The Sermons of Johannes Tauler · 60 of 124

First Sermon for Trinity Sunday

Amen, amen, I say to thee, that we speak what we know, and we testify what we have seen. — John iii, 11.

Dear children, this is the happy day when we celebrate the glorious feast of the blessed Trinity. And you should know that all our other festivals are to be valued on account of what we commemorate today, just as the blossoms of a tree are esteemed for the sake of its fruit. I know not what words to choose to fitly show its greatness, for it surpasses our power of expression, telling as it does of the reward of all our labors and giving them their perfect ending. As a seraph surpasses a beast in intelligence, so do the lessons of this day go beyond human reason. Therefore, St. Dionysius said: Whatsoever a man says about

Insight

Trinity Sunday is the feast that gives all the other feasts their value, the way blossoms are valued for the sake of the fruit they will produce. Tauler is making a structural claim about the liturgical year: the whole sequence — Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost — points to and is summed up in this one day. The reason is the doctrine. The whole story of salvation history is the Trinity's own life turned outward and then drawing creation back into itself. Every feast is the Trinity working in a particular mode; Trinity Sunday names the source. As St. Dionysius said: whatsoever a man says about — the sermon trails off here in the medieval manuscript, but the Dionysian point is the standard apophatic one: whatever you say about God, the opposite is also true, and the truth lies infinitely beyond both.Pseudo-Dionysius, Divine Names I.5-7; on Trinity Sunday's medieval placement see the Sarum Use and the Dominican liturgy Tauler would have prayed.

Dear children, foolish men talk of the holy Trinity as if they had penetrated its mystery — a gift denied to all created beings. Let it be otherwise with you. Talk little of this sublime theme, as St. Paul admonishes us. Leave study of it and discourse about it to great doctors, who, however, can but stammer about it. Yet they must treat of it for the purposes of holy Church in refuting the errors of heretics. But such learned discoursing is not your privilege.

Insight

Foolish men talk of the holy Trinity as if they had penetrated its mystery. Tauler is unusually direct here, and he is following Paul's caution in 1 Corinthians 13:12 — now we see in a mirror dimly. Leave study of it and discourse about it to great doctors, who, however, can but stammer about it. The instruction is pastoral: do not approach Trinitarian doctrine as a problem to be solved by your reasoning. Stammering is the right register. Augustine, who wrote fifteen books on the Trinity, ends De Trinitate by confessing that he has said less than he intended and asking the reader to pray for him. The deepest minds in the tradition all arrive at the same edge: this can be felt, but not finally said.Augustine, De Trinitate XV.51 (final apologia); 1 Corinthians 13:12; cf. Aquinas's silence at the end of his life (the famous 'all I have written seems like straw').

In my text Christ says: “We speak what we know, and we testify what we have seen.” Applying this to the knowledge of the holy Trinity, dear children, then only Christ alone has seen it and known it. As to us here below, we can know nothing of it except through the witnessing of our Lord Jesus Christ. And He is a witness in two ways, one by similarity, the other by difference or contrast, namely in. His lower and in His higher powers. If we lack either of these witnessings of His, we shall fail to reach a true knowledge. These two ways are like two sisters inseparably joined in their lives. It is not as if the knowledge in the lower faculties' goes in advance and that in the higher follows after, but they must work together, inseparably associated. By this means the mind finds itself made ready for the knowledge to be gained by contrast, on account of already possessing the knowledge gained by similarities; and then vice versa. It is thus, too, one gains joy by sorrow, sorrow by joy; he gains honor by disgrace, comfort by misery. Dear children, these relationships cannot be achieved by the powers of our poor fallen nature, or in our outward life alone. But by the aid of Divine grace one may essentially reach the mutual effect of like upon unlike.

But nature must suffer many a bitter death, death inward and outward, before the soul stands absolutely indifferent to joy or sorrow. Ah, what fervent thanks do we owe to Ood for these many deaths, by dying which we gain possession of a glorious and Divine life — if we would only realize the gift of God. Children, we should carefully watch our souls, and yearn and long for, and sincerely pray for this death, which grants us so perfect a life. For by its means the enlightened spirit is indifferent to pain or pleasure, truly balancing like and unlike, incapable of disturbance by any happening whatsoever; hate or love of men, consolation and misery, being to such a soul, one in no wise different from the other.

We find many men, both of the clergy and the laity, who would gladly be perfect followers of Christ if all things were pleasant, if they met with no contradictions. But when opposition is met, inwardly or outwardly or from their fellow-men, then they turn off from God. And yet trouble would be much better for them, and more useful, than peace. Tribulation leads to the essence of truth and is its fruit, and peace is but its flower. Peace is serviceable to tribulation which it precedes, helping us to bear trouble. But only in the midst of tribulation is God born into our lives, all in a hidden manner. Hence must a man stand indifferent between the favorable and unfavorable circumstances of life. But alas, nowadays nobody wants to follow God on this road nor love Him in adversity — many would on this account almost hate Him and forsake Him.

Insight

Tribulation leads to the essence of truth and is its fruit; peace is but its flower. The botanical reversal is sharper than it first sounds. Peace is the visible blossom; tribulation is what the plant is actually for. Tauler is correcting a temptation that runs through every comfortable spiritual culture: the assumption that the experience of peace is the destination. He is saying peace is real and valuable, but it is decorative; the fruit hidden inside the rougher seasons is what nourishes. Job's whole book is built on the same point — the friends keep offering the peace-version of theology, and the wind from the whirlwind keeps tearing it apart until what is left is fruit. Notice that Tauler does not romanticize the suffering. He just refuses to mistake the bloom for the harvest.Job 38-42; cf. James 1:2-4 on testing producing endurance; Cloud of Unknowing ch 18 on the cost of the work.

