The Sermons of Johannes Tauler · 102 of 124

Sermon for the Feast of St. Agatha, Virgin

The kingdom of this world and all its pomp I hare despised tor love of my Lord Jesus Christ. — From the Roman Ritual.

The Church sings these words in the holy office today in the name of every bride of Christ, who has given herself up to His service to persevere in the same forever. Take notice, dear children, what peculiar qualities she should show who would be pleasing to God, be accepted by Him, and led to His eternal espousals, consummating a perpetual union between Him and her soul.

And be it observed that a virgin is not well pleasing to God, unless she despises the kingdom of this* world and all its pomp. That means that she sets a watchful guard against pride, vain glory, and the favor of men. This extends not only to personal adornment, but over everything else whatsoever of this fleeting life of ours. She must give all this up for the honor of God; And the same is to be said of spiritual pride, interior vain glory; and' also the outward show of piety, the parade of devout words (given forth by a worldly heart), selfish joy of heart over spiritual gifts or graces, and all sorts of spiritual self-satisfaction; Such difficulties as these do the virgins of Christ encounter, and that in many various ways. One can hardly exaggerate the hurt that is done these guileless hearts, and how by all these means, the evil one endeavors to mislead them.

Another good trait is watchful guard against a different kind of pride. This is an overbearing' manner towards others, arrogance, and boasting, assuming to be wise, putting on airs of prudence. And if she happens to be reproved for her faults, or anywise despised and

A third good trait is this. It is not enough for her to know and to avoid her faults. She must 'give herself up to suffer willingly all that distresses her, laboring in God’s vineyard in all patience, preparing for her Spouse a deeply humbled heart, in which He alone shall be allowed to rest. God’s rest is indeed in the heart of a virgin selfabased, very meek, subjected unto God and all men even unto death, if such were God’s will. This self-abnegation from the inmost heart, wins from God all that the soul stands in need of, and very much more. God meets such a soul half way, bringing all His graces. He ennobles it with every dignity granted to His holy ones.

Tbe fourth trait of a true virgin, is that she shall gladly be despised and punished and disgraced in this life, and undergo much ill treatment, just as the Canaanitish woman endured what she seemed to suffer from Christ. The like treatment He gives to all His elect spirits even unto our own times. If He has a special love for anyone, and if He would infuse into him special graces, then does He scourge him hard in his inner soul; and even outwardly He permits him to be trampled under the feet of all men. Evil things are uttered against him, false and intolerable charges are made against him. When this happens to Christ’s virgin, let her revile her own self with the utmost sincerity, let her bow down in true humility, let her esteem her sad lot a real boon from God, of which she is by no means worthy, thanking Him for a gift that shows she is one of His favorites.

The fifth trait is a yet deeper humility. Christ’s true virgin should despise herself in truest sincerity, suffer every adversity with absolute patience, submit to every one’s caprice, and never under any circumstance utter the least complaint. We meet with virgins who speak evil of themselves with fine words, saying: O I am only a poor sinner. But let anyone else dare to say that to them. This reveals half a heart of pride. A virgin with half-hearted humility is shown in being Instantly provoked by even a single little word of contempt and beginning to defend herself. She cannot endure being made light of: — and yet she insists on being considered a humble virgin. No, my dear child; all the contempt thou dost outwardly show for thyself is manifestly without any real foundation of humility, if thou are not willing to be shamed by thy equals, or better still, by one who is thy inferior.

That goes through the marrow; that will show whether or not thou hast genuine humility and patience.

The sixth trait, is that Christ’s virgin does not idle away her time — she is not careless of duty or of pious exercises. With much devotion, and with all the yearning of her heart, she meditates on the passion of her Beloved. She loves His holy wounds. Nothing pleases her better than to pass her time in studying the life of Jesus Christ, for whose sake she has given up all things: no occupation seems to her more useful. Again, it is peculiar to the virgins of Christ, that they are diligent in labor all the days of their life; outward and inward occupations absorb them, all being done for the honor of God. They incessantly offer prayers for the salvation of all mankind; nay, they offer themselves up as a sacrifice to God for the sins of the common mass of the people, good and bad together. And it may happen that God will have His virgin spouse in a state of interior desolation; all love for God seems gone, for every sort of joy has vanished away; not a particle of devotional feeling remains; the soul is void, miserable and abandoned. If in that state the virgin persist in serving God with her old fervor, full of faith, entirely resigned to her sorrow of heart, then indeed will God be honored in her, then is He well pleased with her.

