too much has certainly been made. The
fact that the words were written when Luther was still Prior of Wittenberg, and
before there was any breach with Rome, should have sufficed to secure them from
such misinterpretation. Finally, to the Cologne edition of 1543 (the
standard for all subsequent ones) Petrus Noviomagus, the editor, added
twenty-five sermons more, which he had found chiefly in the library of St
Gertrude’s Convent in Cologne; and the authenticity of these is in a general
way supported, both by internal evidence, and by the fact that to the nuns at
St Gertrude’s Tauler frequently preached. Of the Festal Sermons contained in
this volume, eighteen are to be found in the original Leipzig edition, fifteen
form part of the Basle supplement, and four are of those that were added to the
Cologne edition. Miss Winkworth, selecting from the whole number of 145
sermons, took eleven from the original edition, eleven from the Basle
supplement, and five from the Cologne supplement. Of the Festal Sermons she
selected only three, her principle of selection being rather edification than
authenticity.
But, on the general question
of authenticity, it must be confessed that not one of the 145 sermons can claim
such as it would have possessed had it been written by Tauler’s own hand and
been put forth by him as representing what he said or desired to say on the
occasion. His sermons were always spoken; and the MSS. are at best only the
reports of those who heard him; and such reports, it is hardly necessary to
say, do not reproduce the sermons as they actually were delivered; though the
way in which the sermons have thus come down to us explains the differences of
reading in various editions and also the obscurity of certain passages. A
critical edition of Tauler’s Sermons by a competent hand is doubtless a thing
to be desired; but it would be a misfortune, from the point of view of
edification, if, in such an edition, matter otherwise admirable found no place,
on account of the uncertainty of its authorship.
The scope of Miss
Winkworth’s edition of Tauler’s Sermons differed from that of the present
publication. She had learnt to admire them by hearing some of them read in
German Protestant households as a part of domestic worship; and her idea was to
introduce a previously unknown preacher to an English audience, compiling “a
volume of sermons for the Sundays and Holy-days of the year, such as any head
of a family might read to his household, or any district visitor among the
poor.” But as she was very properly anxious to publish in their entirety such
sermons as she selected, she felt compelled to omit such as, either in whole or
in part, were “too much imbued with references to the Romish ritual and
discipline to be suitable for the Protestant common people.” I cannot say that
any of the sermons strike me as particularly suitable for such a purpose. They
contain, indeed, many thought that have become pulpit commonplaces since
Tauler’s day, and other thoughts that might very well acquire such acceptance;
but for such a use as Miss Winkworth contemplated, the sermons need more than
mere translation. Their spirit must first be made his own by any man who is to
expound it profitably; and this he then must do in his own language. My idea
has therefore rather been to present these sermons of Tauler’s in such a form
as may aid towards a more accurate historical appreciation of the man and his
teaching. I have had no thought of either pruning or adapting his words. He was
a Dominican friar of the fourteenth century, and he held all the beliefs of his
age and of his Church without any trace of reserve. The ardour of his Marian
devotion is especially noticeable; and it would be as improper to omit this or
to tone it down in a translation, as it would be to correct any other
illustrations of his beliefs and practices, crude and almost grotesque as some
of them undoubtedly are. Indeed, in order to preserve throughout the
impression of a Catholic preacher addressing a Catholic congregation, I have
even gone out of my way to give the English translation of the Scripture texts
from the Douai version; since, though that did not exist in Tauler’s day any
more than our own Authorized Version, it is a faithful translation from the
Vulgate, which Tauler used in the pulpit, translating it into German for the
benefit of his hearers. Such at least has been my intention; though, from
inadvertence and a greater familiarity with King James’ version, I may not have
adhered to it throughout. To the lady, by her own desire anonymous, to whose
patient labour the bulk of the translation of the Sermons is due, I desire here
to record my most sincere thanks. Tauler’s sentences are sometimes obscure
because they are so long; and that obscurity the translator has in many cases
succeeded in removing by breaking up a sentence into two or more; but it has
not been found possible to remove in all cases the obscurity of the original.
(See, at the end of this Introduction, an illustration of the methods used by
some earlier translators of Tauler.) The version here presented will, however,
be found as a whole, readable and easy; and it should serve to render more
familiar one of the most notable figures in the history of the Christian
Church; one whose teaching shows how essential is the unity that underlies a
spiritual conception of the Christian Creed, however much its exponents may
differ as to matters of form.
A word must be said in
explanation of the title, “The Inner Way,” which the present volume bears. It
is used merely by way of convenience, at the urgent request of the publishers.
For myself, I had thought that “Tauler’s Festal Sermons” would have amply
sufficed to identify the contents of the volume for all those whom it is likely
to interest; and that any additional title might even cause perplexity,
especially to those who know that all the spiritual works, except the sermons,
once attributed to Tauler, are now generally regarded as unauthentic. But it
appears that, in book selling regarded as a business, the word “Sermons” bears
a fatal significance, and must be avoided at any cost. Thus urged, I have
selected a title which marks the general character of Tauler’s teaching, and
which will not, I trust, give rise to any misconception as to what the volume
professes to be.
Some Notes on Tauler’s
Life
The historical criticism of
the nineteenth century did not leave Tauler undisturbed. When Miss Winkworth
published her “History and Life of the Reverend Doctor John Tauler” in 1857, no
one had questioned, save on grounds of religious sentiment, that he was the
“Master in Holy Scripture” who was converted by the “Friend of God from the
Oberland,” as is narrated in that quaint and edifying legend. The story in
question had, in fact, been printed in every edition of Tauler’s Sermons, and
was regarded as an authentic and almost contemporary document. Quetif and
Echard, in their Scriptures Ordinis Praedicatorum, had suggested, early
in the eighteenth century, that the legend should be regarded as an allegory; and this view was supported by Weiss, in his
article on Tauler in the Biographie universelle (1826) already referred
to. But it was reserved to H.S. Denifle, a learned Dominican of our own day, to
point out that the story, as applied to Tauler, involves grave historical
difficulties, and is barely reconcilable with certain matters of ascertained
fact. His criticisms would seem to have settled the
question; but to him Preger, a Protestant, whose life has been largely devoted
to the study of the German mystics, and who was selected to be the biographer
of Tauler in the “Universal German Biography,” has made a detailed reply in the
third volume of his Deutsche Mystik (1893); and many will hold that he
has succeeded in rebuilding the edifice which Denifle was thought to have
destroyed. The latter’s criticisms are however ably reinforced in the article
on Tauler by Von Loe, also a Dominican, in the eleventh volume (1899) of the
new edition of the Kirchenlexicon; and it would be impossible for
anyone who had not made a prolonged and
independent study of the question to decide between the disputants.
Moreover, the controversy is
mixed up with a further question, as to whether Tauler did or did not submit to
the Papal interdict, under which Strasburg (and other cities that espoused the
cause of the Emperor Louis the Bavarian) lay for many years after 1329. The
evidence certainly seems to point to the conclusion that Tauler, and the
Dominican house at Strasburg, did submit. But Preger holds it as proved that a
certain Merswin, a layman who had withdrawn from a distinguished civic position
and led a penitential life as one of the “Friends of God,” received the
sacraments from Tauler during the interdict. Specklin, however, the Strasburg
chronicler, on whom Preger relies for this assertion, also says that Tauler
wrote a book (or two books) in which he protested against people being allowed
to die without the sacraments during the interdict, and in obedience to it; and
that his book was condemned as heretical. To this his Catholic apologists reply
that such a thing was impossible, since such administration of the sacraments
during an interdict was not prohibited by the ecclesiastical law at that date.
It is a pity that so admirable a legend should have proved the occasion for so
keen a controversy.
Proceeding now to sketch the
undisputed facts of Tauler’s life, we note that he was born at Strasburg, about
the year 1300, of a respectable citizen family, dwelling in a house “near the
Miller’s Bridge.” At an early age (Preger says at fifteen) he entered the
Dominican convent at Strasburg as a novice; and he was through life a brother
of that “Order of Preachers,” known in England as the “Black Friars.” He passed
the two years of his novitiate and the eight years of his preliminary study in
his native city; and then, as a brother of much promise, he was sent to the studium
Generale at Cologne for a further period of four years. It is interesting
to note that, during those early years at Strasburg, the nave of the Cathedral,
as we now see it, was fresh and white from the mason’s chisel, while the great
western facade was in process of erection. There he would have heard the
sermons of his master, Eckhart, usually reckoned the most intellectual of the
German mystics and the founder of German philosophy. He would have heard him
again at Cologne, where Eckhart had the misfortune to be accused of Pantheism,
but was acquitted after trial by the Inquisition. At Strasburg Tauler would
also have known the mystic, John of Sternengassen, and the theologian, John of
Dambach; and he would have studied the authors he most frequently quotes,
Augustine, Gregory, Bernard, Hugo and Richard of St Victor, Thomas Aquinas and
Albertus Magnus. Logic, Scripture, and the Sentences of Peter Lombard formed
part of the regular curriculum of his preliminary training; and it is supposed
that, when he proceeded to Cologne at the age of twenty-five, he had already
been ordained priest, and had definitely adopted that mystical standpoint in
religion by which he will always be distinguished.
At this date the Dominican order
occupied a position similar to that of the Jesuits two or three centuries
later. It was the nursery of great preachers and theologians, and royal
confessors were usually chosen from it. At Cologne Tauler would come to know
several of the more learned men of his order; and it was there that his
training was probably completed. From a
passage in one of his sermons: it has been inferred that he proceeded to Paris;
but there is no certain trace of him in the Acta of that University; and
it is more likely that he returned direct from Cologne to Strasburg. Neither is
there any evidence that at Cologne he took the degree of “Master in holy
Scripture,” (a degree equivalent to that of “Doctor in Theology”); and this he
could only have done either at Paris or Cologne. In all the MSS. previous to
the fifteenth century he is described simply as “Brother John Tauler”; and this
is evidence against his being the anonymous “Master of Holy Scripture” whom the
lay “Friend of God” converted. Only in virtue of that indification has he been
described as “Dr. John Tauler.”
He would have returned to
Strasburg about the year 1329, when the city was laid under an interdict by
John XXII. The validity of the interdict was disputed among the city clergy,
great pressure being put upon them by the municipal authorities not to observe
it. Even among the regulars (Dominicans and Franciscans) there was a party that
contended for its non-observance. The General Chapter of the Dominicans
admitted its validity; but, according to Preger, not all the German
houses—there were about 100—accepted the decision. The Strasburg convent, he
maintains, did not submit to it until 1339; and the friars were thereupon
expelled for three years by the City Council. But before this date Tauler
appears to have been sent to Basle, where, though the city was imperialist, the
clergy were not called upon by the civil authorities to defy the interdict, and
where, moreover, the Pope relaxed its observance from time to time. Here Tauler
made a considerable stay, and presumably delivered some, at least, of those
sermons which were included in the Basle edition of 1521. Here, too, he met
Henry of Nordingen, a secular priest who had come to Basle from Constance for
the same reason that Tauler had come there from Strasburg. He was a man of much
piety and influence, and he numbered many regulars among his spiritual
children, one of them being Margaret Ebner, a Dominican nun and an ecstatica,
with whom Tauler had later some correspondence, now lost. He returned to Strasburg not much later than
1346; and it was in the years following that his sermons there attracted
general attention and admiration. In 1357 he again visited Cologne, and
addressed a series of discourses to the nuns at St Gertrude’s in that city.
Some of these were presumably the originals of the sermons added to the Cologne
edition of 1543. Four years later he died in Strasburg (the date on his tomb is
June 16, 1361), and was buried in the convent of his order. He had died,
however, outside the convent, in the guest-house of an adjoining nunnery, over
which his sister presided. A manuscript at Colmar, giving an account of Tauler
by one who had known him personally, describes him as “a gifted and holy Friend
of God”; but adds that he was detained six years in purgatory for sundry faults,
one of these being that on his death-bed he allowed himself to receive too much
attention from his sister, “in whose guest-house he died.” Other faults
ascribed to him are that he was irritable, that he was wanting in submission to
his superiors, and that he extolled too highly the “Friends of God,” while
towards others he was harsh. According to the legend already referred to, the
lay “Friend of God,” to whom he had owed his conversion, was with him again at
his death-bed, and received from “the Master” the notes of his conversion, to
be published after his death, describing him as “the Master,” without any other
name.
I have failed to obtain any
portrait of Tauler, and I am doubtful whether any vera effigies of him
exists. But I have heard of a conventional likeness, in which he is represented
in the Dominican habit, holding in his left hand the Holy Bible, stamped with
the Agnus Dei, while he points to it with his right. On his breast are
the letters I H S and beneath them a T, an allusion perhaps to his name or to
his preaching of the Cross.
Notes on Tauler’s
Teaching
Only to Tauler’s Sermons
must recourse be had to ascertain his teaching; and even of these, as has been
noted, a critical edition is desirable. The other works once attributed to him,
and printed as his in the Latin version of Surius, are now accounted doubtful,
if not certainly spurious. These works are: 1. “The Following of the Poor Life
of Christ”; 2. “Exercises on the Life and Passion of our Saviour Jesus Christ”;
and 3. “Divine Institutions,” also called “The Marrow of the Soul.” All these
are spiritual works of high value, and they deserve a place in any library of
devotion; but, as attributed to Tauler, they are not authentic. Such at least
is the present verdict of the critics.
Judged then solely by his
Sermons, Tauler is described by Von Loe, his latest biographer, as “one of the
foremost among the medieval German mystics and preachers, uniting the
intellectual depth of Eckhart with the interior spirituality of Suso and the
fervour of Berthold of Ratisbon.” The first-named was mystical; the last-named
was practical; Suso was both; but he was rather a director than a preacher.
Tauler also was both, and, like Berthold, he preached for his times. Herder
criticizes him, saying that to have read two of his sermons is to have read
them all; but this is hardly a verdict to be accepted; for his method varies
largely, and the Sermon numbered xi. in this volume, for the most part so dull
and in places barely intelligible, would strike a critic as not the work of the
same author as the Sermon numbered xv. which the German editors have described
as “a most precious and thoughtful exhortation,” and perhaps the best example
of Tauler’s method. Sometimes moreover he expounds a text like a homilist;
sometimes his text is barely referred to, and becomes a mere peg on which to
hang a discourse on a subject of which he was full. No doubt there are readers
to whom his allegorical interpretation of Scripture will be distasteful.
Kingsley admits that it is “fantastic and arbitrary”; and the method is, of
course, one that can easily be abused, especially when the interpretation of
numbers is in question. But it has its justification, both in the fact that it
is in accordance with Christian tradition—it is found in St Paul, in the early
Fathers (as Keble’s Tract lxxxix. made abundantly clear), and in the offices of
the Church, whether those for the choir or those for the altar, and traces of
it are left in the Anglican Prayer Book—and also in the experience of
sympathetic souls, who find light and consolation in its use. But Tauler’s
mysticism (of which more is said below) by no means exhausted itself in the
allegorical interpretation of Scripture. To him, as to Keble and to Kingsley,
the book of Nature was full of parables of things spiritual; and, beyond that
again, he clearly enjoyed (for he was no hypocrite) an intuition of things
divine, wherein he found more light and certitude than in mere submission to
the dogmatic magisterium of the Church.
Further, as to his manner,
he is eager and earnest in his presentation of his subject; he uses homely
illustrations from daily life, yet without loss of dignity, and when he
disparages, as he often does, “outward works,” he is saying nothing against the
performance of the duties, even the humblest, of ordinary life; he is merely
protesting against reliance on ecclesiastical routine, such as fasting,
self-discipline, long prayers, and such-like; and this protest is of course
quite compatible with Catholic orthodoxy; nor is it unnecessary for these times
any more than for his own. But the manner of his sermons, as they have come
down to us, is sometimes hard and even menacing; and readers may not always
find it easy to reconcile his frequent use of the words “dear children” with
such an apparent lack of tenderness and sympathy. But, likely enough, this
defect of manner was less noticeable in the discourses as delivered, than it is
in the reports as now read.
Readers will also fine it
necessary to bear in mind that the mystical standpoint in religion does not by
itself free a man from contemporary views and prepossessions. The mystic is of
his own age and race; and it is amply evident that the articles of Tauler’s
creed were just those of any other Catholic believer of his time. There is
throughout a spiritual element in his teaching; but it does not exclude the use
of what we should now account popular and conventional language about the fall
of man, the pains of hell, and so forth. True, he says in one place, what
indeed any Catholic preacher may say, that the chief pain of hell is the
consciousness of being excluded from the Presence of God; but he does not go on
to suggest, as a spiritually-minded teacher might now, that all other language
about the pains of hell, “the worm that dieth not and the fire that is not
quenched,” is merely figurative of that one pain, and that such language was
and is necessary to bring home men,—to all men in different degrees,—the
exceeding greatness of that pain or penalty, as it will hereafter be realised.
