The Sermons of Johannes Tauler · 81 of 124

Sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity

And put on the new man, who according to God, is created In justice and holiness of truth. — Eph. lr, 24.

Walk In the spirit, and you shall not fulfill the tests of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. — Gal. v, 16, 17.

Dear children, if we would walk in the spirit, we must steadfastly turn away from all sin, and from inordinate love of creatures; and we must lovingly turn to God with all the powers of our soul in persevering prayer. To this we must add detachment of spirit, and wellchosen devout exercises. By these means we shall bring the flesh into subjection to the spirit, “and put on the new man, who according to God is created in justice and holiness of truth.”

Children, you should know the dignity of your soul. And although every creature of God belongs to Him, yet none other so particularly as our soul. God made use of no other creature to create us, but freely and directly did He make us, taking counsel alone of His goodness, and forming us after His own image and likeness. We are more His than we are any others of His creatures. His image and likeness is sunk so deep in us that it can never be effaced — not even in souls condemned eternally to hell. And, as inwardly we are in God’s likeness, so also outwardly we should show forth God’s likeness, being in our life conformed to His holiness.

This likeness should follow four attributes of God. The first is that God is invisible, for we know that no man can see God and live. We

Dear children, St. Paul writes that by Christ the world was crucified to him, and he to the world (Gal. vi: 14) ; which means that the world with all its joys and luxuries and lusts was exceedingly painful to the Apostle; he longed for all this infinitely less than for the gallows of the cross. And what meant he by saying that he was a cross to the world? He meant that he was such a man in morals and in manners, and in the whole man that he showed himself to be, that the world cared for him as little as it cared for the cross. Now it is in this that the perfection of spiritual men consists; if thou standest there, thou art in the way of perfection. But, alas, although there are many among us to whom indeed the world is a cross, for they do not desire it, do we on the other hand find one man in a thousand so perfect as not to desire to please the world? Nor am I now speaking of those who follow sinful courses. No, dear children, no, by no means. But I say simply this: The man who can truly affirm with St. Paul: I am a cross to the world, must have reached that point of perfection as to show plainly in all he does and in every trait of his character that he cares not to please anybody except God; never dreams of winning anybody’s favor except God’s alone. He indeed it is that can say: I am the world’s cross. I range myself against it in everything whatsoever, in my interior dislike for it, in my outward opposition to it, and to that degree that it no more desires me than it covets the gallows of the cross*

Insight

Tauler glosses Paul: the world was crucified to me, and I to the world. He spends time on the second half. The first is easy enough — the world has stopped charming you. The second is harder. You have become such a person that the world finds you uninteresting. Paul says: the world cares for me as little as it cares for the cross. This is a kind of perfection that doesn't advertise itself. The mature contemplative is not someone the world envies. He's someone the world has stopped noticing, because there is nothing in him for the world to want. The Daoist sage who is useful by being useless makes a similar move — he survives the woodcutter by not being good for furniture.Galatians 6:14; Zhuangzi 4 on the useless tree; cf. Eckhart Pr 13 on the abandoned heart unrecognizable to the world.

The second way in which our soul is shown to be like to God is that we are conformed to His unchangeableness. Thus must we be wholly steadfast in a good life. We must give ourselves over to Him permanently. Let the whole world be turned upside down, we cannot be shaken loose from Him, never thrown off into sin, not separated from Him in any manner whatsoever. Ah, dear children, to the man who is thus fast fixed in God, all changes are alike, fortune or misfortune, poverty or wealth, joy or sorrow. O how like unto God the creator, is the soul that stands immovable in Him who gives motion to all created things.

The third resemblance to God is that the perfect soul is the image and likeness of all virtue. We know that in God there is the image of all things created, namely in His eternal and only begotten Son our

Lord Jesus Christ — an image not like that in the creature, but the living image as God is in God, withont beginning and without end. So must a perfect man assemble in his soul the living image of all virtues that he sees around him as they shine forth in the lives of good men and women of all conditions. From one and from another he learns different virtues and acquires various kinds of holiness; this one teaches him humility, that one patience, a third mortification; good order and discipline, devotion, spiritual motives, truthfulness, affectionateness, cleanness of life, obedience. His soul is a treasure house of virtues, gathered in from all directions. It is a picture gallery full of masterpieces of virtue, which he copies in his daily life. And thus never is anything seen in him but holy living.

The fourth trait of his likeness to God is that he is good; he shows forth the divine goodness. God is the fountain head from which all goodness flows. All the goodness in this world taken together and joined in one is called and is good, because it is a single drop of God’s goodness, a drop He has permitted us to enjoy. Hence, dear children, must we cleave close to this infinite source of all good, if we would feel the power of good in our lives — the nearer the source the purer and the sweeter the waters of goodness and grace and holiness.

When we give up the world, that is to say, sin, we draw nigh to the flowing spring of divine grace. The man who totally shuts out whatsoever is the world or cleaves to the world, he it is that may be said to leave the world; self-will, self-love, self-opinionatedness, these must one and all be shut out. This done, a man must then give himself up to God, body and goods and liberty, keeping back nothing of self or for self. This is what it means to be a really good and pious man. He must surrender his will in subjection to another man’s will, and keep obedience even to his death. He must hand over his goods to another man’s ownership, holding nothing back for his own even secret possession. His soul, he must plainly manifest to another, to be by him directed in all things whatsoever. Children, whosoever honestly does all this, and thus goes forth from self in soul and body, and draws nigh to the fountain head of all good and all grace — O how plentifully shall the living waters flow into him, fructifying his soul unto all virtue. Then does that man arrive at essential blessedness; be is like unto God indeed, and “according to God is created in justice and holiness of truth.” God grant that this may be our happy destiny. Amen.

Insight

The drawing close to the source of all good. Tauler keeps the image plain: when you give up self-will, self-love, self-opinionatedness, the living waters flow into you, fructifying the soul unto all virtue. He's not describing a transaction. The water was already there; the dam was the self. Remove the obstruction and the watering of the field happens by itself. This is the same recognition that animates wu wei in the Daoist tradition — the action that is most powerful is the one that stops getting in the way of what wants to happen anyway. The work of becoming good, in Tauler's account, is not so much building as it is clearing.John 7:37-38 on the rivers of living water; Tao Te Ching ch 48 ("by daily decreasing one arrives at non-action"); cf. Eckhart Pr 5b on the unobstructed soul.