The seventh trait of a true virgin of Christ is in the quality of her intention. She should see God and mean God in all she does, in all she leaves undone. Let her disengage her soul from all outward things. When she does good works, let her feel as if she had done nothing; and let her think of all good works, as if she were not concerned in them but only in God. Such a virgin of Christ longs to suffer all the shame and scandal of all men, that God’s glory may be advanced: for herself she craves neither authority nor honors. She can in no possible way be puffed up with self-conceit, for the Holy Ghost reigns in her. Such persons are sometimes compelled to govern others; in which case they rule with much affection and with true meekness. They fulfil Christ’s words: “He that will be first among you, shall be your servant” (Matt, xx, 27).

The eighth good quality of a virgin of Christ, is that she constantly strives against all love and desire of transitory things, and all worldly honor. But it happens that when such desires grow weak in her heart, then is she first assailed with spiritual pride. This is a powerful sense of self-approval, often coupled with longing for the praiss rise up to tempt us, if they are not wholly overcome. But such temptations are of great profit to Christ’s virgin; for this ardent lover of God enjoys nothing but suffering, and shame, and all that is painful to her interiorly or exteriorly, and this out of tender affection for Christ. These afflictions she covets above all contemplation, before all interior sweetness. When called on to endure some evil thing for Christ’s sake, she is better satisfied than if she received all the pleasure that creatures can minister. On this account the movements of the lower appetites cannot drive her into sin — she can now conceive of no joy in such things, for her will is to suffer, her desire is to be afflicted for Christ’s sake, and meanwhile always to make herself acceptable to God, her divine Spouse. May God help us to gain and to hold all these traits of a true virgin of Christ. Amen.

. womb — The interior virtues of Ma/ry — Her purity of body and soul — Her humility — H ow her soul eayperienced a mystical generation of Qod’s Son — Close application of this event to our own interior Hfe.

Hail full of grace, the Lord is with thee. — Luke i, 28.

In this feast we celebrate the eternal and overflowing love of God, the Lord of lords and the Master of all, by which He had mercy on ns poor men, sinful and condemned, brands of hell fire. As St. Paul says: “Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery 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, eveu to the death of the cross” (Phil, ii, 6-8). Of such a love as this can no man rightly discourse, nor can we praise and thank God enough for it. It surpasses the power of angelic and human reason to comprehend it — that our God and our supreme Judge should become our Father, our Brother, and our Spouse. He has taken our debt and our condemnation on Himself; He has redeemed us by His bitter death; He has made us His children, giving us eternal life; He has restored us to our first high place of honor; yea more than that: He has made us like unto the angels themselves, even granting us a heavenly righteousness and a divine kinship, even nearer to God than that of the highest of the angels.

O God, all perfect Good! Who can hold back his deepest love in return for this great love of Thine — his deepest love and praise with all his powers of soul and body. And this Thy work of our redemption has made Thee lovable to us above all things — a work unimagined and unexampled, a humility without limit, a grace so wonderful and so unmerited, a gift without recall. This work of Thine quickly excites

Jesus, what shall I give Thee in return for that favor? Alas, if I gave my poor soul a thousand times over for Thy sake, how could that compare with Thy giving Thyself up to death for me, my Lord and my God?

Dear children, although we can never fully recompense this great love, yet we should earnestly apply ourselves to make at least some partial return by giving ourselves to Jesus, ourselves with all we are and all that we can do; as did His most beloved mother, the Blessed Virgin, out of a heart most perfectly true to Him. Therefore I will show you some illustrations of how we may rightly serve our Lord, helping you to become as it were spiritually our Saviour’s mother, God granting us the grace to generate and to bring forth His divine Son. And although your holiness is too little to enable you to comprehend perfectly the mind of the angel when he said to Mary: “Hail, full of grace,” yet you can gain some plain notion of how well prepared the Blessed Virgin was for the conception of the Son of God iii her womb.