He is liberal indeed in extending to the spiritually-minded heathen a
sufficient knowledge of things divine. He holds that in the “inner ground” Plato and Proclus apprehended the Holy
Trinity; he things that in Plato can be found the whole meaning of the opening
verses of St John’s Gospel, though in veiled words. He teaches that a king,
remaining such, may yet rise to the height of “interior poverty,” if there is
nothing that he is not ready cheerfully to resign to God’s Fatherly love. He
extols the “evangelical counsels”; but teaches also that the highest perfection
is attainable by a married cobbler working to maintain his family. His doctrine
of Purgatory does not differ from that usually held by Catholics; but he
regards it more as a place for the purging away of self-will than for the
expiation of sin. In his sermon for the second Sunday in Lent there is a
passage somewhat in disparagement of the invocation of Saints. A good soul, he
says, once prayed to the Saints; but they were so lost in God that they did not
heed her. Then she betook herself humbly to God direct, and straightway she was
lifted far about all media into the loving abyss of the Godhead. But perhaps he
comes nearest to the Protestant position in his language about the “Friends of
God.” They are, he teaches, the true pillars of the Church, and without them
the world could not stand. In his sermon for Laetare Sunday he bids his
hearers “beg the dear Friends of God to help them (in the way of perfection),
and to attach themselves simply and solely to God and to his chosen Friends.”
And there is a similar passage in the sermon for All Saints (see pp. 218-222,
and cf. pp. 93 and 174). But, in his teaching, the “Friends of God” do not
form, as they would have formed for the later Puritans, “the Church invisible”;
they constitute rather a second visible Church, to which the hierarchical
Church is in some respects inferior. Some thirty years after Tauler’s death the
Inquisition at Cologne condemned as heretical certain propositions of Martin of
Mayence; one of which was that these “Friends of God” (who were laymen)
understood the Gospel better than some of the Apostles, even better than St
Paul; and another was that submission to their teaching was necessary to
perfection. But Tauler never went so far as this.
It may be added that, from
the modern Christian social point of view, Tauler’s limitations are obvious.
True, that in his sermon for Septuagesima he exhorts his hearers to use
“natural gifts” for God. But his conception of “nature” is a very narrow one.
Rightly it should include, besides those natural gifts which constitute
personal character, such social virtues as patriotism, love for the community
and for the family, a desire to master the earth and to make it the seat of a
well-ordered Christian society, a realization of the Kingdom of God on earth.
But Tauler manifests no conception of anything of this. For the social
elevation of mankind, here and now, he has nothing whatever to say.
Nevertheless, whatever were
our author’s limitations, Preger’s judgment on the value of Tauler’s sermons is
one to command general assent:—“Their strength lies in the fact that Tauler
knew how to put into them his whole heart, the fulness of his moral being. So
utterly and completely is he penetrated by love of God and of Christ, so
happily is the sublime and unworldly zeal of the orator blended with gentleness
and freedom, that he masters the will unawares, and lays the heart open to the
demands he makes upon it ...His sermons will never cease to hold their place
among the most perfect examples of pure German speech, of fervid German faith,
and of German spirituality in all its depths.
Tauler and Mysticism
It may be convenient to some
of those into whose hands this little volume will come, if a brief account is
here given of that “Mysticism” to which repeated reference has been made, and
to which reference must be made, when the significance of Tauler’s teaching is
under consideration. Although the subject is now much better understood than it
was in 1856, when Robert Vaughan published his “Hours with the Mystics,” a
notable book, queerly put together, interesting in its facts, but irritating in
its manner, and one that was sympathetically reviewed by Kingsley in “Fraser’s
Magazine,” there is still need to point out what mystics
are not, more perhaps than what they are. Mystics are not dreamers; they are
not fanatics; they are not fools; they are not a sect; and mysticism is not a
religion. As a rule, mystics are so termed by others; they do not use the term
of themselves. But thousands and millions of Christian believers have been and
are mystics, without themselves knowing the word. In fact, as Dr. Bigg says,
“mysticism is an element in all religion that is not mere formalism”; and it is
confined to no one form of Christianity. A Carthusian hermit, prostrate on the
floor of his cell in meditation, may or may not be a mystic; but so may also be
a grocer’s assistant who occasionally attends a Methodist chapel. When Cardinal
Newman taught that in the act of faith the conclusion is more certain than the
premises, he (perhaps inadvertently) proclaimed himself a mystic; and so, I
think, did Ritschl, in spite of himself, when he affirmed the certitude of the
“value-judgment” by which a man lays hold on the historic Christ; for mysticism
is such a way of apprehending spiritual truth; it is a way that is neither
purely intellectual, nor purely emotional; but one that employs, in one act,
all the powers of a man’s soul. The mystical attitude towards truth is thus in
harmony with Matthew Arnold’s lines:—
“Affections, Instincts,
Principles and Powers,
Impulse and Reason, Freedom
and Control -
So men, unraveling God’s
harmonious whole,
Rend in a thousand shreds
this life of ours.
Vain labour! Deep and
broad, where none may see,
Spring the foundations of
that shadowy throne,
Where man’s One Nature,
queen-like, sits alone,
Centered in a majestic
unity.”
It is true that mysticism
has to do with mystery; and that is why the term is popularly held in
disrepute. But the mysteries with which mysticism chiefly has to do are neither
numerous nor fantastic: they are God, and the Soul, and Revelation; the last
being the making known of the One to the other: and, beyond this, Christian
mysticism views the Eternal as approached through Jesus Christ, the Door; a few
texts from St Paul and St John sufficing to state the whole case. Individual
mystical writers have, no doubt, gone far beyond this, and have said
extravagant things; but the essence of the whole lies herein; and (again to
quote Dr. Bigg), “the Church can never get rid of the mystic spirit; nor should
she attempt to do so, for it is, in fact, her life. It is another name for
conscience, for freedom, for the rights of the individual soul,for the grace
and privilege of direct access to the Redeemer, for the presence of the Divine
Spirit in the heart.”
And further, most people are
now familiar with the distinction between the dreamy, unpractical mysticism of
the East and the vigorous variety of the same mode of thought in the West. In
both cases it produces the same consciousness of certitude and of interior
peace; but in the one case that tends to mere contemplation and
self-introspection, while in the other it inspires a Tauler of a Cromwell or a
Coleridge; and from the latter’s mysticism, movements that are vigorous to-day
have derived their spiritual energy, though but few of those whom the movements
affect may be aware of the fact. It is also necessary to distinguish between
mysticism as a way of holding spiritual truth, and mysticism as an
interpretation, sometimes fantastic, of the world and of man; and again between
this interpretation and the mystical interpretation of Scripture, already
referred to, which is apt, indeed, to allegorise wantonly, though its fancies
are almost always of service in securing a broader and more edifying
interpretation for texts which, if regarded as mere history or legon, would
lack religious significance. The evolution of these other aspects of the
subject from that first mysticism, which is the apprehension of spiritual
things by the soul, a few moments reflection will make clear. The mystic, who
sees God in all things and all things in God, recognises more in nature than
mere natural phenomena, and more in the Word of God than its first literal
significance. To him every thing, every event, every person, is a vision from
the Unseen, a voice from the Inaudible. He lives in a world of parables, full
of spiritual significance; and, while for him there is a Real Presence
everywhere, he finds it also most truly and effectively where it is most
clearly discerned by faith. Nothing that might be accounted magical is required
to produce it, for it is there and everywhere already. So too, in his
interpretation of the Book, which contains, with whatever admixture, the
fullest record of that which has been revealed to man as necessary for the
salvation of his soul, he sees more than the mere student of the letter. In
God’s dealings with man from first to last he perceives a harmony that implies
a foreshadowing of the last in the first, of the whole in the part; and in this
way he can find an interpretation of spiritual value even in the thoughts of
good men, who have pictured to themselves, inaccurately, it may be, as to
matters of fact, God’s earlier work in the creation of the world and of man.
And, thus broadly understood, mysticism is now “in the air,” and is becoming
recognised as a force that makes for unity among Christians, who differ
somewhat as to dogma, and more as to their methods of external expression.
Happily however, its interior and reserved character will always hinder
mysticism from being degraded, as external religion can be and is, to the
position of a mere badge or cry of an ecclesiastical party.
Not to know anything about
mysticism is, according to Professor Royce, not to know anything about a large
part of human nature; for mysticism is the philosophy of experience; the
mystics are the only thorough-going empiricists in the whole history of
philosophy; and the realm of experience is that which is decisive of truth. A complete
history of mysticism would cover a very large field in the history of the
world; and that not only of the world of thought; for, in the West at any rate,
the mystics have repeatedly built the platform on which great dramas have been
played; and in this sense (but in this sense only) Tauler and the “Friends of
God” were “precursors of the Reformation,” much as the Puritans were the
precursors of the modern Revolution. It may be quite possible to show that
Tauler was an orthodox Catholic friar, and that his obedience to the Church was
throughout irreproachable; but, none the less, his mystical doctrine of
the inner and outer, of the letter and
the spirit, tended irresistibly towards the overthrow of Catholicism, so far as
in his day is consisted in mere formalism and obedience to external rule. The
same doctrine in the teaching of St Paul made short work of the Jewish Law; and
again in our own day (for there are symptoms of its revival) it will either
destroy or will newly inspire modern Catholicism, whether Roman or Anglican,
which, without the mystic spirit, must inevitably degenerate into mere
Byzantinism, the religion of credulity and of ceremonial routine.
The earliest home of
mysticism was in the East; but before the Christian era it had passed over into
Europe, or had an independent origin there. So at least is the alternative
stated by Professor Royce. But its independent origin in the West, in the
mystical teaching of Jesus Christ, as we recognize it in the language used by
St Paul and St John, must surely be acknowledged as beyond question, save by
those who hold that the Prophet of Nazareth acquired mystical doctrines in the
farther East, perhaps by residence there; and of this there is at present
absolutely no evidence that can be termed historical. According to Professor
Seth, it is a mode of thought or of feeling, from its very nature insusceptible
of exact definition, in which reliance is placed on spiritual intuition or
illumination, believed to transcend the ordinary powers of the human understanding.
In this sense Plato (whom Eckhart quaintly describes as “the great Parson”—der
grosse Pfaffe), was a mystic. It is the endeavour of the human soul (in its
own judgment successful) to grasp the Divine Essence, or the ultimate Reality
of things, and to enjoy the blessedness of actual communion with the Highest.
Thus, mystical theology is that knowledge of God and of things divine, which is
derived, not from observation or from argument, but from conscious spiritual
experience; and, being thus based, it possesses, for the individual who holds
it, an irrefragable certainty.
From Plato and from
Aristotle’s account of God’s inner life, the Greek mysticism, as a stream
distinct from the mysticism of the New Testament (i.e. of St Paul, and of the
writings attributed to St John), passed into Plotinus, and so, through Philo
and the neo-Platonists, it became an element in Christian theology; and the
writer known as “pseudo-Dionysius” was its chief prophet in the early Church.
It would take long to trace, so far as it can be traced, the filiation of the
doctrine from the age of the neo-Platonists to the fourteenth century; and it
must suffice to say that there existed in Tauler’s day at least four Latin
versions of the works of Dionysius, that of Scotus Erigena being the one with
which he was most likely to be familiar. Dionysius was also commented on by the
greatest scholastics, incidentally even by St Thomas Aquinas, who sought to
deal justly with the mystics without endangering orthodoxy. Eckhart, whose disciple
Tauler in some sense way, had been trained in the school of St Thomas; but he
gradually emancipated himself from the scholastic yoke; and he is commonly
reckoned the spiritual ancestor of Kant and Hegel. Indeed, in other ways and by
a more direct descent, mysticism at this day largely affects multitudes to whom
its very name is unknown. The favourite devotional books of all the churches,
and many of our most popular hymns, are essentially mystical. It has been
defined above as philosophical empiricism; but it is more than that, and much
more than mere sentimentality. Again to quote Professor Royce:—“It is the
conception of men whose piety has been won after long conflict, whose thoughts
have been dissected by a very keen inner scepticism, whose single-minded
devotion to an abstraction has resulted from a vast experience of painful
complications of life...It has been the ferment of the faiths, the forerunner
of spiritual liberty, the inaccessible refuge of the nobler heretics, the
inspirer, through poetry, of countless youth who know no metaphysics, the
teacher, through the devotional books, of the despairing, the comforter of
those who are weary of finitude; it has determined directly or indirectly, more
than half of the technical theology of the Church.”
With the above eloquent
passage, written only the other day, may be compared Kingsley’s lament, written
in 1856, that mysticism was a form of thought and feeling then all but extinct
in England. The Anglican divines, he said, looked on it with utter disfavour;
they used the word always as a term of reproach; and they interpreted the
mystical expressions in the Prayer-book (chiefly to be found in the collects)
in accordance with the philosophy of Locke, being ignorant that these collects
were really the work of Platonist mystics. But meanwhile, he pointed out, it
was the mysticism of Coleridge “the fakir of Highgate,” that had originated
both the Oxford Movement and Emersonian free-thought; while Carlyle, “the only
contemporary mystic of any real genius,” was exercising more practical
influence, and was infusing more vigorous life into the minds of thousands of
men and women, than all the other teachers of England put together. If he had
also mentioned Wordsworth, Tennyson, Browning and Ruskin, he would have made
still clearer how immense has been the power of our latter-day mysticism; while
the names of Neale and of Keble, of Faber and of Newman, can speak for the same
potent influence among those who were ecclesiastics by profession.
This perhaps may suffice, if
any need there was to secure or those who read Tauler’s sermons now for the
first time, sympathy with him instead of suspicion on account of his reputation
as a mystic. There is no need to follow him when he becomes subtle or
extravagant; but of his generally broad and spiritual teaching no one can doubt
the wholesome influence. Ritschl, in his zeal for his new rational Lutheranism,
is bitter against the mystics; yet even he admits that Tauler did good service
in inculcating interior as compared with mere ceremonial religion, and in
lessening the great medieval distinction between clergy and laity. There was in
Tauler’s day a great need for a revival of the religion of the heart—when is
there not such a need?—but it was also necessary that the established methods
of religion should be respected and remain intact; for there existed no other
social bond equally fitted to hold men together. And this was the secret of
Tauler’s influence. He was able to fill the old bottles with new wine from an
ancient vineyard without bursting them. Recent historical criticism may have
destroyed some of the romance with which his name was associated. But if, as it
now appears—and Harnack as well as Ritschl agree with Denifle in this—he was
not a “Reformer before the Reformation,” and was not the subject of a singular
conversion in the midst of his successful career as preacher, he still remains,
and will always remain, a striking and venerable figure in the medieval Church,
a reformer at any rate of practical abuses, and a prophet of righteousness in
days that were corrupt as well as stormy.
The Versions of Tauler’s
Sermons
That the editors and
translators of Tauler have also been perforce to some extent his interpreters,
may conveniently be illustrated by the following passage from his first Sermon
for the Fourth Sunday after Easter, on the words Espedit vobis ut ego vadam,
etc. I give the passage, first as it stands in the archaic German of the
original edition (1498); then in the Latin version of Surius (1548); then in
the modernised German of Hamberger’s edition (1872); then in the French
translation of Sainte-Foi (1855); and finally in the English translation of
Archdeacon Hare, in his notes to “The Mission of the Comforter,” reproduced in
Miss Winkworth’s volume (1857).
In the edition of 1498;
Sermon XX. fol. 60
“Kinder yr sollet nicht
fragen nach grossen hoen Kunsten. dan ghet einfeldiglichenn in eweren grunt
inwendig. ufi lernet euch selber erkenne. im geist un in natur. Und fraget
nicht nach der verborgeheit gotes. von seinenn aussflussen un einfliessen un
dem icht in dem nicht ufi funcke der sele in der istikeit. Wa xps iesus
gesprochen hat Euch ist nicht zu wissen vo der heimlikeit gotes un darub so
solle wir halde einen ware ganzen einfeldigen glaube in einem got in
dreyfeldikeit detr Pson un nicht manigfel digliche sundern einfeldiglichen und
leuterliche.”
From the Latin Version of
Surius (1548).
