The Sermons of Johannes Tauler · 3 of 124

Sermon for the First Sunday of Advent

It is now the hour for us to arise from sleep. — Rom. xiii, 11.

Today we celebrated the beginning of Advent, the coming of our Lord. A precious time has begun for us, and we find during this season words of joy and devotion in the lessons and songs of holy Church. Even as the month of May is the most delightful and beautiful part of the year, so the season of Advent has a holiness and sweetness all its own. It is the time toward which the prophets and saints of the ancient covenant during four thousand years sighed with incomparable ardor, crying out to God: “O that thou wouldst rend the heavens and come down!” (Isaias, lxiv, 1.) to deliver those that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. All the happenings, all the symbols of the Old Testament, had the one end of setting forth the grandeur of Him who was to come, and who now has come. Let us, then, thank God and always praise Him, that He has created us at this time and under this law of grace, that He has willed to give us His gifts and His riches in such abundance, if we will only take them. The Holy Apostle exhorts us to awake from the sleep of sin: “The night is passed, the day is at hand * * * let us walk honestly as in the day” (Rom. xiii, 12-13). We must, therefore, consider carefully how we have fallen and how we can rise again out of our sins and vices to our first innocence.

God created us to fill the places from which Lucifer and His angels were driven out. Through hate and envy of us Lucifer treacherously led the first man into disobedience and caused him to lose all the graces and virtues which made him like God and the angels. In this way was man poisoned and his noble nature stained. By his sin he wounded it mortally. And by this transgression has come upon us blindness of reason, perversity of will, disorder of the appetite of concupiscence and weakness in resisting evil. “Man when he was in honor did not

We thus have three enemies to combat, which triumph, unhappily, almost universally, and rule in the breasts of nearly all men — the world, the devil and the flesh. When these three enemies have worked their will in man his soul is lost — that soul so noble, chosen out by God with so much love — for he who allows himself to be wholly overcome shall most certainly go down to eternal death. God’s friends — those who seek in all things His glory— can hardly keep back their tears when they behold the hateful tyranny with which these three enemies hold sway over so great a multitude of men, among whom they usurp the place of God. And these souls are to be found both in the worldly state of life and in the cloister. To God’s friends the eternal destruction of their brethren is a great torture. Their hearts wither away with sorrow as they consider that self-love is so rooted in the world that there are few who love God purely and tend toward Him solely.

The world rules by pride — exterior pride or that of the spirit. How many men belong to this order of the devil! They wish to be something, to make a fine showing, and they could not count their sins and vices if they tried. Satan excites his subjects to hate, wrath, bitterness, suspicions, rash judgments and revenge, to aversions and discord. His disciples are glad to sow dissensions; they are without love for theit^ brethren. Our flesh seeks its own interest in everything, in all sensual and voluptuous pleasures. Men ignore all the misery this surely brings, those above all who suffer from it. By these three enemies is the greater part of men drawn into hell. If one wishes to recover his first glory and the dignity which Adam lost by sin and which we have lost with him; if one wishes, I say, to make a place in his heart for the coming of Jesus Christ, he must flee from the world, triumph over demons, overcome his flesh with sound reason and in all discretion, and carefully exercise himself in the virtues which I shall explain to you.

In the earthly paradise man fell by two things — sensuality and pride. Now we must rise up and regain the early force of our nature by two things. Firstly — We must resist courageously and with judgment, even unto death, every ill-regulated pleasure. Secondly — We must humble ourselves in deep abasement, not only under God, against whom we have risen in pride, but even under all men. Wouldst thou rise to the first place, choose always the lowest. By these two means it is that nature wins back her first energy.

Man must become like the angels in two ways. Firstly — He must willingly pardon all who have offended him and love his enemies sincerely, as do the angels in our ease when we vex them by our sins. Secondly— He must render willing service to our neighbor, even as the angels serve us for the love of God. In two ways we should become like God — in the practice of obedience after our Saviour’s example, who obeyed His Heavenly Father even unto death, and by growth and perseverance in that virtue and in all others. Thus do we become heavenly men; thus are we made one spirit with God through deep humility, by entire yielding up of self, by patience full of sweetness, by poverty of spirit and by warmth of charity. All who do this — and their number, alas! is very small — shall triumph over their foes. God will free them from the heavy burdens which weigh them down and help them in bearing the trials, many and painful, which He sends; for he sends trials in order that men entering within themselves may consider the reasons of these trials, so that being, as it were, thrown back on themselves by suffering, they may be kept in a state of recollection. He wishes them to ask themselves why God crushes them beneath so heavy a weight; for whithersoever God shall lead them by these trials they must follow, submissive to His Divine will. Again, God sends trials so that men may depart from themselves and from all creatures, and likewise that by suffering they may have patience.

But in what does this patience consist? Is it that a man is inaccessible to all external emotion? No; certainly not. To be truly patient is to hold for certain that no one can do us wrong; nay, far more than that, we feel that those who make us suffer are right in what they do against us, that they ought, indeed, to torment us yet more, and that we ought to feel a tender gentleness toward them. Such patient men follow Jesus Christ in His humility, who says: “If you continue in My word you shall be My disciples, indeed; and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John viii, 31-32).

There are two ways of hearing the Word of Jesus Christ. Some hear it with joy, as far as they can; reason and the senses listen to it with pleasure; but this is only a natural light. What they cannot feel nor taste they reject, and, since such food cannot satisfy them, they cease not running about looking for something new, something more that they can hear and understand. They do not perceive that they must stop these useless searchings and adopt another way if they would become better. The others, on the contrary, enter within themselves and dwell in the remotest depth of their being, observing simply by their reason, calls them and invites them directly and without any perceptible intermediary whither He wills to conduct them. Whatever Divine influence comes by such exterior means as perishable creatures has little flavor; is, as it were, wrapped up in multiplicity and contains a seed of bitterness. One finds herein a certain savor of the creature, from which the possession of God must be freed if the spirit shall truly taste Him and if He shall sink into the deepest depths of the soul. Those who look within themselves for the gifts and decrees of God partake of them at their very fountainhead, and there they give them back again. They draw and taste at the very fountainhead, whilst the former class are self-seekers in everything. And yet nowhere can they find their own selves in a way so certain and so simple as in that innermost depth, where we feel the immediate presence of God.

Perhaps you will ask me how we can do and observe without hindrance what God requires of us? It is by being careful to dwell within ourselves. Let each one dwell within and give over all seeking on the outside. So shall a man soon and surely learn what he should do, what God wills of him interiorly and exteriorly; and, when he knows it, let him yield himself to God and follow along whatsoever road He shall conduct him, whether it be in the active life or the contemplative or the unitive, in suffering or in joy. If God gives him nothing, let him resign himself simply to His will, and, for love of Him, agree to be deprived of His gifts. And let him sink yet deeper into his inner life, having ever before his eyes the dear image of our Lord. Our Lord had three motives in all His actions; He sought only His Heavenly Father’s glory, with no thought of anything else, great or small, and He referred all to His Father’s glory. Secondly — From the depth*

May God grant us these dispositions! Amen.