The Sermons of Johannes Tauler · 95 of 124

Sermon for the Feast of St. Andrew, the Apostle

The next day John stood, and two of his disciples. And beholding Jesus walking, he saith: Behold the Lamb of God. And the two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus. And Jesus turning, and seeing them following Him, saith to them: What seek you? Who said to Him: Rabbi (which is to say, being interpreted. Master), where dwellest Thou? He saith to them: Come and

Three things are taught us by these words. First, the overflowing wisdom of Christ as our teacher; second, the infinite dwelling place of God’s being, the foundation of all being; third, the confidence we should feel in God’s invitation to seek Him in spirit, in the dwelling place of His Godhead — “Come and see,” — that we may learn wisdom at wisdom’s fountain head, namely, the school of the most holy Trinity. Therefore does the Lord say, Come, O soul, and dwell with Me and in Me: come and see in order that thou mayst learn; I will enclose thee within the depths of My divine heart as in My dwelling, in which thou shalt contemplate and learn all thy eternal good.

And now consider this Master’s school. Ah, my Master, (so speaks the soul) teach me how to escape the fate of the five foolish virgins. He answers: Learn of Me to be meek and humble of heart, as I once taught St. Andrew and My other disciples. Then the soul says: But, Lord, this teaching is too hard; for the cares of life, and also anger and contention, disturb my heart, so that I lose meekness of spirit. And our MaBter, Christ insists: “What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul?” (Matt, xvi, 26). It is from thoughts of thy self-interest that all thy pain of heart springs, thy tedium in spiritual exercises, thy dullness of soul: this is

His eyes to the lowly virtue of humility, saying in thy heart: Lord, I am the puniest little creature that ever Thou didst create. Place thyself thus in meekness of spirit, and thou shalt duly appreciate that Ood is a short word but a long meaning. Diligently pursue this devout practise; for if thou wilt do so and not give it up, thou shalt soon be made aware of a wisdom hitherto quite hidden from thee.

The second teaching is about the way the soul is drawn towards the dwelling of the divine being, our Master. The longing for this is felt by all creatures. They desire their own existence only that they may find the being of God. All the activity of nature is nothing else than a search and an asking: Where is the dwelling of God? Without this the heavens and the earth would not stand. And now, dear child, why dost thou go outside thyself in this search, seeking God in the strange lands of perishable things? Thou shalt not find Him there. They all deny thee, and beckon thee to go back and away, saying: We are not God. St. Augustine says: “Lift up thy soul above thyself into eternal things, for God is there.”

And mark well that God may thus be found in many ways, all variously teaching the soul about Him. First, the soul finds God its creator dwelling in holy fear, in the heights of penance and of sorrow for sin. By penance a man freely breaks his obstinate will into subjection under God’s will. Learn herein to give up everything great and little, to do hard penances, to chastise thyself for having yielded to thy unbridled will. The more the soul is practised in this, the more does it find. God in itself and itself in God. Thus speaks the lover — “I will go to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of frankincense” (Cant, iv, 6). It is in that place of bitterness that God speaks to His beloved. It is the high place of an elevated spirit, which has changed all self satisfaction and treacherous sweetness, into feelings of sharp regret for sin. It now finds only bitterness in whatsoever is not according to God’s will. Then God speaks deep in the spouse’s spirit: “Thou art all fair, O My love, and there is not a spot in thee” (Cant, iv, 7).

But if anyone lives according to his own will and pleasure, he finds

God indeed, but not as does the faithful soul; for God is ever against him in all his works. All that he does hurts him. He may practise bodily works of piety, but they are of little help, unless the rebellious will has first been subdued. One psalm sung by a man who can conquer his own will is many psalms sung: — that is to say, the least work that such a man does, is more acceptable to God than the greatest work of a self-willed man.

Furthermore, we find God’s dwelling in the wilderness, in the burning bush: there did Moses find Him. The burning bush means that kind of a spirit in a man which withdraws him from all creatures, and which lives only in the remoteness of solitude, in the loftiness of the eternal Godhead. As the divine essense embraces the three distinct persons of the holy Trinity, so has this spirit embraced God within its three powers by the fires of divine grace, as if they were like the flames of the burning bush encircling and enwrapping God with three branches all flowering with flames.

The soul now grows in fire and light, it waxes strong in every virtue, never a day passes without steady progress; until at last it beholds God in the heavenly Sion with the vision of an angel. Be sure that as thou findest God, thou shalt find a divine method of prayer and a divine power of virtue within thy own self, ever more today than yesterday. But whosoever would thus find God, must suppress all animal tendencies, and must go forward with Moses guided by right reason and the light of holy prudence: flesh and blood shall not possess the kingdom of God. I believe, dear children, that all your venial sins are the sudden uprisings due to the intrusion of outward things into yoqr heart, causing now acts and again words uttered and done before you can turn on them the light of holy prudence.

And, again, God is found dwelling in the mountain within the cloud, where His finger wrote on stone the glory and the light of His commandments. The mountain is the lofty spirit in a man, and the greathearted soul in him. He can find no content in his works or rest in his endeavors, except when he can see stamped plain upon them the mark of God’s will. Then it is that the human soul does not only a human work after human ways, but a divine work according to the divinely prescribed way of God’s will. Thus does the soul sanctify the body’s work, whose work again is made the soul’s work. And thus the work of God’s will is made one with that of the soul’s will. Now may the soul say with St. Paul: “I live, now not I, but Christ liveth with me”

(Gal. ii, 20). As if the apostle said: I work, now not I, but the power of the divine essence worketh in me. All this takes place within the cloud, and the everlasting splendor of the divine light: for all created light is as dark night when compared to the divine day.