“Et vos, charissimi, non ad
subtilium sublimiumque artium et scientiarum cognitionem aspiretis: sed in ipsum
interiorem fundum vestrum simpliciter ingredientes, illic vosipsos cognoscre
discite: nihil vobis magnopere curae sit scire secreta Dei, influxus et
effluxus illius, de esse et non esse, et quid sit animae scintilla in sua
existentia. Non vobis commissum est scire arcana Dei. Nihil plane utilius est
quam ut veram integram et simplicem fidem de uno Deo in personarum Trinitate,
non multipliciter sed simpliciter et pure retineamus.”
From Hamberger’s edition,
“in die jetzige Schriftsprache ubertragen” (1872).
“Kinder, ihr sollet nicht
fragen nach hohen grossen Kunsten. Gehet einfaltig in euern Grund inwendig, und
lernet euch selber erkennen in Geist und in Natur, und fraget nicht nach der
Verborgenheit Gottes, von seinem Ausfliessen, und Einfliessen, und von dem Icht
(Etwas) in dem Night (Nichts), und von dem Funken der Seele in der Istigkeit
(dem Wesen der Seele in ihrem Seyn): denn Christus hat gesprochen: “Euch ist
nicht noth zu wissen von der Heimlichkeit Gottes.” Darum sollen wir halten dem
wahren, ganzen, einfaltigen Glauben, an den einem Gott, in Dreifaltigkeit der
Person, und nicht mannigfaltighich (nicht mit verwirrender Spitzfindigkeit),
sondern einfaltiglich.”
From the French
translation of Sainte-Foi (1855).
“Il ne s’agit point, mes
enfants, d’affecter de grands airs. Entrez simplement dans votre fond; apprenez
a vous connatre tels que vous etes, et spirituellement et naturellement: ne
cherchez point a connaitre les secrets de Dieu, tels que le flux et le reflux
de I’etre au non-etre, l’essence de l’ame. Car le Christ a dit que vous n’avez
pas besoin de connaitre les secrets de Dieu. Ayons une foi simple, vraie et
entiere en un seul Dieu en trois personnes, en un Dieu parfaitement simple,
exempt de toute multiplicite.”
From Archdeacon Hare’s “Mission
of the Comforter,” apud Winkworth (1857).
“Children, ye shall not seek
after great science. Simply enter into your own inward principle, and learn to
know what you yourselves are, spiritually and naturally, and do not dive into
the secret things of God, asking questions about the efflux and reflux of the
Aught into the Naught, or the essence of the soul’s spark; for Christ has said:
“It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put
in His own power.” Therefore, let us maintain a true, entire, simple faith in
one God in a Trinity of Persons, and yet not as manifold but as one and
simple.”
THE INNER WAY
ON THE FEAST OF ST ANDREW THE
APOSTLE
Of Christ as our
Master, and of the good things He will teach us in a few words, such as will
lead us on to the highest Perfection. Then, of where His Dwelling is, how and
where we may find Him, Who calls and invites us all to come and see; as is
clearly shown in what follows.
Rabbi (quod est
interpretatum Magister) ubi habitas? dixit eis: Venite et videte.
Rabbi (which is to say,
being interpreted, Master), where dwellest thou? He saith to them, Come and
see.
We read in St John’s Gospel
that St John the Baptist was standing, and two of his disciples, (one of them
being Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother), and, when he saw Jesus pass by, he said:
“Behold the Lamb of God.” The two disciples heard that, and saw them following,
and said unto them: “What seek ye?” They said unto Him, “Rabbi (which is to
say, being interpreted, Master), where dwellest thou?” He saith unto them;
“Come and see.”
These words teach us three
things, first, the overflowing Wisdom of Christ in the words of the Master, secondly,
the Dwelling-place of His inscrutable Being, the stronghold of all beings, for
they said: “Where dwellest thou?” and thirdly, the Comfort given to us by the
invitation of God to seek Him in spirit, in the resting-place of His Godhead,
and to learn at the Source of wisdom, that is, in the school of the Holy
Trinity. He thus speaks of it: “Come, O soul, abide with Me and in Me; and look
that thou mayest learn; I will open unto thee the depths of My Divine Heart,
that thou mayest learn and see all that is for thine eternal good.”
Now listen first to the
Master: O Master, teach these daughters for me, that not one of them may remain
amongst the five foolish virgins. Then He answered and said: Daughter, learn
of Me that thou mayest be meek and lowly of heart, as He also said
to St Andrew and the other disciples. Now, if thou bethinkest thyself again,
this teaching is too hard for me; for sloth, care, anger, cowardice and
such-like resist me and afflict my heart, so that I lose all meekness of
spirit. Christ our Master replied: “How much will it help thee, O man, if in
thy service thou gainest the whole world and losest thine own soul?” For
from thence will many sorrows come upon thee, agitation of mind, anguish and
bitterness of heart, vexation in all good works, indolence of mind, whereby the
soul loses all meekness of temper. Thus it comes to pass that the overflowing
Spirit of Christ cannot pour joy or consolation into the soul; for His
tenderness cannot suffer the bitterness of thy soul; for He is sweeter than
honey. Therefore he that will have nought to do with the deceitful comfort of
man must receive the sweetness of this Spirit. And therefore, dear child, begin
manfully, follow this Master, and cast thyself down before Him in the depths of
humility, and say in thine heart: “Lord, I am the least of all the creatures
that Thou hast made,” and compose thyself in meekness of spirit; and then shalt
thou know that God is a short word which has a long meaning. Exercise thyself
diligently therein, grow not weary; and then shalt thou perceive that which
before was hidden from thee.
At another time the soul
will be attracted by the Dwelling-place of the Divine Nature of our Master.
Now, know that this question is one sought out by all creatures; and therefore
they long for the same nature themselves, that they may find out the Nature of
God; for all natural works are but a seeking after and a questioning after the
Dwelling-place of God. If it were not so, the heavens and the elements could no
longer exist. Dear child, what askest thou outside thyself, and why seekest
thou God in the strange lands of mortal things? Thou canst not truly find Him;
they all deny Him, and point thee away from themselves. “We are not God,” they
say. But Augustine writes: “Exalt thyself above us to the things eternal: for
there is God.”
Now, mark that God may be
found in many ways in which the soul receives instruction. First, the soul finds God her Creator on the heights of
penance or penitence. Therefore the soul must, above all things, exert all her
strength to subdue her own free will, ready, for God’s sake, to learn to give
up all things both great and small, to do hard penance, and to punish herself
for following the will she had forsaken. The more the soul exercises herself in
these works, the more will she find God in her, and herself in God. This is
shown in the Book of Love; for the Well-beloved says: “I will get me up to the
mountain of myrrh, and will speak unto my love.” The mountain of bitter myrrh
is the height of the exalted spirit, which transforms into bitterness the
desire for all personal gratification and deceitful delights in all things that
are not according to God’s Will. Thus God speaks in spirit to the soul: “Thou
art all fair my love, pure and undefiled, there is no spot in thee.” But he who
lives according to his own will, for his own pleasure, cannot thus find God,
but will find Him as his adversary in all his works. Thus man will spoil all
that he begins; for the works of the flesh will help but little, if the will
and the affections of the heart are not first subdued. A Psalm, said by one who
has subdued his will, is worth many Psalms: that is, the least work done by
such a man is more pleasing to God than the greatest work done by a man who
follows his own way.
At another time man finds
God in the wilderness, in the burning bush, as Moses found Him. The bush in the
wilderness signifies such a temper or spirit that, withdrawn and estranged from
all creatures, puts forth leaves or blossoms on the heights of the Eternal
Godhead. As the Divine Being comprises within Himself three Persons, so also
this spirit has laid hold of God in His threefold powers, as the bush laid hold
of the flames in its blossoming branches; and this is of grace. This putting
forth of leaves causes the soul to grow steadily in light, in godlike virtues,
day by day without ceasing, until she, with the vision of angels, beholds God
in Zion. Now, mark, in the measure that thou hast found God, in that measure
also wilt thou find in thyself the divine training and virtues—more to-day than
yesterday. But he who will thus find God here, must cast off all carnal
desires, and, with Moses, he must come under the dominion of self-restraint and
the light of reason; for flesh and blood cannot posses the Kingdom of God. I
believe, dear children, that nearly all your daily shortcomings proceed
therefrom; that ye follow by word or deed the sudden impulses that thrust
themselves into the heart from without, before the light of self-restraint can
shine therein.
Thirdly, God may be found on
the mountain, in the cloud; for the union (Testament) of Divine Light and of
the commandment was written on the stone by the finger of God. The mountain is
like a high-minded, large-hearted man, who has no pleasure in any of his works,
neither can he find any rest in them, unless, like St Paul, he is confirmed in
all his works by an express sign of the Will of God; so that the will of the
soul does not even carry on human actions according to his own will, but after
the manner appointed by the Divine Will, divinely. Thus the soul by her works
sanctifies the body, so that when the body does the soul does also; and again,
on the other hand, the works of the Divine Will and the works of the soul are
at one; so that the soul can say: I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in
me; I work, yet not I, but the power of Divine Being worketh in me. This
takes place in the cloud, in the eternal splendour of the Divine Light, for the
light of all creatures is as night compared with the Divine Light.
Then God may be found in the
cave with the prophet Elias. We read that the prophet came into the wilderness,
and that in his soul he longed that he might die, for he had become weary in
spirit with the turmoil of this world. While he slept, an angel came, and
placed at his head a cake baken on the coals and a pitcher of water, and bade
him arise and eat, because he had still a long way before him that he must go. And
he went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights, until he
came to the place where he found God.
Then a strong wind came
rushing by, which rent the rocks and the stones; but God was not in the wind;
for God shows the spirit which is moved by stormy winds to be like those which
Daniel saw contending in the sea of this world; that is in a worldly heart, in
inordinate fear, hope, joy and scorn; for all these things blind the light of
the spirit with which a man ought to seek after God. The stormy wind also
signifies to us the restless heart of a man, who in all things, both in his words
and works, behaves so unkindly and impatiently towards his fellow Christians,
that it might grind the stones to powder; that is, that large-minded men are
often robbed of their soul’s peace thereby. Dear children, with God’s help,
beware of such violence. Keep watch over yourselves; subdue your unmortified
nature, that it may not break out as violently as that of the wild, untamed
beasts. It is indeed a dreadful thing to see such a man, endowed with reason,
to whom God of His goodness has given so much light, and in whose nature He has
implanted that kind of courage which enables him even to tame the wild beasts,
if he chooses to exert his will, and follow the promptings of his own
integrity. Alas! sometimes we are even wilder than the bears and lions, and a
disgrace in the sight of God our Creator; living contrary to the nature He gave
us, as though the light of His countenance had never shone upon us. I tell you
in truth that we shall have to give an account to God for all that we ruin by
such storms. It may be that we shall ruin ourselves (as often happens with the
wrathful) or our neighbour, who is not only disturbed thereby, but also
angered, and hindered in much that is good—and of this we are guilty. Then,
when we say it grieves us, but it is our nature, and we are obliged to do it,
we are excusing ourselves falsely, and we never learn to die unto ourselves.
Verily, if we turned to God in earnest fervent prayer and humble submission,
these infirmities of our nature would not overpower us, nor, as we say, oblige
or force us to commit such faults.
Then came a fire, and God
was not in the fire. Fire is a thing which can never say “Enough;” and it
represents the heart of a man who is never satisfied, either with his goods or
with the gifts of God; but is always burning to increase without measure those
things which are neither divine nor pure; desiring to receive comfort or other
temporal things, and to find love and pleasure in them. All this is a sign that
the Spirit of God is not there. I mean also all those people who make light of
and belittle all the gifts of God, as though God had never done them any good,
and who say: “Why did God make me? since I am so empty and barren of all that
is good;” and who do not perceive that God has preserved them from many a fall,
and protected them from many sins into which they would have fallen, if He had
not so carefully watched over them, and called them away from the world to a
spiritual state, in which they might have been pillars of all Christendom, if
only they had lived in accordance with that state.
I tell thee, dear child,
that such unthankfulness might well have dried up the springs of love, of
Divine Grace. Therefore, I beseech you, by the Eternal Love of God, that ye be
not quickly moved by the desire for these things, as I have taught you all,
with heartfelt earnestness, and as God knows; and if any other spirit teach you
otherwise, it is at the peril of your salvation in the sight of God; as St Paul
says to the Galatians: “If any man preach to you a gospel beside that which we
have preached to you, even though it were an Angel from heaven, let him be
anathema.”
There came a still small
voice, like unto the sweet breezes of May; and in that voice came God;
for so saith the Scripture. This signifies to us one who walks with God, in the
eternal words of God, and whose thoughts and words are holy according to the
Word of God, and whose longing spirit communes with God. Then it is that God
comes; for in such spiritual sunbeams a steady blessed light is borne in upon
the soul from God. They are not worthy of this blessedness, who, by strange
forms of man’s words (or even of an Angel, As St Paul says) are drawn away from
the good desires they had received from God. This it is that the soul longeth
after in the Book of Songs, when she says to God that the north wind should
depart and go away; meaning thereby all that entereth into the spirit from the
flesh, from whence all evil comes. So saith also the prophet Jeremias; for he
saw that in the seething-pot all the budding spiritual gifts of God boiled and
withered away when it was turned towards the north wind. Then his spirit was
troubled within him, and he could no longer hold fast to the inner savour of
the north wind. Therefore, when the soul longs for God,she says: Come, O
south wind, (for it is sweet) blow through my garden, and let the
aromatical spices thereof flow; that is, that my works may have a godly
savour.
Fourthly, God is found above
the Angels; for the soul must be exalted above all Angels (though by nature
below the Angels) if she would find God. Therefore she finds Him in the Father;
for thus the soul must bring all her works, free from all self-seeking, as the
Eternal Word uplifts Himself eternally to God, if she would find Him, as he was
found by the soaring Seer of God, John the Evangelist, when he said: “In the
beginning was the Word.” Then Andrew, and the loving souls that were with him,
ask with earnest longing: “Master, where dwellest Thou?” John answers: “In the
Beginning was the Word;” for in words we shall not find God, if we do not lift
up our souls in the Beginning. Therefore we must pierce through all things that
are beneath God and are not God, and the Beginning (from which we have our
being) seek earnestly again; for therein alone is our dwelling and the future
resting place of our eternal bliss. This must be done by turning earnestly to
the vision of the Divine Being and union with Him. As He said to those two
disciples: “Come and see;” as though He had said: Come, that is turn away from the
things by which ye are inordinately troubled and absorbed, that hinder your
eternal peace; for ye must be emptied of all works, understanding and carnal
desires. And see that ye come to the knowledge that God the Lord is empty and
bare of all; so that your spirits may be guided to that pure and holy Being.
For of necessity the soul must be empty and bare of all, that would enter into
the secret Presence. Therefore man must divest himself of all those things of
which he is conscious. Dionysius said to Timothy: “O dear friend, we must no
longer listen with our outward ears to the sweet and loving words of our dear
master, Paul; but we must go to God, emptied of all things.” This we can only
do when our eyes are blinded and our inmost desires are raised on high, in
order that we may learn to know His hidden Unity. May God help us all to this.
Amen.
ON ST BARBARA’S DAY, OR THAT OF
ANY OTHER HOLY VIRGIN
Of some ways by which
man may with certainty attain to Union with God, and may also have unceasing
Communion with Him. How he may have peace with the world, the evil enemy and
his own flesh.
Dilectus meus loquitur
mibi, surge, propera, amica mea.
“My beloved speaketh to me: arise, make haste, my love.”
Thus spake the Bride in the
Book of Love. Now, he who wishes to be the friend, and to know whether he be
the spouse of our Lord, must take note of the following marks, and see whether
he possesses them. If he possesses them, then he is, undoubtedly, a chosen
spouse.
The first is that he must
have peace with our Lord, so that no created being can disturb his inner peace.
Thus saith the prophet: “He will give you true peace in this place.” The spouse of our Lord must so comport
herself, that she readily renounces all things in humble confidence, retaining
her divine peace unimpaired within, and renouncing all things in Him and by
Him. Now wouldest thou ask, with whom thou shalt have peace? With the world,
the enemy, and thine own flesh. But how? With the world, by not heeding what
the world may do unto thee, either taking thee or leaving thee; to this thou
mayest attain with patience.
