The Sermons of Johannes Tauler · 79 of 124

First Sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday after

Blessed are the eyes that see the things that you see. — Luke x, 23-37.

On one occasion our Lord, gazing upon his disciples, said: “I confess to Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to little ones” (Matt, xi: 25). This is appropriate to our text, which was addressed to those same disciples: “Blessed are the eyes that see the things that you see. For I say to you that many prophets and kings have desired to see the things that you see, and have not seen them; and to hear the things that you hear, and have not heard them.” Then the holy narrative proceeds: “And behold a certain lawyer stood up, tempting Him, and saying: Master, what must I do to possess eternal life? But He said to him: What is written in the law? How readest thou? He, answering, said: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind: and thy neighbor as thyself. And He said to him: Thou hast answered right. This do, and thou shalt live.”

Now let us consider our text: “Blessed are the eyes that see the things that you see.” A man has two sets of eyes, interior and exterior. It were a hard lot if a man had no interior eyes; he would be like a ibeast had he only exterior eyes. And let me ask, dear children, how

These are the dark blinds over the eyes of men’s souls. But the moment a man feels pained at this lamentable state, and humbly confesses it to God, determined to do his best to remedy it, presently God guides him to good counsel, and the obstacles to spiritual sight fall off. But with some men no counsel avails, and then their darkness grows yet more dense. They will not forsake their idols, but, like Rachel, they hide them away and sit upon them. Their minds are filled with the forms of the created things they love; these blind their eyes; the voices of the world deafen their ears. And when reason is thus deaf and blind, it cannot be saved.

“Blessed are the eyes that see the things that you see.” Any man in his senses can see that the creatures that possess our hearts are in themselves merely nothing, and yet they are capable of giving us joy of a certain kind. But why cannot we understand the joy that God will give us, since it is from God that created things have all come forth? The knowledge and appreciation of this would make our eyes blessed, if we would but see it, for we in our day see more than our Lord’s disciples at that moment were able to see. They saw their Master indeed; but He was then a poor, rejected and much suffering man, whereas we know Him now, in the light of holy faith, as a majestic being, God and Lord of earth and heaven. Gould we but duly appreciate what our eyes thus behold, eternally blessed would those eyes be.

Dear children, the great masters dispute with one another as to which is greater, knowledge or love. But as to us, we shall rather choose for our discussion matters of eternal life: — when we come to that, we shall behold all things in very truth. Our Lord says: “But one thing is necessary” (Luke x: 42). And what is that one thing necessary? It is that thou shouldst know thy own nothingness; recognize this as thy only real self; fully understand as thou dost depend on thyself who thou art. For that one thing necessary has our Lord suffered such agony of soul that He sweat blood. It was because thou wouldst not learn this one thing, that he cried out on the cross: “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Mark xv: 34). Why should the one thing necessary for our salvation be given up by us? Dear child, I bid thee to dismiss from thy mind all that I and all other instructors have taught thee, all work and all contemplation, and study henceforth only this one thing necessary — to know thy own nothingness. For our Lord said: “Mary hath chosen the better part” (Luke x: 42). In very truth, didst thou but gain only this part, thou shouldst have, not a part, but the whole of heavenly wisdom. This sense of our nothingness is not what some men conceit themselves to know and teach. They feign a deep humility as they speak of it, but in their souPs inmost depths they cherish a notion of themselves as high as the steeple of the Cathedral. They would be great before men’s eyes, and they deceive men, and most of all themselves, by a pretense of humility. Dear child, if thou findest thyself clinging fast to some devout practice, meanwhile unmindful of thy nothingness, then I say to thee it were better to give over this busy method of thine, and turn inward to the thoughts of thy helpless uothingness.

Insight

What is the one thing necessary? Tauler is unusually direct here. It is to know your own nothingness; to recognize this as your only real self; to understand fully who you are when you depend on yourself. For this one thing Christ sweat blood, he says. For this one thing he was forsaken on the cross. Dismiss everything I and other instructors have ever taught you, says Tauler, and study only this. The instruction has a Ramana flavor: trace the I-thought back to its source and you find no separate self there at all. Tauler keeps the Christian frame — the nothingness is a creature's nothingness before God — but the practice is recognizably the same self-inquiry that contemplatives across traditions arrive at as the last task.Luke 10:42; Ramana Maharshi, Who am I?; cf. Eckhart Pr 6 on the nothingness of the soul before God.

But let us now consider the outward man. Ask thyself: What art thou, and whence art thou? Thy bodily substance is made up of such foul matter, that it is offensive to thy very self as well as to all others. And what shall thy body become? A sack of uncleanliness, emiting a most intolerable stench, turning the costliest food into the worst filth. Yet this fuel for the everlasting fire of hell, is what many a one devotes his whole life to pampering. A dead corpse? It is an unbearable horror to the very ones who once loved it best — it is more disgusting than a dead dog. It would seem as if God had set everything against the comfort of our bodily life, the air and the sun and all the elements. Now we are freezing with cold, again scorched

Look at the wild animals, how happily they are placed compared to thee. Their garments grow upon them naturally, and they ars always comfortable whether it be cold or hot. As for thee, it is from them that thou must borrow thy clothing; thus art thou poorer than they. All thy pleasure depends on their gifts to thee, and yet thou art proud! Is not this an unspeakable blindness of heart? The cattle are quite content with what God gives them of clothing, beds, shelter, food and drink. And now consider thy marvellous misery, that thou sinnest not seldom by excessive enjoyment of these things that the cattle furnish thee. In former times the saints wept because they were compelled to eat; and they laughed when they had to die.

