The Sermons of Johannes Tauler · 18 of 124

Sermon for the Third Sunday after the Epiphany

After these things there was a festival day of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. — John v, 1.

This part of the Holy Qospel tells us that Jesus went to a festival at Jerusalem, and that He visited a pool of healing there enclosed by five porches. “In these lay a great multitude of sick, of blind, of lame, of withered, waiting for the moving of the water. And an angel of the Lord descended at certain times into the pond, and the water was moved. And he that went down first into the pond after the motion of the water, was made whole, of whatsoever infirmity he lay under.” Our Redeemer there saw a man lying on a mattress who had been sick for thirty-eight years. Moved with pity, He said to him: “Wilt thou be made whole?” The infirm man answered: “Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pond; for, whilst I am coming, another goeth down before me.” Then said our dear Lord to him: “Arise, take up thy bed, and walk!” And immediately the man was made whole, and he took up his bed and walked, not knowing who it was that had healed him. But “Afterwards Jesus findeth him in the temple, and saith to him: Behold, thou art made whole! Sin no more, lest some worse thing happen to thee.”

The pool of healing, what is it but the sweet and noble person of our beloved Lord Jesus Christ Himself? And the health-giving water, is the adorable and most precious blood of the eternal Son of God, true God and true Man, Who has washed and cleansed us in that bath of love, before our Lord’s coming, lay in captivity under the law of the Old Testament while they lived, and after death waited in limbo for the moving of the waters; that is, till our Lord’s precious blood was poured out at His blessed and bitter death, giving them eternal health and salvation. And so also in these last days, which are the time of salvation, no man can ever be healed and saved except by the adorable and precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And you should know, too, that all sick souls that will not pass through our Lord’s pool of healing will, without doubt, perish everlastingly. But there are yet other souls who feel the stirring of these waters only outwardly; they are influenced by the admonitions of their fellowmen, threatening them with the punishments of hell, or painful visitations of Providence afflicting soul or body; or, again, they are moved by the Word of God preached to them. All such come, indeed, into these healing waters, but only half-heartedly. And these are much to be pitied; for, although they are made whole of their sinfulness, yet the) hold off as much as they dare from true and entire conversion to God. Let us pity them, I say, for they live and die but half-cleansed, and are finally cast into the bitter pains of purgatory, there to remain till they are entirely purified.

The pool of healing had five porches, before which lay a great number of infirm persons, each and all waiting to be first in the waters as the angel stirred them, and thereby to be healed. This means the proud, the wrathful, the vengeful, the covetous and the unchaste — all these, let ua well remember it — are washed in the blood of Jesus and are made whole if they will but accept the cleansing.

We may also consider the five porches as representing our Lord’s five holy wounds, by the overflow of Whose precious blood, we are healed and saved from the mortal sickness of sin. Yet another meaning may be given, for the five porches are like the five virtues of very great prominence in the Christian’s life, all needed for every soul, but this one or that especially necessary to each, according to his peculiar spiritual sickness.

Humility is the first — humility, deep and unfeigned. By this a man rates himself as worthless; bows himself down beneath the hand of God and of every creature; meekly accepts all adversity and prosperity, sorrow and joy, no matter from what source it comes, as allotted him by God alone; is ever in fear and shame before the face of God; never repining.

The second portico of the pool of healing, is diligent attention to the interior life — recollection of spirit. O, how necessary is this virtue to many simple, well-meaning men! They do not wait for God’s signal, but, wholly self-guided, they rush outwards to the showiest kind of teaching, preaching and the like, little realizing that they are influenced only by the human motive of sensible and natural satisfaction. St. Augustine tells us, that it sometimes happens that men who thus abandon a recollected life and unguardingly mingle with the joys of creatures, never more return. Be assured, dear children, that whoever would engage in external works should keep a careful watch over his interior, earnestly inspecting his motives. Laboring externally with this safeguard, he ever preserves peace and security both within and without. Imprudent activity breeds unrest, the soul being guided by the attractions of sensible joy and the casual happenings of life, instead of God’s interior leadings and admonitions.

The third portico is repentence for sin, deep and true. It is turning away in all sincerity from everything that is not God, or that does not come from God. The very marrow of true contrition consists in this — that a sinner returns absolutely to God with all that he is inwardly and outwardly. That a man is wholly absorbed in trustfulness of God’s goodness, that he ardently longs to possess Him and Him only, that he is resolutely determined to cleave to Him forever in all love, that he has the purpose clear and distinct to do God’s will alone to the utmost of his power: My dear children, this is what repentance essentially is. Whosoever has it in that spirit, his sins are without any doubt forgiven him wholly, and the deeper the intensity of his earnestness, so much the more perfectly is he cleansed.

The fourth portico is a joyous voluntary poverty. You know, children, that there is a poverty arising from outward conditions, and an interior, that is to say, a real and true poverty. To outward poverty all men are not called; but to interior poverty all are called who would be true friends of God. By this virtue God alone is our riches; in our inmost heart we value Him and Him only. Whatever else we may have, is possessed only because we are sure He wills us to have it, and it is held in sincere poverty of spirit. St. Paul tells us of this poverty: “As having nothing and possessing all things” (II Cor. vi, 10). And we most understand this to mean, that we do not wish to possess anything in this life that God would have us be without; that we yield up to Him quickly and gladly our goods and our friends and our honor, our very body and soul, if He so wills it, for His love and glory. This should be our mind every hour of our lives, even though we have to overcome the resistance of mean, cowardly human nature; for this is essentially the poverty required of all good men. And this forms a noble character — one set at liberty from all attachment to creatures, and elevated in spirit above the vicissitudes of life, whether of joy or sorrow, ever ready to give up all earthly things as God wills it. If such a one were monarch of a kingdom, he would in spirit be no different from a literally poverty-stricken man, nor would his royal riches in the least degree hinder his soul from profiting fully by any of God’s graces. Being incapable of resting for peace and joy upon perishable things, he constantly stands in spirit before God like a beggar asking for an alms from a kind, loving Father; and that alms, the only gift that can ever satisfy him, is nothing less and nothing else than God Himself. It is true that when some temporal gain or loss happens, such men are momentarily glad or sorrowful; but this is only felt in the lower part of the soul, is not yielded to, and is followed instantly by an elevation of the spirit to God.

