The Sermons of Johannes Tauler · 39 of 124

Sermon for Easter Sunday : Second Part

I in them, and Thou in Me; that they may be made perfect in one. — John xrii, 21-23.

Herein our Lord and Saviour teaches that when a man has left all things of his outward life, father and mother, and, indeed, all multiplicity totally surrendered for God’s sake, then must he turn inward and do in like manner in his inward life. He must surrender his soul to God in total forgetfulness of whatsoever is native to his inner life, his soul to be dismantled and, as it were, taken to pieces, that it may be rebuilt and newly adorned, in a life wherein all images find their prototypes, namely, in God. If one loves in a human spirit, there is danger of one’s hating; if he hopes in that spirit, he can scarcely be entirely humbled. But if one willingly has nothing even that is lowly, he can scarcely be ambitious of the high things of this life. Let him, then, die to all and enter into God in search of the highest. This means, as I have said, that God will dismantle him, and then build and adorn him over again. All virtuous imaginings,may lead to selfish picking and choosing this or that way to gain virtue; but when the end is reached, the way is not needed and should be forgotten — the end is God. Virtues will never be so much our own, so true and so deep-seated in us, as when we have been stripped of their images and joined in unity with God. It then comes to pass that these virtues are not for this or that place or time, nor for any manner of self-seeking whatsoever; for they act within us for virtue’s own sake and, as it were, by their own holy force. God is the essence of all virtues, which without Him are non-existent; possess Him

Good, with no other why or wherefore but that essential Good, and because of it. Thou shalt then love for the sake of love itself, be true for the sake of truth itself, righteous for the sake of this supreme holiness.

The true, the good are indivisible and one in God — simple unity. A creature possesses good; as we say a good angel, a good man, a good heaven — all these have good in them, as they have also truth and being; but it is not with them as with God, for they have these as a manner of existence, all in place and measure and all with limitation. God has good because He is esential good.

But if thou wouldst have all the true and the good and all essential being, thou shalt find them in their fountain and origin, wholly without limitation. Pass over man and angel and Heaven into the indivisible and limitless good and true. All else may but hide God’s unity of goodness and truth from thee, and may become a prison to thee. Unity looks not outward; it covets nothing foreign to itself whether far or near; it is not measurable as broad or long; it is one, it is God, who has all good in Himself, and there is none out of Him. It is He who give* being and its good to creatures — not they to Him. Any spiritual method, in so far as it is Divine, is not outside of God, for all that is indivisible and true and good is in Him.

A man in whom all manner of self-seeking has quite perished away and been replaced by love, and who has God in him and is himself in God — whatsoever that man does in and through God is the best and done in the most perfect manner. And this perfection is inherent in the work and not borrowed from without; it is not from length and breadth, but from the unity of purpose with God; and so little works and great ones become in a way equally good in such a state of soul, from the uniform greatness of their origin. Say an Ave Maria with God’s holy unity, and it wins as much as a whole psalter less perfectly said; one step with God is equal to a pilgrimage beyond the seas without Him. Great works with upright intention shall be granted great inward; but the real worth of a good deed is in the disinterested love

The external is but a symbol of the internal, as a sign may tell us that there is wine in a cellar; yet there may be wine where no sign is hung out, and it is then of none the less worth to its owner. The main thing is to have a good will to serve God; that being made secure, my soul ranges free over the good deeds of all men, including the saints, all their sufferings for religion, their alms to the poor. Of these I think with a longing heart to do and to suffer them all for God’s sake, and that most gladly — but I lack the opportunity. In God’s eyes it is as if I had done them all. I fail in none of the merit, if my good will is equal to the effort that would be required for their actual accomplishment. And as I read of the holy men of the past, and keep my heart fixed on their marvels of virtue, my good will gives me a share in their merit; to God a thousand years are as a day that is passed.

St. Augustine says: “Turn into thyself; there alone shalt thou find God.” And as thou turnest — so we may add — thou turnest in God Himself, with whom thou hast been made one. In God is life and all things; and, as St. John tells us, “He came into His own, and His own received Him not. But as many as received Him, He gave them power to be made the sons of God.” (John i, 11-12.) Now, God’s Son is of one nature with His Father, and a Godlike man is not by nature, but by grace, one with Him, by Whom he is made Godlike; and if there be anything in him that is not Godlike, in just so far is he out of God. Truly is he God’s son, and one with Him after the image of the sonship of the only begotten Son; so that God out of him acts not, nor does he act out of God. And as God does not separate Himself from His only begotten Son, so neither does He separate Himself from a Godlike man, unless because this man has first separated himself from God. A certain master exclaims: “I do not envy all the good that God has given to His only begotten Son, because I can by the mystery of grace become unified with that same Son, out from Whom, through Whom and in Whom are all things — so truly one with Him that no part remains not united.”