According to her name, Mary was rapt into God and made one spirit with Him in the three powers of her soul. And she was all moved and guided by Him, being absorbed in His blessed will, intensely devoted to His honor — moved and guided by Him as a tool in the hand of a workman. She was poor in spirit. She was lifted up to God froni a fathomless humility. She was self annihilated, willess, passive, and without any longing except for God. And it was by reason of this state of her soul that God found an entrance to her in soul and body. She was clean of spirit; for she did not cleave to any gifts of God, nor did she use them for her joy. She was clean of soul: she felt no attraction towards any created thing, but her soul was adorned with all virtues. She was clean of heart and pure of body: she was never moved to sin, being like the seining angels of heaven. Although she was the fairest among women, yet never could any man look upon her with bad desires, and this was on account of her angelic purity. She was an interior spirit: her sweet affectionate yearnings were all upward toG42

was a faithful heart: her heart was enflamed with love’s fiery longings to be lost in the incomprehensible abyss of the Godhead.

Thus had she found her Beloved. She had penetrated the sovereign majesty with her sweetness; she had wounded the eternal wisdom with her comeliness; she had drawn to herself the eternal goodness with her love. Thus had God been poured into her with all His infinitude of being, and thus had He placed her over all His Kingdom. She did not live her own self, but she lived only to Him who is the life of all the living. All her beginning and ending, all her doing and not doing, was in God, and was full of purely divine intention. For she was ever united to God, turning away from His holy presence never a single instant. Hence no creature left any impression on her soul or ever entered there, for like the angels she saw all things singly in God. God alone did she find in her soul’s depths, in its essence, in the inmost recesses of her spirit. Hence she was not turned outward with her soul’s powers, looking for high things and multiplicity. She has ever turned inward in all single-mindedness — away from self and towards God, as God was towards her and in her. She was most perfectly and with all her faculties turned to her origin. Poor, clean, interior, Godlike, more a creature of heaven than of earth was Mary. In her spirit she was the paradise of God, God’s heaven in her soul, God’s palace in her body. God’s light shone through and through her. Between her soul and God there was union without a medium.

Now consider that God would be born of this holy virgin in three ways, in her spirit, in her soul, and in her body. And she was not so blessed by the birth in her body as by that in her spirit, as St. Augustine says; and as our Lord in the gospel answered the woman who said: “Blessed is the womb that bore Thee, and the paps that gave Thee suck.” But He said: “Yea rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God, and keep it” (Luke xi, 27, 28). Therefore had she first conceived and brought forth God in her spirit. By her purity she pleased God well; by her humility she prepared Him a fit dwelling place; by her love did she constrain God to descend into the depths of her spirit, a place all restful in the quiet silence of perfect detachment from created things. There did God unite her spirit to His, there did He utter to her His hidden Word, begetting His only begotten with ungpeakable joy and love. This is the eternal generation in Mary; this is the obscure night of the spirit wherein the darkness of the human intelligence receives the dawning of the uncreated brightness. Because where the divine light shines, no created light can remain, for the night is changed into day. That means that the created light of the soul is changed into the uncreated light of eternity. Thus it happened that Mary gave over her spirit into the uncreated being of the Godhead, and her soul sank away into the depths of humility.

And now she drew down into her soul the all-lovely sweet streams of the light of eternal wisdom; for as the Father brought forth His only begotten Son in her soul, He in turn new-formed her in Himself. The Father willed that she should consent that His only begotten Son should assume human nature, and should be born of her in bodily form by the act of the Holy Ghost. From this she shrunk away out of unfeigned humility, and she answered Him fearfully in her spirit: Heavenly Father, I am not worthy. O I had rather be the handmaid of that mother of God’s Son. But God willed that she herself should be that mother, and so insisted. Then did she sink into deep self-abasement; and she was given to understand that she was chosen indeed for that high motherhood — God must have her and no one else for His mother. Instantly she was encircled and enshrined in the light of the holy Trinity, and penetrated through and through with the divine glory; the arrows of divine love pierced her soul to its inmost depths; and thus was she made willing to be the mother of God.