Secondly, that thou mayest
be at peace with the enemy; but man can scarcely ever attain to this. The enemy
is constantly striving with him, and is always interfering in all man’s works
and actions in order to hinder him. There is nothing by which man can so
completely quench the fiery darts of the enemy as by fervent and devout
prayer; for it burneth and chaseth him away, and forceth him to flee with all
his lusts. Therefore, when man is conscious of the fiery arrows which are shot
at him, and which would deprive him of his spiritual peace, let him at once betake
himself to secret prayer with all his might, and take no heed of hindrances;
and thus he will be rid of all hindrances, while nothing more grievous can
happen to the enemy. Thus we read of St Bartholomew, that he prayed, and then
the devil cried our: “Oh, thou burnest me with thy prayers, and thou hast bound
me with fiery bands.”
Thirdly, thou must have
peace with thyself. But how? Thou must in all things subject thy body to thy
spirit, that in all things thou mayest have dominion over it, that it may not
hinder the in any work that God requires of thee. Thus did the holy saints: for
they had dominion over their own bodies, and trained them so well, that that
which the spirit desired, the body sprang forward to do, as though it would
say: “Here I am before thee.” We read that it was so with the humble Francis.
There are four things that a man must do, in order to acquire this dominion
over his own body. First, thou must deprive thy body of all that pleases it,
whether eating, drinking, sleeping or waking, and of all comfort. When thou
seest that it is ready to rebel, bridle it with a discipling that is still more
severe. Secondly, thou must renounce all thirst for and all the consolation of
the world, and all worldly things and cares. Let the dead bury their dead;
follow thou God. If thy friend dies; or joy, grief, honour or riches, or
whatever it may be, is thy portion or comes to thee, bear all patiently in God.
A saint once said: “With whomsoever thou rejoicest, and with whomsoever thou
sorrowest, with him wilt thou also be judged.” St Paul says: “Reckon
yourselves to be dead unto the world.” The dead man careth not whether he
be praised or blamed, whether goods are given him or withheld. A dead or a
dying man careth nothing for gold or jewels, for honour, friends, joy or
consolation. Thou must do as one of the old Fathers did, who dwelt in a wood.
His own brother came to him and said: “Dear brother, I am in great distress; a
cart of mine, laden with goods, has fallen into the water, help me to drag it
out;” and he cried and wept and besought him urgently. The old Father replied:
“Go, and ask that brother, who still dwells in the world, for help. Why comest
thou to me?” Then the man, who was a merchant, said: “That brother has been
dead a whole year.” Then said the old man. “So have I been dead for twenty
years;” and thus he dismissed him, and troubled himself no more.
Thirdly, thy mind must be
always fixed on God. Thou must be always in the Presence of God. Verily, if
thou desirest to have the Creator of all creatures, thou must renounce all
creatures; for it cannot be otherwise, but only insomuch as thy soul is emptied
and bared; the less of the creature, the more of God: this is but a bargain. St
Augustine says: “That man is far too covetous who is not satisfied with God;
for what canst thou desire that thou canst not find in Him? Remember that
whatever such a heart can desire is to be found a thousandfold in Him. Desirest
thou love or faithfulness, or truth, or consolation, or His constant
Presence?—all, all can be found without measure in Him. Desirest thou beauty?
He is of all the most beautiful; desirest thou riches? He is of all the
richest; desirest thou power? He is of all the most powerful. Whatever thy
heart can desire, may be found a thousandfold in Him; for in God alone canst
thou find the best blessings.” Therefore drive out all creatures with all their
consolations. Say: “Get thee away: thou art not He Whom I seek; Whom I desire,
Whom I love.” Whether it be honour, or riches, or joy, or friendship, say: “Get
thee away, flee from me, let me alone, let me be, I heed thee not.”
Whence comes it that God is
so strange to thee, and that His loving Presence is so often lost or withheld?
There is but one reason; that thy mind is not emptied and bared, and that thou
troublest thyself about the creature, and art corrupted thereby. St Bernard
says contemplation is nothing else than a cleaving to God, a forgetfulness of
all earthly things. St Augustine says: “He can contemplate who is free from all
earthly thoughts, and thinks of the things that are of God.” and he also says:
“O good Jesus, my soul longs unspeakably for Thy love. I beseech Thee that I
may be enraptured with the vision, the Cross, and the most holy sweetness of
Thy Humanity. May I be able to withstand the vanity and the temptations of the
world, and long to be caught up into heaven, to fathom the mystery of the
Sacraments of God. May I so increase in spiritual things that I may be caught
up, as it were, to gaze on Thy Divine and Holy Trinity, so that in all my works
I may acknowledge Thy Divine Will, and be united with Thee. And, though I
sometimes let down to the first or second stage, may I have no difficulty in
rising up again; so that, when I see or hear of earthly things, I may not heed
them, but die unto them and live alone unto Thee. There is one thing that thou
must know; wert thou only freed from the likeness of the creature thou mightest
have God unceasingly; for He could not refuse thee, either in heaven or in
earth. He must come to thee. Had He sworn, He must change His word, and come to
thee, and completely fill thy soul, if He found it empty; for, do what thou
wilt, as long as the creature reigns in thee, thou must do without God and
remain in vanity. If thou withholdest the least part of thyself from Him,
assuredly He will take much from thee of that which He is, an immense portion.
There was once a fair and
beautiful woman, who bare a child, that was as black as a Moor. Master Albertus
was told of this great trouble. He found a picture of a Moor that the woman had
seen and he said to her: “Woman, I have found the father of your child.” And he
compared the matter to a hen that was set in sight of a sparrow hawk, and all
her young were fashioned after the likeness of sparrow hawks. Thus all who are
born after the Divine Likeness are divine; and all that are born after the
flesh are carnal.
Fourthly, thou must subdue
thy natural senses, and at all times hold the mastery over them; thou must see,
and yet not see, and never raise thine eyes, nor listen with thine ears, nor
open thy mouth, without good cause. Thy hands, thy feet and all thy members
must never be allowed their own way. Thou must guard them carefully and keep
them securely, that nothing may suggest itself to them, or be heard or seen by
them that is not divine. For, St Augustine says: “We must die and yet not die,
we must keep under our nature and our senses by force.” Then God will rule over
us, and without doubt we shall also rule over ourselves. Amen.
SERMON III
On the Conception of Our Lady,
also on Her Birth
How men, when they
are advancing, may learn to know their infirmities and secret evil
inclinations; how they may die unto them and be freed from them; whether it be
from the delights of things pertaining to the senses or the mind, or to the
powers of the soul, or whatever else it may be. How the likeness of past habits
must be driven out by the Likeness of the Life of Jesus Christ, so that men may
come to understand with all the saints, the Height, the Depth, the Breadth and
the Length of God.
Transite ad me, omnes
qui concupiscitis me.
“Come over to me, all ye that desire me, and be filled with my fruits.
For my spirit is sweet above honey and the honeycomb.”
Dear children, in the last
sermon on these words, which were spoken (of the Virgin Mary) by the Eternal
Wisdom, I told you that these words referred to our Lady, whose dignity and
honour can in nowise be expressed by man in words, for they surpass all knowledge
in value. I described the works and ways which were necessary to the man who,
rising up, desired to enter into the way of truth; then, what was necessary to
him during his progress; and then, how the perfect man might arrive at the
goal, and what his end would be.
I told you how man must
first put away all crying sins, such as pride, impurity, covetousness, anger,
and all the evil growths of the world, with all foolish desires; and, above
all, everything that pertaineth to the flesh, whether of things animate or
inanimate. In short, the man who does not turn bravely to God with all his
heart and with all his mind, who does not love God from the bottom of his
heart, and intend above all things to serve Him, and to be found at his death
in Him, will never come to God; even though, as St Paul says, he were to do so
as many good works as all men now living, and were so wise that he spake with
the tongue of Angels, and allowed his body to be burned, and gave all his goods
to feed the poor. Now, how have they turned to God with all their love and with
all their minds, who give their hearts, of their own free will, to created
beings, although they know that they are thus occupying the places where God
should dwell, and of which they are consciously depriving Him? God careth not
for works, when He is deprived of the heart and of love. Of what use is the
chaff to Him, if another has the wheat?
Now when these grosses sins
are cut off in the growing man with a diligence which is like unto a sharp
steel, and of which I have already spoken, he will be sharpened like a sharp
knife, and whetted by the great righteousness of God, which lets no word nor
deed, however small they may be, pass by unpunished. He must remember the
secret and terrible judgments of God; for no one knows how it will be with him;
for no one knows whether he is the subject of God’s anger, or of His favour.
Now, when this man has begun be cutting off all wicked vices, he must then take
heed of that which is left in the bottom of his heart, namely the inclination
thereto, which is the result of old habits. For these old habits make excuses
for themselves, and strive to appear as though they were virtues; and yet they
are only counterfeits; when pride, which a man fondly imagines he had overcome,
lies hidden in his heart. For instance, care about dress and such-like matters
remains, and it is called cleanliness; or pleasure is found in things
pertaining to the senses, such as food or drink; and it is called necessity.
Then some men are so angry and wrathful, longing to inform against every man
and to judge him; and they are so suspicious and impatient; and then they call
it justice; while pure laziness is called illness.
Children, if you insist on
any of these things, and glory in your own kindness and in your own judgment,
and in your own lofty and wise works and ways—when the end comes, the Devil
will come and take away those with him who fondly imagine that all is well with
them. This will be the case, especially, with those who conceal their pride beneath
the appearance of humility, and who, wise in their own conceit, should of right
stand under Lucifer’s banner; for the higher they stand in their own esteem,
the deeper will they fall into the abyss.
Children, look to
yourselves. This is not a question of small things. If ye were to be kept in a
hot room a night and a day, ye would think it very hard; I say nothing of
burning heat for many a year, or perhaps for all eternity. Therefore commune
with your own selves, for the kingdom of God is within you. See with
whom ye associate, with whom ye readily stay; and examine the reasons and the
tendency to all evil habits. For if a man gives way to a fault for a year or
two, that fault takes such deep root in his heart, that he can scarcely
overcome it with all his might. Therefore young men should guard themselves
carefully, so that no evil tendencies may take root in them. They must root out
all infirmities at the beginning, when it is far more easy to do so than later.
Now there are four things, especially, which man must guard against, four
powers which are so injurious and evil that they are like jagged teeth.
The first is the love of
visible things; and in this lies the strength of desire. It is scarcely
possible to imaging or describe the harm men do to themselves thereby. Men who
desire to be good, begin with this or that, with one thing or another, and are
so occupied with the seed-sowing, that they do not keep to the full truth. They
do not look into their own hearts, which are closed up, like some unknown thing
a thousand miles off; there outward and visible things are of more importance
to them. Thus they go on avoiding themselves, so that they do not know where
they are.
The second power is anger.
This is used inordinately; for it should never be used outwardly, except in
those things which are displeasing to God. In itself it is a noble power; but
in many men it produces very evil growths. They suddenly fall with vehemence on
anything whatsoever; and in false righteousness desire to censure it, to judge of
all works and ways; and thus they deceive themselves and other men with their
violence, their unrestrained and bitter anger, and their loud, harsh, unkind
and angry words.
The third evil is to be
found in the power of the light of reason, to which many men trust to their own
hurt. They trust in their own reason and glory in it, and they compare
themselves with the all-wise and living and essential Truth; for he, who says
he possesses it, possesses it not. Thus many a man deceives himself and
imagines he possesses all things, because he sees them in his own imagination,
while they are hundreds of miles away; and thus he misses that noble treasure,
deep humility; and accepts the counterfeit before him and also before other
men.
The fourth evil is the
secret delight which is often taken in talent. This holds sway in many men;
they are deceived by its good appearance, and pleasure attracts them more than
divine love; they take pleasure for God, and that which they imagine God is
only pleasure. Thus, if their pleasure were to vanish, so also would their
diligence. Look well to yourselves; for many a thing which seems as though it
came from divine love, has so many additions, that the enjoyment, the taste and
the circumstances excite us more than we imagine. Sometimes this arises from
new emotions, from inclination, or from fear of hell, or from the desire to be
blessed; and this is man’s natural desire. Know, children, that those who do
not seek God from the heart, God will neither be their end nor their reward. All
these things of which ye have heard must be diligently cut off, as with a sharp
knife, which must be whetted on the severe judgments of God, and on His
unchangeable righteousness, which lets nothing escape.
Now, when these outward
infirmities have been cut off, there still remains beneath the tendency to sin,
the likeness of past habits; and this must be driven out by the Likeness of
Jesus Christ. As one nail must be driven out by another, so must man imprint
this Likeness devoutly and firmly on the ground of his heart, so that all
inequalities in him may be done away and extinguished. Now, as God has given
great power to minerals and herbs, to drive out disease, by what power do ye
believe that the Son of God will drive out all the diseases of the soul, but by
His holy Sufferings, His Death, and His sacred Likeness. Now, because man can
do nothing by himself, he must exercise himself in holy suffering by means of
prayer; he must cast himself down secretly at the feet of the heavenly Father,
and beseech Him for the sake of His well-beloved Son, and by all His
sufferings, to help him; for without Him he cannot attempt or succeed in
anything. He must train himself never to allow the sacred Sufferings, nor the
Likeness of his Lord to forsake his heart; and he must allow no strange
likeness to find a place there. In order to do this, he must lift up his heart
and mind to the heights of the glory of the Godhead, on which he must gaze with
holy fear and longing desire. When he lays his dark and miserable ignorance
before God, he will understand what Job said: “A Spirit went before me.” This leading of the Spirit causes a great
disturbance in the heart of the man. The clearer, the truer, the plainer this
leading is, the stronger, the quicker, the truer and the plainer will be the
work, the strength and the conversion of the man; and he will more plainly
recognise his place of abode. Then the Lord comes in a quick glance, and lights
up the heart of the man, and will be Lord of all his work. When the man becomes
conscious of the Lord’s Presence, he must let his work alone and worship Him;
all his powers must be still, and there must be calm. Otherwise the works of
man would be but a hindrance, and his good works also; for he must do nothing
but submit himself to God. But when man is again left to himself, and he is no
longer conscious that God is working in him in any way that he can clearly
recognize, then he must begin again to work diligently, and to discipline
himself in holiness. Thus the man will sometimes work, and sometimes rest, as
he is moved of God and entreated; everyone must do as seems best to him, either
working or resting, so that he may be drawn to God. But he who cannot rest
alone must make use of sacred pictures, and of discipline, so that he may be rooted
and grounded in holy love, and may comprehend with all saints the height, the
length, the depth and the breath.
To understand all this is
impossible; but it is possible to cling to it with love and pure intentions.
The mind must lift itself up above all visible things, and above all the lower
things of sense, and realise that God, Who can do all things, did not choose to
make a creature so noble, that with the help of his natural understanding he
could attain to the knowledge of the very essence of the Being of God. For the
depth of the divine abyss cannot be fathomed by deep humility. Therefore our
Lady, taking no heed of all the great blessings that God had poured out upon
her, spake only of her lowliness, for which all generations should call her
blessed, because God had regarded her only.
The breadth of God must be
understood as the universal love which He manifests in all places, in all
lands, and in all the works and ways that are good. There is nothing so broad
or so universal as God, nor so near to the inmost heart of man; he who will
seek Him there, shall find Him. Thus every day we find Him in the Blessed
Sacrament, in all the Friends of God, and in all creatures. This breadth must
be sought with an earnest, fervent mind, that is, a mind that is empty and
untroubled by all other things, and that has secretly yielded itself up with
all its powers in the Presence of God. To that man will be given freedom of
spirit and supernatural grace; he will be exalted in mind above all forms and
fashions, and will soar above all created things. St Gregory speaks of it thus:
“If we would come to the knowledge of invisible things, we must look beyond all
things that are visible.”
The length is eternity,
where there is no before and no after; but where all is still and unchanging,
and in which all things exist, in a steady unchanging vision of Him, in whom
all things exist. This length must be sought by man in a steady, unchanging and humble spirit;
unchanging in God, and renouncing all love, all sorrow and all creatures, that
he man be satisfied in God, may rest in peace, and may leave all things to God.
Thus the noble word: Transite, will be accomplished; for man will
overcome all things, and will be filled with the divine Birth of this lovely, noble
Virgin, to whom all men should pay great honour. However highly they may be
exalted, they should give time and trouble to honour and serve her. May we also
follow her, that we may also come to that Birth by the help of God. Amen.
On the Feast of St Stephen or
of St Lawrence
Of the three Grades
of those who learn here to die to themselves in Nature and Spirit, that they
may (like the Grain of Wheat) bring forth much fruit; viz. of those who are
beginning, of those who are advancing, and of those who are perfect.
Nisi granum frumenti
cadens in terram mortuum fuerit, ipsum solum manet.