The fifth portico is giving back to God the glory of all His gifts, a steadfast reference of all graces and favors to the Divine origin from which they have flowed forth. Many men, when God bestows special spiritual favors on them, regenerating them into His wonderful light, begin to felicitate themselves. They riot in spiritual gluttony; they never think of humbly attributing their good fortune to its only origin, but appropriate God’s graces to themselves in a feeling of personal ownership. And this is very perilous to their souls. We should so steadfastly look to God alone in all happenings, that we shall scarcely perceive the gifts which he is showering upon us. Consider a man gazing at something through a narrow opening in a wall; if he fixes his attention wholly upon the object he is inspecting, the wall serves him well; but if he begins to examine the wall itself, asking how thick or thin it may be, then the wall is a hindrance to him. It is thus with the soul and God’s gifts, little or great. Rest thy mind on them, study how noble and beautiful they are, indulge recklessly in all their joys, and then art thou hindered from possessing God, Who alone is to be praised and glorified in His graces. Thou oughtest instantly to refer

Children, many infirm men lay in the porticos enclosing the pool of healing, and whichever one of them first entered the waters after the angel stirred them, was made whole. And what meaning has this stirring of the waters? Nothing less than the descent of the Holy Spirit into a man’s soul, stirring up with a powerful movement of grace hi* whole interior life. Thereby is he so totally transformed, that thing* which once he loved have now become absolutely tasteless to him. Once he fairly dreaded and strenuously avoided what now he covets with all his heart — to be stripped of all things and to live like a banished man; to retire into inner silence; to be humiliated and to be cast off by all men. Such things become sweetest joys to him, when God’s Spirit stirs the deep waters of his soul. All this happens to the sick man; that is to say, the man whose spiritual powers have been absorbed in the outward things of life; these faculties of his soul are now washed and completely cleansed in the adorable and precious blood of Jesus Christ. Only by this deep searching and cleansing process can he be cured of all his soul’s ailments, as it is written: “As many as touched Him were made whole” (Mark vi, 56).

And now, dear children, sometimes when our beloved Saviour has cured a sick soul it does not know it, and it may even go on during its whole life hardly aware of it. But this is permitted all for the best; for, our Lord knows full well, that if that soul thought itself all cured and safe and sound, it would quickly yield to self-complacency. It is, therefore, only out of special affection that He allows it to remain in ignorance of its happy condition, being all its days securely fixed in holy fear and anguish of spirit, and quite humiliated in God’s sight. Such a soul is perfectly safeguarded against offending God, even if the whole world were offered it, and this is a high degree of holiness. Rather than arouse the wrath of God by sinning, such a soul would gladly and joyfully be put to death. And, indeed, it dies daily for God’s sake within its inmost self, being entirely self-abandoned to His blessed will, and that in the darkness of a holy ignorance of what may be its standing with Him. One only purpose actuates such a soul: To be bound captive to God’s and in their outward activity they become very unassuming, all of which will in time and in eternity, and without the least shadow of contradiction on its part.

And what is the termination of this devout resignation to a state of ignorance of God’s love or hatred? It is this: When, at last, the heavenly Father comes to lead that soul to its eternal home, He dispels all ignorance and darkness and gives it a foretaste of the everlasting joys of Paradise. And such a well-tried soul dies full of joy and confidence; and, having been so loyal to God during the long years of darkness and desolation of spirit, it is led instantly and without any interval of purgatory into His Divine embrace. This is what is meant by the words of Scripture: “And I heard another voice from Heaven, saying to me write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord” ( Apoc. xiv, 13) .

It is related in the Gospel that our Lord found a man at the pool of healing who had been sick thirty-eight years. Mark well that this sickness, however long continued, was not unto death, but that the glory of God might be manifested. O, dear children, may God grant us to learn this lesson well — the example of a man who, because for thirtyeight years he so patiently waited on God, was at last rewarded. God Himself came to him, made him sound and well, bade him take up his bed and walk. This teaching, dear children, is a sharp admonition to many spiritual men of our day. I refer to those who have, indeed, repented of their sins and entered on a pious life, but who say that all is lost if it happens that our Lord gives them no extraordinary graces; they act as if they thought God had treated them unjustly. They are by no means content humbly to retire into themselves and patiently to wait on the Divine will. O, how few there are who possess that beautiful virtue! How few who sweetly and in perfect good-will give themselves up entirely to God’s blessed guidance. Such souls little know how pleasing they are in His sight, and therein they are very fortunate. May God teach us how noble and profitable a thing it is to surrender oneself captive to His will, never for a moment wishing to be released from His blessed bonds of ignorance and darkness, until His own appointed time. - May God grant us this grace, giving us steadfast confidence and courageous long-suffering under His guidance, even amid misgivings and anguish of heart. Amen*

brotherly love; third, bearing wrongs patiently; fourth, compassionate kindness; fifth, humble subjection to others; sixth, alacrity and exactness in well doing; seventh, strict abstemiousness; eighth, rigid observance of the rules of chastity.