The Sermons of Johannes Tauler · 110 of 124

Second Sermon for the Feast of the Exaltation of

And I, If I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to Myself.— John xli, 32.

This is the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, whose dignity passes the power of words to tell, by which all glory of time and eternity is given us; for when we think of the cross we call to mind Him who died upon it. On this day religious communities with all solemnity pay high honor to the Cross, and, when their rule requires it, they begin today a season of fasting — a practice profitable, not only to them, but to all others who may be able to observe it.

We recall today how a Christian Emperor recovered the true cross from a heathen King, and how he began to bear it with royal pomp into Jerusalem. But his pomp was not suitable to that symbol of pain and sorrow, and, therefore, God miraculously closed the gate of the city against him, and stationed an angel there to bar him out, who said to him: “Thou comest here carrying the cross with majestic shame and ruin, bearing it on His bruised shoulders and walking painfully along barefoot.” Upon hearing these words the Emperor quickly got down from his horse, stripped off his precious robes, even to his shirt, laid aside his glittering crown and took off his shoes; then in that poor plight, shouldering the holy cross, he started forward. The gates flew open before him, and he entered the city and set the cross up in its place, and many miracles were wrought by it on the blind and lame and sick.

Our Lord said: “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to Myself.” Man is what is meant by all things, for, as St. Gregory says, man has in him all forms of matter and of life. Now we meet with men who have found the cross, for God has drawn them to it and to Himself with many sorts of pains, and with various pious exercises. But these sufferings must not only be found by us — as was the material cross of Christ by that Emperor — but they must be exalted in the soul and made supreme there. If a man will but enter into himself he will find the cross twenty times a day. Painful things are always happening, and these crucify him, if he will but have it so. But it is quite possible that he does not exalt these crosses to their proper height; he does not make right use of them. We should lift up the full weight of the cross of life in God; that is to say, we should accept all our own pains and troubles, inner and outer, both those of the soul and those of the body, with hearty and cheerful willingness. It is thus that a man is drawn into God; for, as Christ Bays, it is when He is lifted up that He will draw all things to Himself.

Again do we find men who bear the cross, indeed, but it is in the way of outward piety, following too mechanically the routine of their order, in choir, at holy reading, in the refectory. A little honor is, indeed, done our Lord in this way of the outward life. But, dear children, do you think that God has created you to be his little singing birds? No, but He would have you to be His special friends, and the spouses of His Holy Spirit. Yes, you carry Christ’s cross outwardly, but you are careful to keep it out of your interior life, and you lay it aside and take a rest from it whenever you can. Such as these carry the cross, not with our Lord, but with Simon the Cyrenian, who was forced to carry it. But after all, even this is good. They do carry Christ’s cross; it guards them from many defects, it helps them against gross frivolity of mind, and it saves them many a pang in purgatory, perhaps even from the eternal pains of hell.

“I will draw all things to Myself,” says our dear Lord. Now, if one will draw things, he first gathers them together. And so our Lord, when He is going to draw us, gathers our senses, our words and works, our thoughts and intentions, our imaginations and our longings, our understanding, our will and our love — all these he attracts towards Him. And when they are well assembled together He absorbs them into Himself, and away from all alien attractions. For be sure of this:

This detachment is, indeed, a heavy task, all the heavier in proportion to how strong the attachment was. For all joy and love thou hast in created things, call it by what name thou pleasest, however holy and godly it may seem to thee — all must be stripped off thee, as the royal robes were stripped from that Emperor, if thou art to be drawn to God and exalted on His holy cross.

This is the first degree, and it concerns a man’s outward life. Should he, however, wish to raise the cross in his interior life, then he must needs give up all interior joy. He must renounce all attachment to the joys of his spirit, even such as flow from the practice of virtue. Learned men dispute as to whether or not a man may lawfully enjoy the pleasure of virtue as such, maintaining that we can only have the profit of a virtuous act, and must reserve all our joy for God Himself, and for Him alone. Yet it must be said that one cannot practice virtue without feeling some joy in it; but this must be without any sense of ownership.

Children, what do you think joy or satisfaction really is? Is it that a man can fast, watch, pray, keep the rule of his order? But I tell you that our Lord, when He would have me keep my order’s rule in the right spirit, will deprive me of joy in doing all this. What do you suppose God means by sending dry times into your observance of the rule? Seldom is one day like another. Now I am full of devotion; yesterday I was empty and barren. At one time I am attentive to prayer; at another my mind is overrun with all sorts of distractions. Dear children, this is the cross of Christ. Accept these dreary changes from His hand in all patience, and they will become a lovely cross to your souls. If thou wilt but offer them all up to God in total resignation of spirit, and thank Him sincerely for them, thou shalt by their means be drawn close to Christ crucified and exalted with Him, magnifying God in all the happenings of thy life.

The Son of Man must be lifted up on the cross. Many among us, dear children, are clean of heart, but they fail in this: they are too hungry for the sweet feelings of religion. They would have their minds full of emotional happiness. Dear child, give over all that. Attend diligently to real disengagement of spirit. Be afraid of interior sweetness; look on thyself as unworthy of such favors. Love like everyone else, must bear the cross. Our Lord said to the two disciples on the road to Emm&us: “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and so to enter into His glory?” (Luke xxiv, 26). Can it be otherwise with thee, His disciple? Now, therefore, if any bright light illumines thy inner soul, or any great sweetness refreshes its taste, let not the enjoyment of that gain control over thee. Stop not with it so long as to ask: What is this gift of God? But quickly fall back on thy own nothingness and do no otherwise.