“Unless the grain of wheat, falling into the ground, dieth, itself
remaineth alone. But if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”
By the Wheat we understand
our Lord Jesus Christ, Who by His Death has brought forth much fruit for all
men, if they are but willing, not only to reign with Him, but also, and in the
first place, desire to follow Him in a dying life. For this may be called a
dying life, when a man for the love of God refuses to gratify his senses and
take his natural pleasure, and follow his own will; and as many lusts as he
dies to, so many deaths does he offer to God, and so many fruits of life will
he receive in return. For in what measure a man dies to himself, and grows out
of himself, in the same measure does God, Who is our Life, enter into him.
Now mark, dear children,
that the path of a man thus dying may be divided into three stages. Those who
have entered on the lowest stage do acts of self-denial from fear of hell and
for the hope of heaven, with some love to God mingled therewith, which leads
them to shun the most flagrant sins; but the love of God seldom works strongly
in them, except it be stirred up by the contemplation of hell or heaven: for by
reason of their blind self-love these men are terribly afraid of death, and are
by no means eager to set their hand to the work of mortifying their
undisciplined nature which shrinks therefrom; and they have little faith, which
is the cause of this timorous weakness, that leads them to be ever fearing for
their own safety; thus, just as formerly they sought and loved themselves in
all kinds of carnal enjoyments and worldly vanities, and avoided bodily pain
and inconvenience out of self-love, so now is the same motive at work, leading
them to shun sin on account of punishment, in order to escape hell and obtain
the rewards of heaven. And when they are still young in the love of God, they
are apt to taste little sweetness in loving God, save when they hope to enjoy
something from His love; as, for instance to escape hell and get to heaven; and
if sometimes they meditate on the Sufferings of our Lord, and weep over them
with strong emotion, it is because they think how He was willing to suffer so
much for their sakes, and to redeem them by His bitter Death, still (because
their love is small) they are much more inclined to dwell upon the bodily
sufferings that He endured in His human nature, than to reflect how He
manifested by His death the highest perfection of all virtue, as humility, love
and patience, and therein so greatly glorified His Heavenly Father. For this
sort of persons set out and begin to die while as yet they love themselves far
too well; hence they are not yet able to see truly what it is to resign
themselves to God, and to maintain a spirit of submission; and, although God
does all things for the best, yet this they will never believe, and it is a
perpetual stumbling-block to them. Thus they often ask and wonder why our Lord
chose to suffer so much and why He leads his friends and followers to himself
along such a path of suffering. And when they are at the beginning of a dying
life, and only half-way inclined towards true perfection, nor perceive as yet
wherein this consists, they oft-times torment themselves with watching and
fasting and an austere way of life; for whatever is outwardly painful to the
flesh they fancy to be greatly and mightily regarded and prized by God. So,
when they eagerly take upon themselves all the hardships they can, then they
think they have reached the summit of perfection, and judge all other men, nay,
even those who are much more perfect then themselves, and think meanly of all
who do not practice outward austerities, calling them low-minded and ignorant
in spiritual things; and those who do not feel as they do they think to have
gone astray altogether from a spiritual course and desire that all men should
be as they are: and whatever methods of avoiding sin they have practised and still
make use of by reason of their infirmity, they desire, nay, demand that
everyone else should observe; and, if any do not do so, they judge them and
murmur at them, and say that they pay no regard to religion.
Now, while they thus keep
themselves and all that belongs to them as it were working in their own
service, and in this self-love unduly regard themselves as their own property,
they cut themselves off from our Lord, and from the universal charity. For they
ought to cherish continually a general love toward all men, both good and bad;
but they remain absorbed in their partial and separate affections, whereby they
bring upon themselves much disquiet, and remain a prey to their besetting sin
of always seeking and studying themselves. And they are very niggardly of their
spiritual blessings towards their fellow Christians; for they devote all their
prayers and religious exercises to their own behalf; and, if they pray or do
any other kind act for others, they think it a great thing, and fancy they have
done them a great service thereby. In short, as they look little within, and
are so little enlightened in the knowledge of themselves, so also they make
little increase in the love of God and their neighbour; for they are so
entangled with unregulated affections that they live alone in heart, not
thoroughly commingling their soul with any in the right sort of thorough love.
For the love of God, which ought to unite them to God and all mankind, is
wanting in them; and, although they appear to keep the ordinances of God and of
Holy Church, they do not keep the law of Love. What they do is more out of
constraint and fear than from hearty love; and, because they are inwardly
unfaithful to God, they dare not trust Him; for the imperfection which they
find in themselves makes a flaw in their love to God. Hence their whole life is
full of care, full of toil and ignoble misery; for they see eternal life on the
one side, and fear to lose it, and they see hell on the other, and fear to fall
into it; and all their prayers and religious exercises cannot chase away their
fear of hell, so long as they do not die unto themselves. For the more they
love themselves and take counsel for their own welfare, the more the fear of
hell grows upon them; insomuch that, when God does not help them forward as
much as they wish, they complain; and they weep and sigh at every little
difficulty they encounter, however small, such as being tempted to vanity,
wandering thoughts, and the like. They make long stories of what is of no
consequence, and talk about their great difficulties and sufferings, as if they
were grievously wronged; for they esteem their works, although small, to be
highly meritorious, and that God Almighty owes them great honour and blessings
in return. But our Lord will tell them (as He does in fact afterwards, when He
has enlightened them with His grace) a poor fool loves his own wooden stick, or
any other little worthless article, as much as a rich and wise man loves his
sword, or any other great and precious thing.
All such are standing on the
lowest steps of a mortified life; and, if they do not die to themselves more,
and come to experience more of what a mortified life is, it is to be feared
that they will fall back from that little whereunto they have attained, and may
plunge into depths of folly and wickedness, from which God keep us all! But
before a man comes to such a fall, God gives him great spiritual delight; and
upon this he is so greatly rejoiced that he cheerfully endures all sorts of
austerities and penances; and then he weepeth that he hath arrived at
perfection, and begins to judge his neighbours, and wants to shape all men
after his own model, so greatly does he esteem himself in his own conceits.
Then God comes in His mercy
to teach him what he is, and shows him into what error he has fallen and
permits the Enemy to set before him and make him taste the sweetness of sin;
and then, when he has thus tasted, he conceives an inclination to one sin after
another, and he cannot rid himself of these inclinations. Then he wishes to
flee sin that he may escape hell, and begins to do outward good works; and yet
it is a dreadful toil to perform these good works as a mere labour, and to put
himself to pain; thus he is brought into an agonizing struggle with himself, and
does not know which way to turn; for he dimly sees that he has gone astray.
Then must God of His mercy come and raise him up, and he shall cry earnestly to
God for help; and his chief meditation shall be on the Life and Works and
especially the Sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The second degree in which
the grain of wheat dies is when a man is called upon to endure insult,
contempt, and such-like deaths; and, so long as his grace lasts, he would fain
continue to suffer; for by the sense of undeserved injury all his powers are
but quickened and raised into a higher state of activity. But when he is bereft
of this gracious sense of the Divine Presence, forasmuch as he is still far
from perfection, he cannot bear up under this spiritual destitution, and, through
his infirmity, falls a prey to mistrust of God, and fancies that God has
forsaken him, and is not willing to help him towards perfection. Often he is in
a hundred minds what to do or not do; and, if our Lord show him some kindness,
then he feels as if all were well between his soul and God, and he feels
himself so rich, as if he could never more be poor, and thinks to enjoy the
Presence and Savour of God (though s yet he is quite untried); just as if the
Almighty were his own personal, special Friend; and he is ready to believe that
our Lord is, so to speak, at his disposal, will comfort him in adversity, and
enrich him with all virtues. But, forasmuch as our gracious Lord sees that such
a man will be very apt to rely upon his imagined powers, and thus to fall
grievously, and sees also that the best and ripest fruit is being lost,
inasmuch as the man has not yet attained to that perfection to which our Lord
desires to lead him, therefore in due tine He withdraws from him all that He
had revealed to him, because the man was too much occupied with himself, with
thinking about his own perfection, wisdom, holiness and virtues; He thus brings
him through poverty to dissatisfaction with himself, and a humble
acknowledgement that he has neither wisdom nor worthiness; then does he begin
to reflect within himself how justly Almighty God has stayed His hand from
bestowing any sensible tokens of His mercy, because he fancied that he was
something; now he sees clearly that he is nothing. He was wont to care for his
good name and honour in the world, and to defend them as a man stands up for
his wedded wife, and to count them who spoke evil of him as enemies to the
common good. He was wont to desire and thirst after the reputation of holiness,
like a meadow after the dew of heaven. He weaned that men’s praises of him and
proceeded altogether from real goodness and sympathy of heart, and by God’s
ordination, and had wandered so far from self-knowledge as not to see that he
was in himself unsound from head to foot; he fancied that he was really as he
stood in man’s opinion, and knew nothing to the contrary.
Here we must mark that he
who wishes to heal himself of such-like grievous mistakes, and subdue such an
unmortified nature, must take note of three points in himself. First, how much
he has striven to endure cheerfully, for the sake of goodness, all the rebuke,
slander and shame that has come upon him, patiently enduring it in his heart
without outward complaint. Secondly, how much in the time of his rebuke, shame
and distress he has praised and glorified God and his fellow-men, and shown
kindness to his neighbour in all ways, in spite of all contradiction against
himself. Thirdly, let him examine himself whether he have loved with cheerful
and willing heart the men or creatures who have thus persecuted him, and
sincerely prayed for them; and, if he finds that he has not done so, and is
unwilling to do so, but is hard and bitter in his grief, then he may surely
know, and ought to feel certain, that there is something false in him, and some
resting in the praise of men and in his own spiritual pride, and that he is not
dead. He has not yet come to the second step in a dying life.
But our kind Lord, like a
tender mother who is full of love, or a wise physician who desires to restore a
sick man to perfect health by his powerful remedies, suffers him to fall many
times that he may learn to know himself; and thus he falls into fleshly
unspiritual temptations, such as he never experienced in those past days, in
which he fancied himself very good and spiritual-minded. Our of mercy God
deprives him of all understanding, and overclouds all the light in which he
walked aforetime, and so hedges him in with thorns of an anguished conscience,
that he thinks nothing else but that he is cast off from the light of God’s
countenance; and he moans greatly, and often with many tears exclaims: “O my
God, why hast thou cast me off, and why go I thus mourning all the days of my
pilgrimage?”
And when he finds himself
thus, from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, unlike God and at
variance with Him, he is filled with the sense of his own unworthiness, and
with displeasure at himself, insomuch that he can hardly abide himself; and
then he thinks many miserable things about himself from passages of Holy
Scripture, and sheds many tears in the sense of his sinfulness, till he is
weighed down to the earth with the pressure of God’s hand, and exclaims with
the prophet: “My sins are more in number than the sands of the sea; they have
taken hold upon me that I am not able to look up; for I have stirred up God’s
anger against me, and done much evil in His sight.” These things he saith, and
more the like. And at times he is not even able thus to weep and lament, and
then he is still more tormented with tribulation and assaults; for on the one
hand he feels a strong desire to cast himself down humbly, and die to himself,
and on the other he is conscious of great pride and arrogance about himself,
till he is so exasperated at himself that, but for the dishonour to God, he
would fain kill himself. I believe that all such conflict greatly wears out the
intellectual and natural powers for it is so excessive, that one would rather
suffer oneself to be put to death than endure it. Yet one grace is left him, namely,
that he looks on it all as of no moment, whatever may be poured out over him,
if only he may not knowingly offend God. After a while the grace of tears comes
back to him, and he cried to God and says: “O Lord, rise, why sleepest thou?”
and asks Him why He hath sealed up the fountains of His mercy; he calls upon
the holy Angels and blessed spirits to have pity on him. He asks the heavens
why they have become as brass, and the earth wherefore she is as iron, and
beseeches the very stones to have compassion on his woes. He exclaims: “Am I
become as the blasted hill of Gilboa, which was cursed of David that no rain or
dew should fall on it? And how should my wickedness alone vanquish the
invisible God, and force Him to shut up His mercies, Whose property it is to
have mercy and to help?”
In the second stage of the
dying life God leads the soul through these exercises and operations of His
hand, as through fire and water by turns, until the workings of
self-sufficiency are driven out from all the secret corners of the spirit, and
the man henceforward is so utterly ashamed of himself, and so casts himself
off, that he can never more ascribe any greatness to himself, but thoroughly
perceives all his own weakness, in which he now is and always has been; and whatever
he does or desires to do, or whatever good thing may be said of him, he does
not take it to his own credit, for he knows not how to say anything of himself
but that he is full of all manner of infirmity. Then he has reached the end of
this stage; and he who has arrived at this point is not far from the threshold
of great mercies, by which he shall enter into the Bride-chamber of Christ.
Then, when the day of his death shall come, he shall be brought in by the
Bridegroom with great rejoicing.
It is hard to die. We know
that little trees do not strike their roots deep into the earth, and therefore
they cannot stand long; so it is with all humble hearts, who do not take deep
root in earth, but in heaven. But the great trees which have waxed high, and are
intended to endure long upon the earth, these strike their roots deep, and
spread them out wide into the soil. So it is with the men who in old times and
now at this present have been great upon earth; they must needs through many a
struggle and death die unto themselves, before all the self-sufficiency of
their heart can be broken down, and they can be surely and firmly rooted for
ever in humility. It does however happen sometimes that the Holy Spirit finds
easier ways than those of which we have spoken, whereby He brings such souls to
Himself.
The third degree in which
the grain of wheat dies belongs only to the perfect, who with unflagging
diligence and ceaseless desire are ever striving to approach perfection. These
men’s state is one of mingled joy and sorrow, whereby they are tossed up and
down; for the Holy Spirit is trying and sifting them, and preparing them for
perfection with two kinds of grief and two kinds of joy and happiness which
they have ever in their sight. The first grief is an inward pain and an
overwhelming sorrow of heart, in the sense of the unspeakable wrong done to the
Holy Trinity by all creatures, and specially by the bad Christians, who are
living in mortal sin. The second grief consists in their fellow-feeling for and
experience of all the grief and pain which the Human Nature of Christ has
undergone.
The first of the two joys
lies in this dying; it is clear
intuition and a perfect fruition to which they are raised in Christ by the
power of the Holy Spirit, that they may enjoy the fruition of Him, and triumph
in all the joys which they hope and believe after this life to behold in all
their perfect fullness. The second triumph is that they are fulfilled in all
the joys which the Human Nature of Christ possessed. This joy such a man hopes
to share as a member of Christ; and, even if he cannot fathom the Abyss of God,
he rejoices therein, for he sees that the overflowings of God’s mercy are
unspeakable, and feels that it is good for him that he is vanquished in the
effort to comprehend God’s power, and bends down beneath God in his self-dying.
To this state a man cannot
attain except he unite his will with God, with an entire renunciation and
perfect denial of himself and all selfish love of himself; and all delight in
having his own will be over-mastered and quenched by the shedding abroad in his
heart of the Holy Spirit in the Love of God; so that it seems as if the Holy
Spirit Himself were the man’s will and love, and he were nothing and willed
nothing on his own account. Yea, even the Kingdom of Heaven he shall desire for
God’s sake and God’s glory, because Christ hath earned it in order to supply
his needs, and chooseth to bestow it on him as one of His sons. When in this
stage, a man loveth all things in their right order, God above all things—next
the blessed (Human) Nature of Christ, and after that the blessed Mother of
Christ, and the Saints of all degrees, each according to the rank which God
hath enabled him to attain. When his affections are thus regulated, he sets
himself in the lowest place at the wedding-feast of the Bridegroom. And when
the Bridegroom comes Who has bidden him to the feast, He saith unto him:
“Friend, go up higher.” Then is is endowed with a new life, and illuminated
with a new light, in the which he clearly perceives and sees that he alone is
the cause of his own evil, that he cannot with truth throw the blame either on
nature, the world, or the devil. Yea, he confesses that God has appointed him
all these exercises and assaults out of His great love, in order that he may
glorify God in overcoming these, and deserve a higher crown. Further, he
perceives and sees that it is God alone Who has upheld him and stayed his
steps, so that he has no longer an inclination to sin, and Who has removed the
occasion to sin that he might not fall. Yea, what is still worse, he is forced
to confess that he has often been dissatisfied that he was not able to derive
more enjoyment from his sins. Thus all his being is swallowed up in sorrow and
remorse for that he is still laden with his boundless infirmity.