Philosophers say that God does nothing out of — that is, outside of — Himself. In the same way a man who is truly good and Godlike, does all things he does in God, having Him as the only end of all; yet further, we may say that a Godlike man never thinks of God outside of his own

Since God works all through the man with whom He is one, it follows that not the man, but God, does the works that the man seems to do. As Jesus taught: “The Father who abideth in Me, He doeth the works.” (John *iv, 10.) To this Godlike man, therefore, his own works are very strange to him, and seem to him as if they were not his own; he is »o deeply one with God that it is He who is in him and He who works in him, and not the man himself — so does he feel. If this fails and he appropriates his works to himself in distinction from God, so does he instantly cease to be enveloped in God’s unity.

Our Saviour said: “I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent me” (John viii, 16) ; and again: “Believe you not that I am in the Father and the Father in me?” (John xiv, 11.) Therefore does St. Augustine teach: “God became man that I might become God; He became the Son of man that I might become the son of God.” And David says: “I have said, you are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High.” (Ps. lxxxi, 6.) What God gave to His only begotten Son made man, that is He ready to give to His Son’s brethren, each in his place and measure. If they refuse to receive it,' then God is not to blaine; just as the sunlight is not to blame if a room is dark at midday — the owner of the house has shut the blinds.

The nature of man which our beloved Lord assumed, is as much mine as it is His; although the case is infinitely different in regard to His person, which is wholly Divine. He took to Himself my very nature, and thereby He took me to Himself wholly. Now, what remains for my part? That I give myself to Him personally. If I hold back, what can He do about my perversity? Did He not take our nature so fully as to be as truly man as He is truly God’s own Son and the Eternal Word? Hence we must truly say that the virgin’s Son is God, precisely as we my ownself — to the Sultan of Turkey as well as to my next-door neighbor— one with the wisest and with the simplest, the least and the greatest? Do I not know that all men stand together and alike one in nature? Thus does our Lord stand as near to me as I do to myself; and I stand likewise as near to Him as He does to Himself — all this in His human nature. But woe to me if I am far removed from personal union with Him by my own self-love and self-seeking, removed from Him and joined to self in His despite; or, again, if I am by my selfishness removed from a loving union with any man and all men, even if they be a thousand miles distant from me. For all of us men are of one nature and should be as one man in love; we should be one in personal union of love. To all men should my heart be given, and their welfare should be as dear to me as my own, their misfortune as bitter to me as my own. In this way do I go out of myself, if I am true to the unity of nature God has made among men; until at last I think of my own and enjoy my own no more and no less because it is mine, than if it belonged to a man whom I have never seen.

But from this we must not suppose that this common love is to be equally distributed over all men; for, though God loves all equally, He yet bestows His favors unequally*. First come parents, children, friends and neighbors; begin to bestow thy love on these, and then go forth with thy loving service to others as best thou canst. One must consider those committed to his nearest care by Providence, as entitled to the perfect and immediate overflowing of love, not exactly because one is a father and mother and friend, but because God has made them such. For it might be that God would lead thee away over the seas, to serve with equal love men whom thou hadst before never heard of; love is equal within the soul, and shown by God’s will unequally in outward act. It is the man who has gone out of self in all things, and been made one with God in Christ, who does all this wisely. Being one in God and with God, then it follows that whatsoever all men and angels have of joy and bliss, is also his in God; and whatsoever others may have of badness or punishment, that is not his, but their own, for it is not in God.

In very truth, in proportion as a man goes out of selfhood does he enter into oneness with God. Yet he must not have regard to himself in this relation, for the less he regards himself the more does he find

Saviour’s teaching: “Take up my yoke upon you.” (Matt, xi, 29.) That means that His wiil shall always dominate ours and be infinitely dearer to us than our own. It was in giving up His will to His Father that Jesus saved us, for nothing is dearer to a man than his own will.

Thus it is that a man stands in indifference to all things; it is because he has passed out of self, as if he were become quite as different to himself as to the Sultan of the Turks and had merged his selfhood in God’s unity. Not, of course, that he is the equal of God, but that in uniting himself to God he has become oblivious to what equality means, so absorbed has he become in the Divine unity. It is unity and not equality that he has attained to in God. When emptying himself of all self-seeking, he has given himself up to God to be one with Him. Nor does he lose his natural existence; but in all his thoughts and deeds he does not perceive himself or consciously consider himself, but only God. As the prophet says: “For my heart hath been enflamed, and my reins have been changed, and I am brought to nothing, and I knew not.” (Ps. lxxiii, 21-22.) He knows not how* to describe this change of his soul into God’s life, for it has no description, no image; all his interior representations are covered by the one uncreated being of God taking the place of all. He himself, so it seems to him, knows not, acts not; God knows and acts in him and through him, according to His Divine will and without any obstacles, in a manner above what the soul can understand. And now it is needful that I should cease to speak on this subject, recalling only our Lord’s words, and begging Him to fulfill in blissful unity what He said to His Father: “That they all may be one, as Thou, Father, in Me, and I in Thee * * * and I in them, and Thou in Me; that they may be made perfect in one.” Amen.