Our Lord said: “If any man will come after Me, let him deny

It is not with prosperity, but with the cross that a man follows God. When St. Andrew saw his cross he cried out: “All hail to thee, thou most lovely cross. Long have I craved with all my heart to have thee. Lift me up from among men and place me with my Master.” To be made like-minded with that apostle is not the work of a day or two. Thou must set thyself to constantly search thy soul and overcome thyself in all things. Thou must also keep strict account of thy sins and imperfections. What if thou art weak and fallest seventy times a day. Never give up; rise again each time and go forward courageously. Return to God so quickly and so sincerely that thy sins are pardoned thee even before thou hast time to tell them in confession. Let not thy sinful tendencies affright three. Many a fault of thine is permitted by God, not so much to hurt thee as to help thee. For does it not cause thee to own to thyself that thou art but nothingness? Does not the shame of it lead thee to mortification and detachment? Carefully avoid all despondency. When a man knows that he has a good will, that he is glad to obey God, then no matter how weak he may be let him be full of courage. No one in this life is free from sin as our Blessed Lady was. Therefore, be content to strive manfully, to suffer patiently, to bear thy cross in union with Christ. St. Paul says: “We know that to them that love God all things work together unto God.” (Rom. viii, 28) ; and the gloss says that this includes even our sins. Be silent; fly to God; consider thy nothingness; stay at home in thy own interior life, nor need thou run to thy father confessor after every little defect. St. Matthew, all unprepared and all uninstructed as he was, affection to creatures. All thy faults may be turned to good account by humbling thee, if thou wilt but keep God in thy mind and in thy heart.

But let me warn you frankly. If you allow creatures to absorb you, and that wilfully, and if you seek dangerous occasions of sin, therein is your damnation. And if God does afterwards give you the grace of true repentance (but upon this you dare not reckon), you shall, at all events, suffer an awful purgatory — if you but knew how bitter, you would wither away with fright. And if in that state of mortal sin you receive Holy Communion, it is as if you took a sweet, delicate little child and cast him into a filthy cesspool. Thus do you treat the Son of the living God, who gave Himself for your salvation. And, furthermore, your confessions will be sacrilegious if you are not resolved to avoid the proximate occasions of mortal sin — a calamity from which the Pope and all his cardinals could not save you; for your* sorrow is vain, and you become guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.

I have already quoted our Lord’s words: “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.” Many a devout Christian takes this doctrine of self-abnegation so seriously that words cannot express how hard they are driven onward to every sort of self-denial, and how deeply they long for the cross. And very rightly, too. What costs little is worth little. “And this I say: He that soweth sparingly shall reap sparingly”

(II. Cor. ix, 6). So says St. Paul. And our Lord: “With what

But, dear children, what is the good of my exhorting you to take up the cross if you will still obstinately cling to your old ways of external devotions? Thou must give thyself up; thou must die to thyself in thy interior. The Lord has said: Follow me. And, indeed, the servant always follows his master; he does not go before him. Nor are things arranged to suit the servant’s will, but the Lord’s. This applies to the inner no less than to the outer life. We

Child, the grain of wheat must die before it can bring forth fruit; so must thou in all sincerity die to thy own will: A man must go out and away from his own will. If he then gives himself up interiorly to God it is with him as if he had not possessed any will of his own. Once a devout nun stood singing in choir, and in her heart she sang as follows: “Lord, this time is now thine and mine, but if I turn inwardB to thee, then this time is thine and not mine.”

If one is going to give himself to God, he must do so by unlimited renunciation of his own will. Every man is, as it were, three men: the animal man, living according to his senses; the reasonable man guided by his understanding; and finally the Godlike man, or the man formed on God’s pattern. This is the highest man, and it is the interior man. Into this interior manhood must we turn our thoughts, with it must we lie prostrated at God’s feet in the abyss of His diety, delivered over to Him bound hand and foot, quite gone out of ourselves. The two lower natures we must trample under foot. In view of this it is that St. Bernard speaks: “We must withdraw the animal man from the things that he possesses with love. How hard a cross that is you know full well.” And he continues: “It is not a whit less hard to draw the outward man back into the inward man; to change from a life of visible things to one of things invisible, deep in the recesses of the soul.” And St. Bernard is in this justified by St. Augustine. All the afflictions of the two lower orders of life, which seem to hinder our turning inward to the highest order, if we did but accept them as crosses and offer them lovingly to God, instead of hindering us will help us to our inner perfection: and this includes all trials of the mind as well as pains of the body. We should readily leave them behind us, and diverting our souls from them, turn quickly to God in our highest spirit.

Thus did Abraham. When he went up the mount of vision to sacrifice his son, he left his servant and the ass at the foot. Our animal nature is but a beast, our natural understanding is but a servant; these serve us to bring us to the mount of vision and of sacrifice. Let them both remain below, while we go up alone with our son, namely our interior spirit. Ascending to the summit we shall there offer our best and highest gift, our very spirit itself, to God. Give

“Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy face (Ps, xxx, 21). In this secret union with God, the created spirit has returned again into conformity with its uncreated type, as it existed in the Divine plan in eternity, though yet remaining in its own created existence: and nevertheless it is in God, because in the Divine abyss all things are as it were in God. When a man reaches this state, says Proclus, all that may affect his outer nature, aa poverty and pain, he no longer adverts to. As the Psalmist again says: “Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy face,” and then adds: “From the disturbance of men” (Ps. xxx, 21). These souls now follow our Lord in His union with the Father, as He said: “In that day you shall know that I am in the Father, and you in Me, and I in you” (John xiv, 20).

That we may all thus be drawn to our Lord, God grant us in His mercy. As Christ crucified would draw all things to Himself, may He draw us; and may He exalt us with the exaltation of His cross, placing us in the holy heights of His true love. May all this be granted ns by Him who has gone before us bearing His cross and ours, and on it has died for us. Amen.