But he hath delight and joy
in that he seeth that the goodness of God is as great as his necessities, so
that his life may well be called a dying life, by reason of such his griefs and
joys which are conformable and like unto the Life of our Lord Jesus Christ,
which from beginning to end was always made up of mingled grief and joy. Grief,
in that he left His heavenly throne and came down into this world; joy, in that
He was not severed from the glory and honour of the Father. Grief, in that He
was a Son of Man; joy, in that He nevertheless was and remained the Son of God.
Grief, because He took upon Him the office of servant; joy, in that He was
nevertheless a great Lord. Grief, because in human nature He was mortal, and
died upon the Cross; joy, because He was immortal according to His Godhead.
Grief, in His birth, in that He was once born of His Mother; joy, in that He is
the only-begotten of God’s Heart from everlasting to everlasting. Grief,
because He became in time subject to time; joy, because He was eternal before
all time, and shall be so for ever. Grief, in that the Word was born into the
flesh, and hath dwelt in us; joy, in that the Word was in the beginning with
God, and God Himself was the Word.
Grief, in that it behooved Him to be baptized like any human sinner by St John
the Baptist in the Jordan; joy, in that the voice of His Heavenly Father said
of Him: “This is my beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased.” Grief, in that like
others, sinners, He was tempted of the Enemy; joy, in that the Angels came and
ministered unto Him. Grief, in that He oftentimes endured hunger and thirst;
joy, because He Himself the Lord of men and Angels. Grief, in that He was often
wearied with His labours; joy, because He is the rest of all loving hearts and
blessed spirits. Grief, forasmuch as His holy life and sufferings should remain
in vain for so many human beings; joy, because He should thereby save His
friends. Grief, in that He must needs ask to drink water of the heathen woman
at the well; joy, in that He gave to that same woman to drink of living water,
so that she should never thirst again. Grief, in that He was wont to sail in
ships over the sea; joy, because He was wont to walk dry-shod over the waves.
Grief, in that He wept with Martha and Mary over Lazarus; joy, in that He
raised their brother Lazarus from the dead. Grief, in that He was nailed to the
Cross with nails; joy, in that He promised Paradise to the thief by His side.
Grief, in that He thirsted when hanging on the Cross; joy, in that He should
thereby redeem His elect from eternal thirst. Grief, when He said: “My God, My
God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” joy, in that He would with these words comfort
all sad hearts. Grief, in that His soul was parted from His body; and He died
and was buried; joy, because on the third day He rose again from the dead with
a glorified body.
Thus was all His life, from
the Manger to the Cross, a mingled web of grief and joy. Which life He hath
left as a sacred testament to His followers in this present time, who are
converted unto His dying life, that they may remember Him when they drink of
His cup, and walk as He hath walked. May God help us so to do! Amen.
On St John the Evangelist’s day
How men must
receive all that God gives, and ordains for those who truly seek him in all
things, as from His Hand, and as for the best. How willingly God gives great
gifts, when, in lowliness of mind, we esteem ourselves of small repute; and how
all things are as nothing without God.
Hic est discipulus
ille, quem diligebat Jesus.
“This is that disciple whom Jesus loved.”
Dear children, though God is
no respecter of persons, and loves all the things that He has made, still He
has His Friends (those who are most conscious of His favour, and turn to Him
with all their might) who are especially dear to Him; and it is not His fault
that all men do not turn to Him of their own free will. He is always ready to
receive us; and He lets the sun of His grace shine on the good and on the evil.
Now St John especially was
conscious of the grace of God from his youth, and was always the dearly loved
disciple of our Lord, on account of his virginal purity, his perfect love, his
keen vision, and all his other virtues. If therefore we would be the dear
disciples of God, we must first follow St John by dying wholly to ourselves, by
resigning ourselves and all our affections to God; and by receiving all things
from His hand; we must deny ourselves all pleasure in the love of created
things apart from God. Those men who thus resign themselves, and submit
entirely to God, seek earnestly all that God gives them; for it is, and it
seems to them the best. Thou mayest (as truly as God lives) be certain that it
must of necessity be the very best, and that no other way could be better than
it is, though another might appear so; yet it would not be so good for thee,
for God has chosen this and no other way; therefore it must needs be the best.
It may be sickness, poverty, hunger or thirst; whatever it may be that God
ordains or does not ordain, it is still the best for thee. It may be devotion
or fervour, or that thou art to possess neither, as long as it is not caused by
thine own neglect; only make up thy mind to seek God’s honour in all things, in
all that thou hast or hast not, then all that He sendeth thee will be for the
best.
Now thou mightest say perhaps:
“How do I know whether it is the will of God or not?” Know this, that if it
were not the will of God, it could not happen. Thou hast neither days of
sickness, nor anything else, except it be the will of God. Now, if thou knowest
it is God’s will, thou oughtest to have so much pleasure and delight therein,
that thou wouldest not heed pain as pain, even though it were extreme. It would
be wrong for thee to be sensible of pain or suffering; for thou oughtest to
accept it from God as the very best for thee. It is His very life, to desire
only the best; therefore I ought to desire it, and nothing ought to please me
better. Now, if there were a man whom I was most desirous to please, and I knew
for certain that I should please him better in a gray garb than in any other,
however good it might be, that gray garb would seem to be more desirable than
any other though it were ever so good. Oh! take heed to yourselves, see how
your love is fashioned! If ye truly loved God, nothing would delight you more
than doing that which pleased Him best, and desiring that His will should be
fully accomplished in us. However severe pain and discomfort may seem, if thou
hast not as great delight in them as in comfort and pleasure, all is not well
with thee.
There is one thing which I
am wont to say constantly, and which is also true, that we cry out every day
and say in the Lord’s Prayer: “Lord, Thy Will be done!” but then we feel angry,
and are not so content with His will as that all He does should seem for the
best. They who do accept it as the best, are kept in perfect peace in all
things. Now, sometimes ye say: “Oh! if it had only been otherwise it would have
been better,” or, “if it had not happened thus it might have happened better.”
As long as thou art of this mind, thou wilt never attain to peace; thou must
accept all as the very best.
Now, mark, God is the Giver
of all gifts, and all things that are best and highest are His real and most
peculiar gifts. God gives nothing so willingly as great gifts, for it is
natural to Him to give great things; therefore, the better things are, the more
of them there are, the noblest creatures, the Angels, are especially wise; they
have no bodily nature, and there are more of them in number than of all other
created beings. Great things are really great gifts; and they are what I can
best make my own and most desire.
I speak also of that which
may actually be expressed in word, and which must come out from within quite
freely; it must not come from without into the heart; but that must come out
from within, which really dwells in the inmost heart. There all things are
present unto thee, and live and move and have their being, in Him, who is the
Holy and Sovereign God. Why dost thou not find it thus? Because thou are not at
home there. The nobler a thing is, the commoner it is. I have my natural sense
in common with animals; and life in common with trees; and my being, which is
still more to me, in common with all creatures. Heaven is more than all that is
thereby; therefore it is also nobler. The nobler things are, the commoner they
are. Love is noble, because it is universal. It seems hard to do that which our
Lord has commanded, and to love our neighbours as ourselves. Common people say,
“We ought to love them as we love God; for we love ourselves too well.” But no,
it should be otherwise. We must therefore love them very much, just as we love
ourselves; and this is not hard; for, if ye would only see it, this command is
more of a reward than a command. A command seems hard, but a reward is
desirable. He, who loves God as he ought to love Him, yea, and as he must love
Him, whether he will or no, and as all creatures love Him, must love his
neighbour as himself. He must joy in his joys, as though they were his own; he
must be as desirous for his honour as though it were his own; and he must treat
a stranger as though he were dear unto him. Then that man will be always
rejoicing, always useful, and always honourable. It will seem like heaven to
him; and he will have far more joy, that if he rejoiced only in his own good.
Now, know of a truth, that
if thine own honour is of more importance to thee, and dearer than that of
another man, thou doest wrongfully. Know this, that if thou seekest something
that is thine own, thou seekest not God only; and thou wilt never find Him.
Thou art acting as though thou madest a candle of God to seek for something;
and, when thou hast found it, thou castest the candle away. Therefore, when
thou doest this, that which thou seekest with God, whatever it may be, it is
nothing; gain, reward, fervour, or whatever it may be, thou seekest nothing,
therefore wilt thou find nothing. There is no other cause for finding nothing,
but that thou seekest nothing. All creatures are absolutely nothing. That which
has no being is nothing. And creatures have no being, because they have their
being in God; if God turned away for a moment, they would cease to exist. He
who desired to have all the world with God, would have nothing more than if he
had God alone. All creatures have, without God, nothing more than a man has,
who has a mite, or absolutely nothing, without Him; neither more nor less.
Listen, I beseech you, to a
true saying. A man might give a thousand marks to build churches and
monasteries, and it would be a great gift; but he who careth nought for a
thousand marks has done more and given more. When God created all creatures,
they were so vile and mean that He could not live and move in them. Then He
made the soul of man, like unto and in harmony with Himself, that unto him He
might give Himself; for all else that He gave him, man heeded not. God must
give Himself to me as my own, as He is in Himself, or I have nothing and care
for nothing. He, who would receive God in full measure, must give himself
wholly to God; he must go our of himself. He will receive the like from God,
all that He has as his own, as God Himself has it, and as He has given it to
our Lady and to all that are in heaven. Those who have thus gone forth, and
have given themselves, shall also, all alike, receive all in all and nothing
less.
Now know, that of ourselves,
we have nothing; for this and all other gifts are from above. Therefore he who
would receive from above, must of necessity place himself beneath, in true
humility. And know of a truth, that if he leave anything out, so that all is
not beneath, he will have nothing and receive nothing. Dost thou trust to
thyself, or to anything else, or anybody else? thou art not beneath, and wilt
receive nothing; but if thou hast placed thyself beneath, then Thou wilt
receive all things fully. It is God’s nature to give; and He lives and moves
that He may give unto us when we are humble. If we are not lowly, and yet
desire to receive, we do Him violence, and kill Him, so to speak; and, though
we may not wish to do this, yet we do it, as far as in us lies. That thou
mayest truly give Him all things, see to it, that thou castest thyself in deep
humility at the Feet of God, and beneath all created beings; that thou exaltest
God in thy heart, and that thou confessest Him. The Lord our God sent His
only-begotten Son into the world. God sent His Son in the fulness of time, for
the sake of our souls, and that we might be filled with Him. When a soul is
freed from place and time, the Father sends His Son into that soul to be born
there. Nothing can hinder God in us, or us in God, if in our hearts we neither
hang on to, nor cleave to time and place, nor exalt ourselves above time and
place in Eternity, which is God Himself. Amen.
Of the Feast of the Holy Virgin
St Agnes
How outward purity
of body, and inner chastity of mind, may be attained and preserved. Especially,
how purity of mind may be preserved, in spite of the outward attacks of human
love and imaginations; and that no man, however spiritually minded he may be,
can ever be sure, while he is still here in the body, that his frail nature has
been completely killed, so that he can never be tempted to impurity. Of three
snares that are laid for those who are spiritually minded, into which they may
fall and against which they must guard themselves, be they never so perfect.
Virgo cogitat, quae
Domini sunt, ut sit sancta et corpore et spiritu.
“A virgin thinketh on the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both
in body and spirit.”
A virgin, says St Paul,
thinks and meditates on the things of the Lord, that she may be holy in body
and soul. Four things are needful for virgins, that they may be pure in body
and pure in spirit. To purity of body pertain spotlessness of the flesh, and
moderation in the use of all bodily necessaries, in eating or drinking,
sleeping or waking. A virgin must refrain from talking; she must be modest in
all her ways; she must abstain from mixing in dissolute society or amusements,
and be lowly and simple in her daily life; industrious in good and seemly work,
or in works of penance and such-like; for all these things tend to external
chastity. He who seeks to perfect or preserve his chastity in any other way,
will find he has been deceived; for that which is visible must be visibly
overcome; or else the impurity of the flesh will overcome the purity of the
spirit. It is plain that he who tries to tame the flesh by the flesh will not
effect much. And now we will say no more of this, but say a little about the
chastity of the spirit, how it may be lost or preserved; and this is a useful
subject, which all those who are spiritually minded will do well to consider
and remember.
Purity of spirit consists in
a clean, pure and humble conscience; for a humble conscience is a pure mind and
a clean heart. A pure mind is to be gained by exercise in the Holy Scriptures.
From thence come holy meditations which fill the heart of man; and therefore it
is the sooner freed from all vain and wicked thoughts. Be sure, nothing
doubting, that the man, who devotes himself to diligent study of the Holy
Scriptures, will be preserved and guarded from the grosser temptations to
impurity. This is shown by St Jerome, when he says: “Love to search the
Scriptures, and then ye will not care for the lusts of the flesh, nor delight
in them.” But a clean heart must be gained by driving out all desire for the
creature, and especially for man; for a good and holy man is so easily grieved
and disturbed in his heart by the inordinate love of man, that it often takes
him a long time to drive out that love from his heart, which had entered in a
moment. Therefore, unless man shuns the causes which minister to the flesh, he
can get no further, and he must receive a hurt that will grieve him. It is here
that man is most easily wounded, on account of his natural short-sightedness,
which is so deeply rooted in inordinate desire, that he will be kept occupied
all the days of his life; though many a man, who does not realize it, is as
bold and joyful as though he had conquered in every strife and had overcome.
Now, dear children, though
ye had conquered in a thousand fights, and had gained the victory, ye must not
trust to it; for as long as body and soul are joined together, to none is
freedom assured on earth. That which may not happen in a hundred years, often
comes in one moment; so that many a good and pure man has been tempted and led
astray in such a manner that he hardly knew how it came about. Not that such
men are spotted by outward deeds, or fall into open carnal sins, though
sometimes even this occurs; but then they are molested by the charm of evil
desire, dangerous, transitory and carnal love, which darkens their understanding
and judgment, and the fervour which they had before experienced; and they are
cast into a hell of distress and scorn, and feel the gnawings of conscience.
Thus man seems to be going to the gates of hell and of external darkness, just
like one who is about to be killed, and, who in great fear and horror of death,
loses his senses and reason. This comes from lack of watchfulness; but it is at
times also ordained by God, that the man may ground himself in true humility,
and may learn to know his own infirmity, and may be able to feel for other men
in theirs. This is especially the case with those who afflict themselves, in
order to overcome and to kill the inner, reasoning and upright man, because
they long to attain to absolute poverty of spirit. It is necessary that they,
more than all men, should guard themselves in the presence of those who are
unlike them. For the Tempter, who never rests, does not forget his cunning when
he finds a good opportunity. Now if such men strive diligently to destroy the
inner man absolutely, and to walk in all singleness of heart, they will exert
themselves to overcome all inner troubles, so that they may uncomplainingly and
unresistingly submit themselves to God in all things, whenever and however it
may please Him. They must not endeavour to get their own way in His work, but
must desire that His will may be done, without any choosing on their part. See,
by this means, man will attain to such simplicity of heart, and such peace,
both outwardly and inwardly, and also in his nature, that he will be scarcely
conscious of any resistance in himself. Neither is he conscious of any shame,
nor yet of the burden of a guilty conscience; and, to use a simile, it seems as
though he had returned to his original ignorance and innocence, and were like a
young child who follows the dictates of nature without shame. In the same way a
child might thus naturally go his own way, and grow up, according to nature,
taking no care or pains to tame his unruly passions. Thus it would come to pass
that his passions would grow stronger and stronger; and, as understanding and
desire increased, sin also would increase. This might also happen to a pure and
spiritually-minded man, however child-like his innocence might be, who had long
lived a life of seclusion, and who seemed to have so conquered his outer and
lower nature that he was scarcely conscious at any time of temptation, either
sleeping or waking; and who, were the occasion to arise, or where he incited to
it, would take no pleasure in it, but would imagine he could easily withstand
all these attacks and temptations. Yea, it would even seem to him as though for
him in such things, than there would be for a man who was dead; in seeing,
hearing, speaking, or in anything else possible. Now see, nature seems quite
dead; and yet none should put their trust in it, either men or women, however
sure of themselves they may be, and even satisfied as to their condition. Now,
however perfect and holy the man in truth may be, however dead he may seem to all
these things, if he will not flee from temptations, his heart will of necessity
be wounded by sensual desires; and it will be agitated and tempted by the love
of a friend, more for one than for another.