Yet further consider thy nothingness in the miseries of thy nature. Dost thou gladly pray, and watch, and fast, and weep? By no means canst thou do it. What thou wouldst wish to do, that thou doest not; and what thou wishest not to do, that thou nevertheless must do. What miseries are thine from thy many amazing temptations; and what sins does not God threaten to allow thee to commit. Dost thou never think of this? O that thou didst but learn the lesson of this thy nothingness, the one thing necessary to know. To be sure, the fact that God thus leaves thee in peril of sin is only for thy best good, so that thou shouldst take counsel of thy nothingness — better for thee, perhaps, than if thou shouldst stand high, and wert lifted up among great things.

Men will come to thee with overbearing manners and hard words, telling thee high-sounding and subtle things of the intellect, as if they thought they were Christ’s apostles. Dear child, get away from them and sink into thy inmost soul, into thy nothingness, and let these men talk on like the ringing of the bells in a church steeple. Nay, if all the devils in hell were turned loose upon thee, and all other creatures with them — it will all help thee wonderfully, if thou wilt but turn inward to the study of thy nothingness: that is “the best part.”

But thou mightst say to me: Brother, I meditate all day long on Christ’s passion, His sufferings in Pilate’s hall and before Herod, —

Bow down beneath the cross of the God-man. Bend thy proud head and ask for Christ’s crown of thorns, and take up thy journey to Calvary. Do this in all manner of ways interior and exterior, cultivating constantly a sense of thy littleness. Since thy great God has for thy sake annihilated Himself so far as to be judged and condemned by His own creatures, crucified and put to death, so must thou most patiently suffer thy little pains in all meekness, ever dwelling upon the picture of thy Savior’s sufferings and sinking it into thy mind.

But men do not follow this way; rather they think of our Lord’s passion with a blinded love; and it is a love which does not bear frnit in good works; it does not result in their renouncing pride and worldly honors. Nor are they led to foreswear bodily pleasures; they are the same after their meditations as they were before. Alas, how little fruit is borne by that sweetest of spiritual exercises — meditation on the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ — if we are to judge by men’s morals. Let it be far different in thy case, dear child. After so holy a devotion, thou shouldst feel so deeply ashamed as to wonder that the earth could endure thee and that it did not open to swallow thee up. Bemember that there are thousands now in hell who perhaps were far less sinful than thou. Had God .favored them as He has thee, they would have served Him far better than thou hast; yet has He spared thee and eternally condemned them. Often think of such truths. Never taste a morsel of food or drink a drop of water but with holy fear and deep humility. Use all the comforts of life wholly for thy mere necessities, by no means for thy pleasure.

Insight

Tauler is sharp about meditation on the Passion that bears no fruit. Men think on Christ's suffering with a blinded love that doesn't translate into anything — they are the same after the meditation as before, still proud, still seeking comfort, still angling for honor. The exercise was sweet but it didn't form them. So little fruit, he says, from the sweetest of spiritual exercises. The diagnostic here is universal across contemplative traditions. A practice that doesn't change what you actually do has stopped being practice and become a feeling. Cassian makes the same observation about the monks who weep in their cells and remain irascible in the kitchen.Cassian, Conferences IX on the test of practice in daily relations; James 1:22-25 on the doer of the word; cf. Imitation of Christ I.4 on hearing without doing.

And then come forward some men full of high argumentation about the spiritual life; they talk as if they had scaled high heaven in their wisdom, but in reality they have not moved a step beyond their own poor ‘self, of whose nothingness they are quite ignorant. To argumentative truth they have attained, but to living truth, which rightly is the only truth, no man comes except by the way of his own nothingness. Going apart from this way of truth one can but arrive at misfortune, and then remain stationary among shadows. O children, the day will come when such souls will wish they never had any show of spirituality or heard a word about it, or won a great name among ' men. They will wish that they had followed the cattle in the fields and eaten their bread in the sweat of their face. For then must they render account of every gift God gave them — a just and terrible God, though now so gentle, now allowing His mercy to be so shamefully abused. Tet if one but realizes now this future reckoning, let him not fall into despair, for these thoughts are sent him that he may subject himself absolutely under God and under all creatures in a spirit of entire self-renunciation. Meanwhile beware of a false and boastful humility. Our Lord says: “Unless you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of Heaven” (Matt, xviii: 3). Let us be as unconscious of our humility as little babes, nor ever make it a subject of our thoughts. The Lord says: “Suffer little children to come unto Me” (Matt, xix: 14).

The earth is the least of all the elements, and in its littleness it has fled far away from the heavens; and yet the vast celestial spheres, sun, moon and stars, pursue the earth with their kindly and mighty influence, producing on its lowly bosom most useful fruits. Where the valley is deepest the waters do most plentifully flow down, and the lowly valleys are thus more productive than the proud hills. It is so in the spiritual life: the soul sunken into the deepest depths of humility attracts the best gifts of the divine abyss of love. “Deep calleth on deep” (Ps. xli: 3), exclaims the Psalmist. The created abyss, with its boundless knowledge of its own nothingness, calleth into itself the uncreated abyss that is the infinite God, and thus is it made one with Him; in which union the soul knows God, and yet^ as St Dionysius says, knows Him as like nothing that it ever knew before; for God is nothing like the things that man knows or can ever express. Herein the spirit of a man is truly humbled and selfabandoned. So that if it pleased God to annihilate him (if such a thought were possible or were permitted), he would gladly be annihilated— for he knows nothing, loves nothing, enjoys nothing, but the One. Children, blessed, indeed, are the eyes that thus see, as our Lord says in the text. May God grant us thus to contemplate our own nothingness. Amen.