God is also found in the cave, with the prophet Elias, to whom the Lord came in the desert: “He requested for his soul that he might die # # # And he cast himself down, and slept in the shadow of the Juniper tree. And behold an angel of the Lord touched him, and said to him: Arise and eat. He looked, and behold there was at his head an ash cake, and a vessel of water. And he ate and drank, and he fell asleep again. * * * And he walked in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights, unto the mount of God, Horeb. And when he was come hither, he abode in a cave” (III Kings xix, 4-9) : and there it was that he found God. But not in the “great strong wind, overthrowing mountains, and breaking the rocks in pieces nor in the earthquake and the fire that came afterwards, but in “the whistling of a gentle air:” in that gentle air Elias found God.

The prophet Daniel saw in a vision the turbulent hearts of worldly men tormented as the sea in a tempest: tossed about with foolish fears and hopes, joys and sorrows. These fears and hopes are what blind men’s eyes, those eyes of the spirit with which they must seek and find God. The Btormy wind also means bitterness of heart against our fellow Christians, by which rocks are split asunder, that is to say the noble hearts of good men are broken and their peace of soul destroyed. Dear children, suppress all such stormy feelings against others; watch your unmortified nature closely and hold it down in subjection, lest it break away from you like a team of wild horses. It is an awful sight to see men endowed by God with reason’s light, and gifted by him with loving dispositions, act so uncharitably. God has given you the power of taming wild beasts, and will you uot look at your own wildness and tame it down to reason’s guidance? It is a shame to us before God our creator, that we are often more savage than the lions and bears of the forest. This is to live at war with our own nature; it is as if the light of God’s countenance had never shined upon us (Ps. iv, 7). I say to you in all truth, that for whatever harm we work by these stormy passions God will exact heavy reckoning, whether the ruin be worked on ourselves — as often enough happens,— or upon our neighbor, who besides being injured, is frequently deprived of many graces by the sin of anger we have caused in him: for this

Then we shall find that this evil tendency can never overcome us.

We read that the prophet Elias did not find God in the fire that followed the earthquake. Fire is a thing that never says: — Enough! This figure of fire may signify a heart that can never get enough of this world’s goods or of God’s earthly gifts. That heart ever burns to amass more and more of those things that are not Godlike nor pure — it constantly burns with the desire of consolations and other transitory things, in which it places all its love and joy — a plain sign that God’s spirit is not within it. And in this class I include those spiritual persons who repine in misfortune, as if God had never done them any good thing. They seem to exclaim: Why did God create me, since I am stripped of every enjoyable spiritual thing? They little dream that by this deprivation God has saved them from many a fatal fall, withdrawing them with special favor from a sinful world. Nor do they realize that if they would but live up to the standard of their holy state of life, they might well become the solid pillars of the whole Christian Church. I say to thee, dear child, that it is these ungrateful thoughts of thine that dry up the sweet streams of God’s grace in its very fountain head. I implore thee by the everlasting love of God not easily to be moved from the holy path which in my heart’s fervor I have shown thee — as God is my witness. If anyone of a different spirit teach thee a contrary way, I affirm before God that is only to thy loss; as St. Paul says to the Galatians: “If any one preach to you a gospel, besides that which you have received, let him be anathema” (Gal i, 9).

There came at last to Elias the “whistling of a gentle air,” like the sweet breath of May: God came in that gentle air. This may mean to us that gentle spirit which lives a sweet spiritual life, following God’s words with holy thoughts and speech, by which the yearning soul companies with God without loud outcry or noise of any kind. God enters the soul with a gentle whisper of love; He comes with the happiness of a shining light, steadily beaming in the spirit. Of this happiness the souls who are easily allured by the alien forms and images of of men — aye or even of fallen angels, as St. Paul said to the Galatians:— allured from the right spiritual way into which God had led them.

The right minded soul is like the bride in the Canticles, who bade the north wind to give peace to the south wind: “Come, O south wind, blow through my garden, and let the aromatical spices thereof flow” (Cant, iv, 16). The north wind is the rush of created things into the soul’s garden, sowing seeds of evil in the imagination. Says Jeremias: “From the north shall an evil break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land” (Jer. i, 14) ; an evil wind, withering all the spiritual fruits of God’s graces. The soul becomes an intolerable burden to itself when it has lost all savor of interior sweetness. Hence, from amid the desolation of the north wind of earthly thoughts, the spirit cries out: “Come, O south wind, blow through my garden.” This life-giving breath of God spreads a sweet perfume through all the fruits of the soul’s life, the sweet perfume of God.

Finally, the soul will find God dwelling above the angels. For although these are by nature above us men, yet we must soar above them if we find God. The soul finds God in the Eternal Father, by lifting all its works above self, as the Eternal Word is joined to the Father. Thus did the high gazing soul of St. John the Evangelist see God, as he wrote: “In the beginning was the Word” (John i, 1). Thus, again St. Andrew asks very yearningly — and the loving soul asks with him: — “Master, where dwellest Thou?” St. John answers: “In the beginning was the Word.” Therefore the soul does not find God in any words that do not introduce our spirit into the beginning. We must penetrate beyond all that is beneath God, and transcend all that is not God, and earnestly seek that beginning from which we have come forth: there alone is our dwelling place, and our place of refuge in eternal blisB. But this can only take place by a quick turning away from creatures to the contemplation of the divine essence, and to union with Him.

Jesus said to the two disciples: “Come and see.” Come: turn

Dialing Ifmtrathj tuttiy (gob met by arguing but by praying — No peace nor even truce with bodily treachery — Upright treatment of God means a steadfast striving after recollection — Curious illustration from Albertus Magnus.