Now mark, dear children, how
this takes place, and how by degrees man falls into such snares. First of all,
love is felt for people on account of their grace, their piety and their
spirituality; and this is all-sufficing to the heart, and seems to be all
spiritual, and is accepted with great thankfulness to God and to these men. If
man does not continue to strive to chase away these emotions, the longing
creeps in to show these people outwardly a little kindness out of pure
friendliness. He recognises them by pleasant words and gestures, by laughing
and bowing, by touching their clothes, or taking them by the hand, or embracing
them, or by bowing the head to them, and by many such like things. These are
all signs of natural human love, and show that the heart has been wounded by
unregulated love. It may be, if the man does not shun it, that he will be still
more deeply wounded; and it may go so far, that spiritual pleasure is turned
into carnal pleasure; and the man, thus entangled in this net of the devil’s
and of carnal desires, cannot easily escape from it without great injury and
danger of sin in his heart. Yea, it may even go so far that he dallies with
such pleasure till at last he consents to it; and that would be a sin unto
death; and, if even then he did not become conscious of it, he might fall into great
spiritual sin without any opposition on his part.
See, dear children, a good
man may thus fall into all kinds of sin, if he does not at once resist the
temptation. Yea, and even though he had attained to the highest and most
perfect state of virtue, if he does not flee from these sins, he may stand in
great danger from them, greater danger than he was ever in before. Never was it
more necessary for him to shun them than it would be now; for no one is free
from these temptations and incitements, as long as his breath is in his body;
and, however holy he may be, it is possible for him to fall into sin and to
endanger his salvation, unless he keeps watch over himself.
As all teachers point out to
us, three snares are laid for the spiritually-minded, into which they may fall.
The first is a man’s holiness. The second is when people are of one family, and
belong to each other by birth and nature, or are related, that as being
brothers and sisters, and so forth. The third snare is personal holiness, and
that in the long practice of virtue, so that the occasion of sin is not
shunned. This carnal affection sometimes exists between persons of different
sex, between a man and a woman. They fall in love with each other, and seek
distraction and diversion together, asking each other how they are, and about
their station and place in life. Ye will see that this must in the end bring
trouble and come to a bad end, and cause sorrow and heaviness of heart. This is
especially the case when people of unequal rank start such a friendship
together. This cannot be tolerated by anyone with a good conscience; for thence
arise contempt, suspicion, irritation and the destruction of inner spiritual
peace. Therefore all those who are obliged by necessity, or their office, to
speak to people who are not of the same rank as themselves, must do so as
little as possible, and go away as soon as possible; and this will be good for
their own consciences, and also for their inferiors or equals, who will be the
less angered or tempted thereby. Whoever, therefore, wishes to be preserved in
such a case, or from other sins, must, as Bonaventura says, seat himself and
speak openly, as though he wished everyone to see how he treats such persons,
and that he no more desires to carry on improper relations with them than with
anyone else. Neither must he set his heart on any other person, to such a
degree that he is absorbed in that person. He must never be outwardly too
friendly to anyone, especially to people of different sex, either in kindly or
spiritual intercourse; but he must behave gravely towards them, and hurry
straight away, exchanging only short words with them.
Now ye see, dear children,
that if even a good and pious man can thus fall into unchastity from such
causes as I have mentioned, how it will be with those who, either in thought,
or will, or deed, do not tear themselves away from all such temptations, and
who are not ready to die to all superfluity, pleasure, effeminacy,
fastidiousness and unruly mirth, and to all the other causes of sin that are
evident. Oh! if even a good man is thus tempted to impurity, how will it be
with a man who is dilatory, wilful, fastidious, lazy and idle, dull and dead to
all spiritual things? Will he not revel in them and be corrupted? This is known
alone to the Lord God, Who trieth the reins and the hearts. But may God have
mercy upon us, poor sinners, and preserve us from those troublesome snares of
unchasity; that we may be found pure and clean in His sight, in body and soul;
pure in conscience; from from all vain thoughts and from all evil desires;
resting not in the creature, but in God only, and loving Him alone and above
all things. May God help us thereto. Amen.
SERMON VII
Our Lady’s Candle-Mass
How we may offer
ourselves, night and day, unto God in holy discipline; in prayer, in
meditation, in beholding God, and by thanking God and praising Him; thereby
following the example of the blessed Mother of God.
Ecce ego mitto angelum
meum ante faciem meam.
“Behold I send My Angel, and he shall prepare the way before My Face.
And presently the Lord, Whom ye seek, and the Angel of the Testament, Whom ye
desire, shall come to His temple.”
To-day we would commemorate
the fact, that the Lord, to Whom all time belongs, and by Whom the Law was
made, subjected Himself to time and law, and offered Himself for us in the
temple of His heavenly Father. It was not necessary that He, like any other
firstborn son, should be sanctified; for all holy seasons and festivals, places
and temples, are made holy by Him. Neither was it necessary for His blessed
Mother to be purified, like other women, for she was shielded from all sin, and
conceived and bare the Son of God by the operation of the Holy Ghost, remaining
ever a virgin and adorned with all purity. Her purity was much greater than
that of all Angels; for it is impossible to imagine greater purity apart from
God. And yet she also subjected herself to the austere law, and offered her
dear Child to the heavenly Father at the hands of the priest, and herself, not
her Son, as a living sacrifice and to the praise of God, for the salvation of
all men.
Now, by this we are taught
that we must, at all times, repress ourselves and become absorbed in deep
humility, as those who have nothing and can do nothing of themselves, but that
which is evil; and that in the inner temples of our souls we must offer up
ourselves, our own wills, and all that we have and are, in complete resignation
to God at all times, with the Son in the Father, as an eternal sacrifice of praise.
All that the Father has He gives to His Son; so dear is the Son, that the
Father loves nothing but the Son; and those whom He finds united with the Son,
He loves in the Son. Therefore, we must exert all the powers of our souls, and
offer them to the Father in the Son, that they may be loved by Him in the Son,
after the perfect pattern of Mary, the most holy Virgin and Mother of God. Now,
to-day, I will tell you something about her, how we may copy her holy life;
because she was full of grace and virtue, and the mirror and exact reflection
of all holiness.
This gentle Virgin spent the
whole of her life in such perfect love to God, in the inner temple of her
heart, that she never loved any other creature beside God. Neither did any
image ever come into her mind that interposed between her and her love of God.
Her love to God was undivided, and she loved all creatures in Him. With all her
powers she communed with herself in the depths of her heart, wherein the Divine
Image lay hidden; there she dwelt in the innermost temple of her soul, and
turned all her powers within, and prayed there to the one God in spirit and in
truth. She confessed that she could not worthily praise God; therefore she
desired that He would praise and magnify Himself in her. She was so conformed
to God from the very bottom of her heart, that if any one could have looked
into it, he would have seen God in all His glory, and would have actually seen
the procession of the Son and of the Holy Ghost; for her heart never turned
away from God.
Now, shall I tell you
something about the devotional exercises of this Holy Virgin? They are,
however, so divine and superhuman, so high and unfathomable, that they surpass
the understanding of men and of Angels. But of her lesser devotions ye shall know
that she always got up at midnight, and lifted up her heart to the heavenly
Father, in such rapt devotion, that it forced its way through heaven, and
rested only in the Father’s Heart; and thus she stood absorbed in prayer till
break of day. Oh! how blessed is he with whom she shares her gentle prayers,
and for whom, with especially motherly love, she intercedes with her Son.
Now, learn, that she knew
that she was beloved and endowed above all other creatures by God; therefore,
when she got up at midnight, she fell on her knees in lowliness, and thanked
God for His rich bounty, which He had poured out upon her. Then she offered
herself and all that she had to God in prayer, and gave herself into God’s
gentle keeping, that He might begin and accomplish His will in her, and in all
that was hers. Thirdly, she prayed for all the members of the Holy Church, that
all things might be ordered therein for the best in all godly honour; and for
all sinners, that they might truly turn again unto salvation. And then she
turned in her prayer to all the poor souls in purgatory, for whom she had
especial love, and besought God to set them free. Fourthly, she talked with God
as a child might talk with his father, or one dearly loved to her beloved; and
then often, by the eye of faith she beheld the Divine Being, unveiled, in all
His glory and beauty, and God spake with her as with His dear and chosen
spouse. Fifthly, she began to praise God in her prayer with such lively praise,
that it seemed to come forth from a divine and blossoming garden that had been
tended by God. Her praise was sweeter and purer, and more pleasing to God, than
when He had created heaven and earth, the morning stars and the children of God
praised Him. Sixthly, she sank down in her prayer into her own nothingness, and
confessed that she could not worship the great God, nor praise Him according to
His worthiness; and she desired of Him that He would be magnified in her; and
then she let all her powers sink down to the lowest depths, whence alone the Eternal
God receives the prayer and praise that He loves best.
Know also that, when she
thus prayed, she withdrew her mind from all that was external, from all forms
and figures, and continued thus, her whole mind being absorbed. Afterwards she
meditated on the greatness and glory of the Lord, with Whom she desired to hold
converse, though in her own sight she was a worthless creature. Then she fell
down at the Feet of the glorious God, and prayed in deep humility, and in
earnest, fervent love and desire, and with heartfelt trust in the boundless
love of God, that He would hear her, not according to her own will, but
according to His. And she continued in prayer from midnight till dawn, and from
that time till Prime she devoted herself to holy meditations, in the best way
that any creature ever did. First of all she meditated on the greatness and
almightiness of the great God, whom she confessed as above all Angels. Then she
sank down in her own littleness, in deep humility. Secondly, she meditated on
the mysterious and unfathomable judgments of God, and on His wisdom, which is
hidden from all creatures. Thirdly, on the fathomless goodness of God in His
eternal love, which is the loving source of all that is good and gracious.
Fourthly, she meditated on the overflowing sweetness of God, from whom she had
received so much sweetness; for, had she not been overshadowed by the Holy
Ghost, her divine heart must have burst with love. Fifthly, she meditated with
tearful eyes on the humility of her Child, Who had humbled Himself, and had so
trodden the path of humiliation that it was impossible for Him to humble
Himself any more.
Sixthly, she meditated on
the sufferings of her Child, how great and manifold they were; and this she did
with great compassion, for the meditation smote like a sword through her virgin
heart and soul. Therefore hers was a martyr’s reward, as much as that of any
other martyr. Then she meditated on the sufferings of her Child, desiring to
imitate Him; for she bethought herself how, at all times, her Child had been
despised and had suffered; therefore she devoted all her life to suffering and
to bearing oppression. She so entirely submitted herself, that she never prayed
to God that her suffering might be shortened or lessened. She spent her life in
suffering, and bore it to the end with willing submission, willing even to
suffer throughout eternity, if such were the will of God. Then she meditated
again on the sufferings of her Child; how He had borne His suffering with great
patience, without murmuring, rejoicing in spirit, because of His burning love
and desire for us. Thus she also bore her suffering without murmuring and with
burning love and joy.
At the hour of Prime she
went into the Temple, and betook herself to a corner with downcast eyes, and stayed
there till mid-day. Mentally reaching out into eternity, she meditated on the
commands and discourses of the Lord; then her soul was exalted, as in a divine
vision, above all knowledge, and she was transfigured in spirit above all
powers. Her memory shed a pure light, and remained in the unity of the spirit
above all carnal suggestions. Her mind was transfused with clearness, so that
she understood and discerned all the virtues, the ways, the discipline and the
mysteries of Scripture with judgment. Her will was set alight with fervent
heat, in silent love, passing beyond all created things. In this state of
exaltation she was above all wisdom and all judgment. Here she received the
outpouring of Divine Love, in silence, her spirit was steeped in the immaterial
Spring, without any exercise of her own power. Here, above all things, she
reposed in God, and, surrounded by Love unfathomable, she lost herself in the
obscurity of the Godhead. She was united, without any intervention, and made
one Spirit with God, above all created gifts, graces and lights, in one single
light that renewed itself unceasingly in the depths of her heart, in the
highest exaltation of spirit. In this she had some conception of future
blessedness, and she loved God with eternal, uncreated love. All created gifts,
virtues, works and discipline, with all that pertained to the creature, must
here remain without, for she was moulded herein with divine brightness above
all sense and imagination. She saw the eternal lights and scenes, as they were
beholden in eternity, with unspeakable and divine joy and pleasure. Know that,
were all the delights and joys of the world melted down altogether, they would
be nothing but bitterness, compared with the least divine joy such as that ever
received by the Mother of God.
Now, know, that the Blessed
Virgin possessed one grace above all other human beings; to whatever heights
she might be caught up and entranced, beholding God in the light of God, she
saw, none the less, all other things, and attended to them. Thus she could even
order her outer life in calm and holy conduct, without disturbing her inner
life; for her highest powers communed directly with their Source, and were
united thereto, so that the lowest were obedient to the highest, as those of
Adam had been in Paradise. This grace was hers, because she never inherited
original sin; for she had been preserved from this by her Child; so that never
for an instant had she been the child of wrath, or an unclean vessel, under the
power of the Devil, like the rest of mankind. The Eternal Wisdom prevented and
would not allow this chosen Temple to be thus defiled. Therefore, during this
inner vision and absorption in God, she could listen with her outward ears,
with diligence and devotion and deep humility of heart, to Divine Service; it
gave her no trouble, but was delightful and desirable above all things to her
at this time. Then, when towards mid-day she went home, she was often fed by
the Angels.
In the afternoon, if it was
not a Holy day, she worked, till Vespers, with her blessed hands, and did
everything, however small it might be, with especial intention to the glory of
God. But, if it was a Holy day, after she had praised God, she went to hear the
Word of God, and listened to it with great humility, however plainly it might
be spoken, and though she understood it better herself; and she stamped it
earnestly in her pure heart, earnestly desiring to experience the least as well
as the greatest. When the Word of God was not preached, she spoke or listened
to others, speaking of God and of the Divine Life; or she read the Scriptures
till Vespers. Then she sang her Psalms and said her prayers till Compline.
Then, when night came on,
she communed with herself in holy meditation, and meditated on the perfect Life
of her Child and her Lord, and on this sweet doctrine; and her heart was filled
with joyful and eternal sweetness. Afterwards she would thank God on her knees
that He had so graciously looked upon her on that and every day; and then, in
meekness and thankfulness, the blessed Virgin Mary laid herself to rest. Hosts
of Angels surrounded her holy bed, so that no evil spirits might torment her;
therefore she had no vain fancies or evil dreams, nor any other vision that
that which God Himself gave to her; for the Holy Trinity was ever her defense
and shield. The blessed Virgin never lay down without first dedicating her
sleep with her whole heart to the glory of God; and, thus united with God, she
bowed her blessed head on the Heavenly Father’s Breast, and rested in peace. At
midnight she began to pass the day again, as she had passed it before, in all
holiness and virtue.
This is related of a portion
of her holy life, as in a mirror, that we may place it before us as our
example, and, following it, may also remain faithful to God, and offer up
ourselves wholly in the inner temples of our souls, according to our power. But
that we may be able to do this, we must call on God unceasingly for His divine
grace and help, and also on His dear Mother, to whom we should, at least once
every day, give especial honour and service. She will then, on her part, help
us faithfully in our need, and especially in our last trial; for she is a
mother of mercy and cannot reject any sinner who desires her help. Therefore St
Bernard says: “He alone can keep silence about thy mercy, O blessed Virgin, who
has called upon thee in his distress and has been forsaken by thee. For we, thy
unworthy servants, rejoice with thee in thy other virtues, but in this virtue
we rejoice for ourselves. We praise thy virginity, we marvel at thy lowliness,
but we embrace thy mercy more willingly; the oftener we think of it, the
oftener we appeal to it. Thou upholdest us, and forsakest not the miserable
sinner, until thou seest that the terrible Judge is propitiated.” May we thus
honour and follow this blessed Virgin and her Child, that we may attain to a
portion with them in eternity. May God help us thereto. Amen.
SERMON VIII
On the Feast of St Agatha, or
the Holy Virgins
That which is
needful for a true virgin, that she may be pleasing unto God, for Whose sake
she has despised the kingdom of the world; that which may be sung of every holy
virgin.
Regnum mundi, et omnem
ornatum saecus contempsi, propter
amorem Domini mei, Jesu
Christi.
“The kingdom of this world and all secular adornments have I held in
contempt, for the love of my Master Jesus Christ.”
These words are sung by the
Holy Church in the person of every spiritual spouse of Christ, who has given
herself to Him that she may be ever faithful in doing His will and service. Now
mark, dear children, what qualifications such a bride and virgin of God must
possess, who desires to be pleasing and acceptable unto God; so that, at last,
He may espouse her unto Himself for ever; when her soul will be so completely
united with Him, that she will never again be parted from Him throughout
eternity, nor He from her.