These are by no means true witnesses of onr Lord Jesus Christ, for He is truly typified by that brazen serpent which Moses hung up before the people, and upon which all must gaze if they were to be restored to health. Let us always look earnestly upon this symbol, and bear true witness to Him in all poverty of spirit and boundless self-denial. We should suffer all trials and all opposition with burning zeal, whether they afflict our inner souls or oppress us from without, coming from the evil one, from our corrupt inclinations, or from our neighbor.

And let me say in all truth, that if every trial were done and over, all contradictions passed and opposition overcome, then we should most earnestly invite them back again. For by suffering them again they might cleanse us from the rust that they had left after them. A true and enlightened man needs to suffer from the feelings and the tendencies to sin that lurk in his flesh and blood, in order to know himself thoroughly, and to hate his weakness and sinfulness. A great sinner, who stands amid his sinful inclinations, is sure to fall and is lost. A perfect man, on the contrary, struggling with his natural weakneses, is only made the purer, and from this painful conflict passes into eternal life. The bad man knows nothing of the steadfast resistance of virtue against vice, gladly if painfully maintained by a good man to the very end.

And now, children, let me ask why there is such a difference between these two men. both whose souls are nevertheless occupied with the forms and images of sin. I answer that they have an essentially different way of acting. The devout man suffers these imaginations for God’s sake — God is exclusively his thought and his support; from God he accepts the sweet and bitter of life, giving himself up to God wholly. The wicked man makes no account of God, and falls wilfully into sin; he would do so without any temptation. No matter how God would treat him, he would never be content. If he had his way, his whole life would consist in having much of everything without price or labor, and this state of mind is in the end his death. Therefore, dear children, if you seek God purely, and love Him in all your ways, nothing whatsoever can hurt you — if all the devils in hell pour all their malice and uncleanness through your soul and body and your flesh and blood, and if the wicked world joins all its baseness and filthiness to that flood of evil, as long as it all happens against your will, and if you had rather die than commit a single sin against God, then all this wickedness can do you not a hair’s weight of harm, even though your temptation lasted ten years man — a steadfast soul, that never falls away from the Divine friendship in word or work.

Therefore the Bon of God teaches us in the gospel: “Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God” (John iii, 5). By the word ghost or spirit one may mean the joys of life, and by the word water, its sorrows. The ugly external aspect of adversity disguises its noble interior advantages. Be assured, children, that whosoever will persevere in patient suffering, to him will be unveiled a clear view of the unspeakably precious qualities to be found in suffering. This revelation is to be gained only by one who accepts adversity with a loving spirit, loving, that is to say, to suffer pain more than to enjoy pleasure, yea, even in all things and under all circumstances. The clearer the value of afflictions is understood, the deeper is the inner joy found in outward suffering. To this was Lucifer wilfully blind — he would be established in joy without passing through sorrow. And therefore did he lose all joy and was buried in unspeakable and eternal sorrow. But the good angels, faithful and true, were willing to suffer the sorrowful trial God imposed on them, and forthwith they were absorbed in the unspeakable joy of God.

Ah, children, how sweet is the fruit grown upon this soil — a spirit fully enlightened about adversity, and pervaded with Divine love. Such a man, entirely melted into God’s will to receive all trials, is presently given a spiritual power far above his nature and rooted in the Divine life. He is cleansed from the imperfections of his inner and outer existence; he grows well accustomed to self-denial; and he is finally absorbed most sweetly in the Divinity. When a man does his own utmost, reach ing the highest possible point of his striving, then does God’s infinitude take up the work. In the innermost spirit of such a man the Divine light begins to gleam, and with it is imparted a supernatural force. Finally the soul is drawn out of itself into thoughts of God wholly beyond power of expression — a preparation on earth for the eternal happiness of Heaven. This is the work of God’s power, a turning inward not to be told in words, not to be conceived in the mind. Although the soul is so far advanced beyond the previous time of suffering, yet that patient endurance has served to win it the grace of interior union. The steadfast uprightness of intention, the will all pliant to God’s

God, every pang of pain meekly borne for God’s sake— this has all served to prepare the devont soul for the inward reception of God’s heavenly visitation.

Children, this turning toward God is not the gift of angels or saints, much less of any earthly benefactor, but comes forth direct from the deepest heart of God Himself; by Him granted, by Him to be perfected. Into the Divine obscurity the soul enters, to be there joined to God in a Divine stillness. And now all sense of what is pleasant or unpleasant in life is quite lost, nay the soul’s very identity seems gone, and its knowledge of God is so elevated, that it seems as if it were not knowledge, but just a perfect union.

Ton should know, children, that to find this happy lot, a man must die to all created things. Joy and sorrow, whether in body or mind, or in flesh and blood, must be indifferent to him. He must love God alone. He must diligently cultivate the interior virtues with a view to suffering gladly all adversity. He must behave himself very virtuously, be fond of a hidden life, never complain, never seek outward comfort — very different from those who have made little progress in virtue, who know little of God in their interior souls. Really good men fly from all the multiplicity of external human existence, are ever removing hindrances to virtue, offer up everything to God, and by this manner of life are brought to that blessed and ever-adorable Trinity of which I am wholly unworthy to speak, or even to have any knowledge. That such a grace may be granted to us, help us, O God the Father, and God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.