At the same moment as she was thus absorbed in the Holy Ghost, the angel Gabriel stood before her and greeted her: “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee” (Luke i, 28). But she was troubled at these great words, both on account of her true humility, and because she was yet entranced in God. But when she said: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord,” then the Holy Ghost took from the virginal heart of Mary her purest blood, all on fire with the flames of divine love, and with it He created the perfect body and members of Jesus; and then He created His pure and perfect soul; and He joined body and soul together in Mary’s womb. Then at the same instant the person of the Son of God, the Eternal Word, the splendor of the Father’s glory, out of merciful love for us and for our eternal blessedness, joined this body and soul to Himself in unity of person. Thus “the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us” (John i, 14).

Now this is the third generation of God in the body of Mary, without any injury to her virginal integrity. Thus she became the daughter of the Father, the mother of the Son, the spouse of the Holy Ghost, the queen of heaven, the empress of the world and of all created things, the mother and intercessor of all mankind who desire her aid. Mary's womb is the temple of God and His sweet place of repose as a Bridegroom in His bride chamber, rejoicing with joy in the virginal body of His mother as in a sweet garden full of fragrant flowers, namely every kind of virtues and graces.

By means of these virtues, therefore, has God changed the heaven of the blessed Trinity into streams of honied sweetness and poured them over all of us poor sinners. She has made the sun of justice to shine upon us. She has reversed the curse of Eve. She has crushed the head of the hellish serpent. This second Eve has restored by her Child all that had been lost and ruined by the sin of the first Eve, and Bhe has procured us much heavenly riches of grace beside. This is the beautiful star that was to rise out of Jacob, as foretold by Moses, which was to shed its beams over the whole world. Therefore says St. Bernard: “In all thy needs, lift thy eyes to this star; call on Mary, and thou canst not despair; follow Mary, and thou canst not go astray. By the strength of her Son she will hold thee fast and firm lest thou shouldst fall; she will defend thee lest thou be hurt; she will bring thee to her Son. She has power indeed, for almighty God is her Child; she has the good will, for she is most merciful. Who can doubt but that this Child shall honor His mother. Who can doubt that she, in whose bosom He who is all essential love, who is the God of love Himself, has found His happy dwelling place, shall be overflowing with love for us.”

Whosoever would go very deep into God, his origin, and would be made more and more conscious of God's indwelling, fixed in God in his soul's life as the rays are fixed in the sun, — such a one must follow the example of our blessed Lady. Let him study her inner and outer, bearing towards God, and soon he will receive great help from her in his own soul and body. Let him first turn himself away from all transitory things, and gathering together his soul's powers, let him transfer them into God who dwells within him, deep in the inmost depths of his spirit. There it is that his soul's three highest powers are centred, and there he will be made one spirit with God; there will he be moved and guided by God. His memory will be made fruitful of good, his understanding illuminated, his will set on fire with divine

God’s sake alone, as we have shown was the case with Mary, God’s mother.

In order that God may have our soul’s powers docile in all things, they must be void of attachment to creatures, and rightly ordered towards Him, all will, all desires directed to Him alone. Thus shall a man be absorbed into the solitude of the Godhead, far above all his soul’s powers; his being shall be sunk deep into the divine oneness. Therein can the divine birth be accomplished in us without hindrance; and by means of the overflowing and exceeding great gifts of God in the spirit, even the very body shall be made partaker of its blissful privilege.

That we may be blessed in this life and saved in the next, let us beg the intercession of the beloved mother of God; as St. Bernard prays: “Through thee, O thou first finder of divine grace, must we gain access to thy Son, thou mother of life and blessedness: so that for thy sake He may receive us, who by thy means was given to us. Thy purity must pay the debt of our excesses, thy humility — so pleasing to Him — must win His pardon for our vain glory; thy superabundant love must overflow on our sins and hide them from His eyes; thy marvellous fruitfulness must lend us a plentiful store of merits. O tb'.u art our chosen queen, our mediatrix and intercessor; thou wilt commend us to thy Son, nay thou wilt answer for us before Him. O thou blessed mother, we beseech thee through the grace which thou hast found with God, through the high place of election thou hast merited, through the mercy that was born of thee, — we beseech thee to obtain that He, who by thy means condescended to share our weakness and misery, mfty grant us the privilege to share His blissful glory — Jesus Christ our Lord, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, praised and blessed forevermore.” Amen.