The first qualification is,
that a virgin cannot please God, unless she despises the kingdom of this world
and all its pomp. She must diligently guard against pride, vain-glory, the
desire to please people outwardly, either in her person with the adornment of
clothes, or with any fleeting things. She must leave all these for God’s sake;
and not only the things pertaining to the body, but also to the mind; the
spiritual world and all its adornments, which consist of pride, vain-glory, a
good outward appearance, and spiritual words out of a worldly heart; in
excessive joys of the heart in spiritual gifts or virtues, or satisfaction in
personal goodness. These things happen to and befall the virgins of Christ in
so many ways, that it is not easy to say how the Enemy dares to deceive these
pure hearts.
The second qualification is,
that she must guard herself diligently against worldly customs and conduct, and
against all harmful habits, both outwardly and inwardly. She must not be proud
in heart of haughty in bearing before other people; she must not boast nor hold
herself in high esteem because she is wise or prudent, nor try to defend
herself when she is despised or oppressed; but with modest and soft words and
demeanour, and in all lowliness, she must set herself to acknowledge and cure
her faults.
The third qualification is,
that it is not enough for her to know that she must suffer; she must also
resign herself completely in all that vexes her and brings her trouble. She
must help to work in God’s vineyard with patience, in the pure ground of a
humble heart, in which God only dwells; for God only dwells in the heart of a
virgin who abases herself, from the ground of her heart, in humility, beneath
God and all men, and, if it must be, even unto death. By this complete
self-annihilation a human being may win from and obtain from God all that he
needs; and more still; for God comes to meet such with all His grace, and
exalts them with all the honour with which He has honoured His Saints.
The fourth qualification. It
is necessary for a good virgin, in this life, to be chastened, despised, rejected,
ill-used and rebuked, even as the Canaanitish woman was treated by Christ. And
thus He treats, even now, all His chosen ones, who are especially dear to Him,
and on whom He will lavish His especial grace. Inwardly He will chastise them
severely, and treat them hardly; and outwardly also He ordains that they shall
be trodden under foot by everyone; men shall speak evil of them; and they shall
be despised in their own eyes with wanton falsehood. Then will the virgin of
Christ despise herself utterly, and suppress herself in true humility, and
rejoice in it for the sake of God, and think of herself as unworthy of all this
suffering, thanking God that He has thus especially endowed her as His own.
The fifth qualification. It
also appertains to such a virgin, that she would not only be despised here of
men, but that she should also despise herself, and suffer patiently all that
happens to her, concealing it in her heart and complaining to no one. We often
see virgins ready in words to despise themselves before men, saying: “We are
all sinners,” who would nevertheless take it very ill, if anyone else said it
of them; and thus we discover that it is all pride. A virgin who is not humble
at heart may be known, when anything happens to her untowardly, though it were
only a word; for she is indignant at once, she is offended with what is said to
her, and begins to excuse herself immediately. She cannot bear anyone to say
anything that is insulting to her honour, or that would cause her to be
despised; and yet she wishes to be considered humble. No, dear child, all the
contempt and scorn that a man is ready to pour out upon himself has no real
ground in humility; but, when he is despised and scorned by another who is his
equal, or still more, by one who is his inferior, he is cut to the quick; and
then a man will learn to know how little humble and patient he really is.
The sixth qualification. A
good virgin never wastes her time by any neglect or carelessness; but, her
heart filled with longing and devotion, she meditates on the Sufferings of her
beloved Lord Jesus, and His Five Wounds; she knows of nothing better that she
can do; for nothing can be more useful to her than to spend her time in
meditation on the Life and Sufferings of our Lord, for Whom she has forsaken all
things. It is the nature of all good virgins to spend the whole of their lives
in work, both outwardly and inwardly, for the glory of God; to pray for the
salvation of all men; and to offer themselves up for the infirmities of the
common people, both the evil and the good. If the virgin of Christ be left to
herself, all love and devotion to God being withdrawn from her; if thus, bare,
poor and miserable, she still serves God; then God is honoured by her, and has
peculiar delight in her.
The seventh qualification.
She must look to God, and think only of Him in all her occupations; and she
must be indifferent to all outward things; and she must do what is right, as
though she did nothing, while she looks upon all real afflictions as though
they did not concern her. Such an handmaid of the Lord desires to suffer shame
and scorn from all men, to the glory of God, and desires neither power nor
honour. She cannot exempt herself from anything, for the Holy Ghost directs
her. At times such people are obliged to take precedence of others; but then
they do it with great courtesy and great humility, and carry out that which
Christ said: “Let him that is the greater among you become as he that serveth.”
The eighth qualification.
This virgin of Christ must fight against all earthly transitory things, honour
and desires. As soon as these desires begin to lose their strength in her
heart, she will be attacked by spiritual pride; that is by self-satisfaction,
and the desire for temporal honour, which can really be driven out by none
other but by God. For, however holy a man may be, he will have to fight to the
end, and chiefly against spiritual pride. Although in these truly humble
virgins neither pride nor covetousness, nor hatred can find a resting-place,
yet they are nevertheless much tempted at times by idleness, appetite and
unholy thoughts, which arise from their nature, and are the temptations of the
flesh, which have not as yet been overcome; and this temptation is very useful
to them. For, because these lovers of God care for nothing but suffering,
shame, and all that is painful, both outwardly and inwardly, for the sake of
the love of Christ, and seek only visions of God and inner delight, finding
therein more joy and satisfaction than in all the eternal consolation that all
created things could give them, therefore no temptation can be hurtful to them.
Neither will any impulse to sin from lower motives affect them, for their will
and their desire is that they may always have something to suffer, and that in
true humility they may be found well-pleasing unto God, Who loves them. That we
may thus preserve this state of virginity, may God help us. Amen.
On The Annunciation of our Lady
How
we must commune with God and commit ourselves to Him; that we may conceive God
and bear Him in our spirits, souls, and bodies, after the example of the
blessed Mother of God.
Ave, gratia plena,
Dominus tecum, Benedicta tu in mulieribus.
“Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among
women.”
This festival is one of
great dignity, and shows the eternal fervent love whereby the God of Gods and
Lord of Lords, the Son of God had compassion on us poor sinful and accursed
brands of hell. When He was in His Divine Glory, He “thought it not robbery,”
as St Paul says, “to be equal with God; but emptied Himself, taking the form of
a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man, He
humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the Cross.” None can speak enough of this love, nor praise
God, nor thank Him enough for it; for it is beyond the understanding of men and
of Angels that our Lord, our God and Supreme Judge, should become our Father,
our Brother, and our Husband. He has taken our guilt and condemnation upon
Himself, and has redeemed us by His bitter Death, and has made us the children
of everlasting life, and has brought us back to our first glory. Yea, and
beyond, for we have become like unto the Angels; and we now posses more
righteousness and are nearer akin unto God than the Archangels.
O, the goodness of God! Who
can so withstand this great love, that he does not love and praise Thee with
all his powers? This work of our redemption makes Thee dear to us above all
things. It is a work which has no like; humility unbounded, grace undeserved, a
gift without return. This work claims our love, draws our wills gently, and
unites our desires firmly and justly to Thee. But what can we give to Thee,
dear Lord Jesus, in return for all the great goodness that Thou hast shown to
us? In return for my destruction of the soul Thou gavest me by creation, Thou
hast given it back to me by redemption; so that I am doubly indebted to Thee,
to give it wholly again to Thee. But what can I return to Thee, dear Lord
Jesus, for that Thou hast given Thy Soul for mine? For, if I could give my soul
again to Thee a thousand times, how should I thereby be any the more like unto
my Lord, Who gave Himself even unto death for me?
Dear children, this great
love can never be repaid by us; but we must do our best, and give to Him again,
on our own account, all that we are, all that we have, and all that we can do;
like His dear Mother, the blessed Virgin, who did this most faithfully and most
perfectly. I will tell you something about this in a figure, that ye also may
become the mothers of our Lord in spirit, and that ye may commit yourselves
unto God, that he may be conceived and born in your souls.
Now, learn, how the blessed
Virgin was prepared when she should conceive the Son of God, though her
holiness cannot be perfectly comprehended even by the understanding of Angels.
According to the meaning of the letters of her name, Mary, she was raised up in
the three highest powers of her soul unto God, she became one spirit with God,
and she was taught by Him; for she resigned herself as a fitting instrument to
His dear Will, in fervent love for His glory. She was poor in spirit, and
always bore herself in God with deep humility and self-annihilation; for she
had no desires, no will, and was as passive, as though she were uncreated. And
thus an entrance was made for God into her spirit, soul and body. She was pure
in spirit, for she never clung with delight to the gifts of God, and did not
use them for her own pleasure. She was pure in soul, for she never delighted in
any creature, but her soul was adorned with all virtues. She was pure in heart
and body, for she was never moved to sin; and thus she was like unto the bright
and shining Angels. Although she was the most beautiful of all women, yet none
could look upon her with evil desires, because of her angelic purity. She was
fervent in spirit, for her sweet ecstasy and longing so moved the Divine
Godhead that the fervent love of the Holy Trinity welled forth and was poured
out upon her. She was fervent in soul, for all the powers of her soul were
always lifted up in the praise of God. She was fervent in heart, for her heart
was opened unto the Lord, and it penetrated with fervent longings the
incomprehensible depths of the Godhead; for she found there that which she most
loved; and, by her inner sweetness, she was well-pleasing unto the Almighty,
clinging to the Eternal Goodness by her love to fill her with all things and to
give her power over all that he had; for she lived not to herself but to Him
alone, Who is the Life of all living. From first to last all that she did was
done in God, and was full of a pure and godlike intention; for she was at all
times united with God, and never turned away for an instant from His Presence.
Therefore the likeness of no creature was ever found in her or had access to
her; for, with the Angels, she looked on
all things simply in God; and found God alone at all times in the depths
and very being of her soul, in the innermost parts of her spirit. Therefore she
did not go forth with all her powers to seek for greatness and variety, but at
all times she abode simply outside herself in God and God in her. Most perfectly
and with all her powers she meditated on the Source from Which she came. Poor,
pure, fervent and divine, she was more like a heavenly creature than an earthly
one; in spirit she was the Heaven of God; in her soul the Paradise of God; in
her body the Palace of God; and she was filled with the Divine Brightness, so
that she needed no mediator with God.
Now, ye shall know, further,
that God desired to be conceived and born of this Holy Virgin in three ways;
that is in her spirit, soul and body. She would not have been so blessed by the
birth of the body only, as St Augustine says, and as our Lord also implies in
the Gospel, when He answered: “Blessed are they who hear the Word of God and
keep it.” Therefore she first conceived and bare God in
her spirit; for by her purity she was well-pleasing unto God; by her lowliness
she made a place for God; and by her love she constrained God, so that He took
up His abode in the depths of her spirit, in calm and absolute freedom and
silence. God united Himself with her spirit, and spake to her His secret Word,
and bare His only Son in her spirit with unspeakable love and joy. This is the
Eternal Birth in Mary; and the darkness of night in her spirit, where the
understanding is darkened. Where the uncreated light arises, no created light
can abide; for night is turned into day; that is, the created light of the soul
is transformed into the Light of Eternity. Thus Mary yielded up her spirit to
the uncreated Being of the Godhead, and her soul sank down in deep humility.
Thereby she drew down the
sweet stream and light of Eternal Wisdom into her soul; and the Father begat
His only Son in her soul, and fashioned her anew in Himself. The Father
required of her that she should consent thereto that His only Son should take
His Human Nature upon Himself in her, and should be born of her in body, by the
working of the Holy Ghost. She was afraid in true humility, and answered Him in
spirit with fear: “I am not worthy, for I would gladly be the handmaid of such
a mother.” But God willed that she herself should be the Mother; then she sank
down in utter self-abasement, and it was made known unto her that she had been
chosen thereto; God required this of her and not anything else. Then the Holy
Trinity shone upon her with a supernatural light and transparent clearness, and
with a ray or dart of Divine Love she was transfixed in the inmost parts, so
that she humbly and lovingly consented to be the Mother of God.
At the same instant the
angel Gabriel stood by her and found her exalted in spirit. He greeted her
reverently, saying: “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.” She was troubled by this lofty greeting,
because of her deep humility, and also because she was entirely absorbed in
God. Then, when she spake: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord,” the Holy Ghost took of the purest blood of
her virgin heart, that had been set alight by the powerful flame of love, and
created therewith a pure and perfect little Body, with all its members, and a
pure and holy Soul, and united them together. This, the Person of the Son of
God, who is the Eternal Word, and the Brightness of the Glory of the Father,
took unto Himself and united it with Himself in Unity of Persons, and out of
true love and mercy for our salvation. Thus, “the Word was made flesh and dwelt
among us.”
This is the third birth that
took place in the virgin body of Mary, without hurt to her virginal purity; and
thus she became the Daughter of the Father; the Mother of the Son; the Bride of
the Holy Ghost; the Queen of Heaven; the Mistress of the world and of all
creatures; the Mother of all men who desire her help; the Temple of God,
wherein God has rested as a Bridegroom in His chamber in great bliss; for the
Virgin’s body was as a garden full of sweet-smelling herbs and of all kinds of
virtues and graces. With these virtues she caused the Heaven of the Holy
Trinity to flow with honey for us poor sinners. She has brought forth the Sun
of Righteousness, she has chased away the curse of Eve, and bruised the head of
the wicked serpent. This second Eve, with her Child, has restored all that the
first Eve had lost and destroyed; she has, besides, brought much more grace and
wealth. This is the noble Star which arose out of Jacob, which was prophesied
in a Book of Moses, whose light shall lighten the whole world. “Therefore,”
says Bernard, “in all thy need, fix thine eyes on this Star, call on Mary, and
then thou wilt not despair, follow Mary and thou canst not go astray. She will
hold thee up, by the power of her Child, so that thou will not fall; she will
protect thee, so that thou wilt not despond; she will lead thee to her Child,
so that thou mayest overcome.” She has the power, indeed; for the Almighty God
is her Child; she is indeed willing to do this, for she is merciful. For who
can doubt that a child would honour his mother, or that she overflows with
love, in whom God Himself has dwelt.
He, therefore, who desires
to commune more and more with himself; and to find himself in his Source, in God,
and to be conscious of God in his heart (which is conformed to God and inclines
to Him, and cleaves to God, as a ray to the sun) he must copy the likeness and
the bright mirror of our Lady, and comport himself as she did, both outwardly
and inwardly; then he will become conscious in himself of great help from her,
both in spirit and in nature. First, he must turn away from all transitory
things, and gather up the powers of his mind, and commune with himself, and
pass over out of self into God, Who is present within him, in the innermost
parts of his spirit, wherein are the three highest powers of the soul, that
there he may be united with and become one spirit with God; and there God will
work in him. His memory will be made fruitful, his understanding will be
transfigured, his will inflamed and inebriated with Divine Love. God Himself
becomes the Food of his spirit, the Life of his soul, and the Preserver and
Guardian of his body. Therefore at all times we ought to commune with the image
or the ground of our souls, where the three powers of our souls are one with
God, that we may be united with God, poor in spirit, soul and body, fervent,
and communing with God with all our powers, so that we may begin and end all
our works with a pure intention to the glory of God; for thus it was written
beforetimes of the blessed Mother of God. Thus we must remain empty, bare and
dead to all around us, that all the powers of our souls may continue in the
place appointed for them, and our wills, desires and intentions may be obedient
to God in all things, that God may work with us according to His dear will.
Then man will be lifted up in himself by God above all powers into the
wilderness of the Godhead, his spirit will sink deep in the Divine Union, and
his whole being will be saturated with the Divine Being, so that the Divine
Birth will take place without let or hindrance in our spirits, in our souls,
and also spiritually in our bodies, from the gifts which break forth and
overflow from soul and spirit into the body.
That we may now and later,
receive blessings through the intercession of the dear Mother of God, let us
call on her with St Bernard, who says: “Through thee must we find an entrance
to thy Son, O blessed finder of grace, bearer of life, mother of holiness, that
He may receive us through thee, Who was given to us through thee. Thy purity
must exonerate the guilt of our uncleanness in His sight, and thy humility, so
pleasing unto God, must win pardon for our vanity, thy overflowing love must
cover the multitude of our sins. Thy honourable fruitfulness gains for us the
fruitfulness of they merits. O, elect Lady, our mediator and intercessor,
commend us to thy Son, intercede for us with thy Son. Do thou see to it, O
blessed one, by the grace that thou hast found, the election that thou hast
earned, and the mercy that thou hast borne, that He Who condescended through
thee to take our sicknesses and our misery upon Him, may also by His
intercession enable us to participate in His glory and blessedness,” Jesus
Christ, Who with Father and the Holy Ghost is blessed for ever. Amen.
Sermon 10 ->
