The Sermons of Johannes Tauler · 46 of 124

Second Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Easter

It is expedient to you that I go; for if I go not, the Paraclete will not come to you. — John xvi, 7.

Mark well, dear children, to how high a place a man must be conducted if he shall achieve perfect happiness. That can only come to pass by his sincerely renouncing all those things that are most pleasing to human nature. From all these he must be mortified; he must let them all go, no matter how good and precious they may seem to him, nay, even holy and spiritual. The disciples of Christ — were they not required to give up their Master in His humanity, so full of grace, so holy and so beloved? And this was expedient to them, in order that they might be made capable of receiving the Holy Ghost. Therefore, no man shall be fit to receive Divine grace whose heart is in possession of creatures. Three kinds of obstacles in as many kinds of men hinder the coming of the Holy Ghost.

The first class are wilfully wicked men, having their pleasures in creatures against God’s law; far away from God’s paths are these. Of these the Psalmist speaks: “Cursed are they that depart from the way of the Lord” (Ps. cxviii, 21) ; that is to say, go away from God to creatures. And there are others who are really good people, but who are anxious about their needs, or who take over much pleasure in outward things. Therefore does our Lord oppose them, saying: “He that loveth his life shall lose it.” (John xii, 25.) He means carnal love of

The second hindrance of good men to attaining real spirituality, is misunderstanding the seven sacraments, fixing their soul too exclusively upon the outward signs therein, and thereby failing to obtain the full inward grace; for the holy sacraments are instituted to lead us to singlehearted truth. Thus the married life is a sign of the union of the Divine and the human natures in Christ, and also represents the espousals of the soul with God. Hence those who rest wholly upon the outward sign in this sacrament, through their sensual understanding of it prevent its helping them to the eternal truth; they do not live rightly in the married state.

Again, some men lean too much on the outward part of the sacrament of penance, on the saying of its prayers and on the confession of sin, not going down into its very truth. To admonish these our Saviour said: “He that is washed, needeth not but to wash his feet, but is clean wholly.” (John xiii, 10.) Which means that when a man has washed his soul once by a good confession, being deeply penitent and honestly confessing all his sins, he need not suppose he must keep on repenting his old sins, already repented of, already confessed. Let him tell his daily venial sins; let him, as it were, wash his feet from the petty faults of life as his conscience reproves him, and thereby he shall be made clean wholly.

And good men are often burdened by the outward customs they observe in receiving our Lord in holy Communion. They have so many outward devotions that these consume their interior fervor. The true sacramental state is an interior longing for God and an interior union with Him, and not a union in appearance only. Hence some do not receive this sacrament properly, for this and all sacraments lead us to God in all simplicity of truth.

We must realize that God is to be rightly adored by all men, in all states of life, and at all times. Now whosoever would rightly adore the heavenly Father, must set his soul into solitude, and give himself up to his longing for God, and have steadfast confidence in Him; and this condition belongs to the highest part of the soul. When thus placed, the spirit of a man rests oblivious to time and to bodily life. St. Paul bids us ever to rejoice, give thanks to God without ceasing and always to pray. To pray without ceasing is to do all one’s works in God’s love, meanwhile renouncing all self-gratulation in them, and at the same time to bow down humbly before God, and give up our souls freely to His influence. When these dispositions are united together in the highest faculties of the soul, then is the soul spiritualized. It then cleaves to God with perfect union of its will. It becomes, as it were, divinized, and then a man begins first to have the right and true adoration of God, for he has attained the end for which he was created.

Now there are some, yes, there are many, who do not adore the Father rightly and in truth. For as often as we pray to God on account simply of benefiting by creatures, we pray to our own injury. The creature is what it is — a creature, and can only bring with it bitterness, hurt and evil. Men who pray for created things, without any spiritual intention, are rightly served when they suffer misery; they have implicitly prayed for the infliction they now endure. Whosoever seeks God and seeks anything else with Him, will not find Him. Whosoever seeks God alone in all sincerity, will find Him and all besides that God may give.

Many good men are hindered from their perfection, because they rest in a deluded spirit upon the humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which means they give themselves up too much to visions. They see in spirit angels or men, or the humanity of Christ; and they believe the words they think are spoken to them, assuring them that they are God’s favorites, or that certain persons have committed sins or practiced virtues, or that God is going to do something by their means. By all of which they are often deceived, for whatsoever God does, He does by His goodness; he has no need of creatures. Hence our Lord said to His disciples: “It is expedient to you that I go.” This was because He would lead them to higher perfection. Even His humanity was a hindrance to them, because they cleaved to it with inordinate pleasure. They must follow God in all their ways, and His humanity should lead them to His Godhead. Christ said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father but by Me.” (John xiv, 6.) Hence those men are much mistaken who flatter themselves that they can do anything good of themselves. Jesus Himself said: “From God I proceeded and came; for I came not of Myself.” (John viii, 42.)

We must adore the humanity of Christ only on account of its union with the Godhead. The man Christ is truly God, and God is truly man. Let us not concern ourselves with any creature; let us be absorbed in God, in our Lord Jesus Christ, who alone is our way to the Father. And yet even where we have entered mentally upon the way of truth

Because the soul is a creature, therefore must it give itself up and go out of itself in the moment of contemplation; yea, even give up for the moment the contemplation of all the angels and saints. These are all but creatures, and taken in themselves can only interfere with the souPs Divine union. When the soul stands free and in need of nothing whatsoever, then it can come to God, as it were, resembling Himself; for nothing helps union so well as resemblance. As soon as the soul takes on the Divine colors, as it may be expressed, so soon does God grant Himself to the souPs powers, and then the soul grows in a Divine resemblance, and is, if we dare say so, tinted and shaded with the colors of the Divinity. The image is in the souPs powers, the resemblance is in its virtues, the Divine coloring is in the union. And thus what we may call God-coloring becomes so intimate, that the soul seems no longer to act in the form of a creature, but in the divinely colored form of its union with God. And while the soul is in a state of contemplation of God and has grown into this yet closer union with Him, and after He is yet more deeply poured into the souPs depths and has drawn it wholly to Himself, then it happens that there remains no power in the soul to know what sort of a being it is now to consider itself to be; yet meanwhile God holds it in its place as a creature. Thus it is that the light of grace expels from thee the light of nature; for the higher the soul is elevated in the knowledge that the light of grace gives, the darker grows the light of nature. If the soul will know the very truth, let it consider whether or not it be withdrawn from all things, whether or not it is lost to itself, loves God with real love, and is not hindered from Him by anything whatsoever; and finally whether or not He alone lives within it. If the soul can answer rightly to all this, then it has lost Christ, as His mother Mary lost Him in the temple, as He tarried in the school of His Father’s highest doctrine, and seemed no longer to think of even His mother — only to find Him again, as she did, in greater other love must go out, or be ready to be sanctified — Interior resentments hinder good prayer, and often stifle even the graces of Holy Communion — Discouragement after faults is a serious hindrance to fruitful prayer — The example of the prayer of Lazarus, the beggar.