The Sermons of Johannes Tauler · 122 of 124

Sermon for a Feast of Many Holy Virgins

And five of them were foolish, and five wise. — Matt xxv, 2.

Thus does our dear Lord compare the kingdom of heaven to two very different kinds of souls, the foolish ones, who live according to the flesh, yielding to its temptations; and the wise, who shun all such dangers, and who live according to the spirit. The wise virgins refrain themselves from all those things against which the foolish ones take no precautions whatsoever.

As to governing our outward life, five things are to be practiced, if we would be like the wise virgins. The first is temperance. We must practice moderation in eating and drinking, and in providing for all other necessities of nature, so that while provision is made for what is needed, we shall not pamper our dangerous appetites.

The second is simplicity and modesty; let our clothing be plain and ordinary, our bearing manly and open, our conduct every way modest and retiring.

The third is avoiding vain company, especially those whose talk is light. And we must be attentive to all our duties.

The fourth is to live by the labor of our hands, never to be idle; for idleness is the open door of all impurity.

The fifth point is diligently to restrain every sense and member, so as to escape the temptations incident to our daily life; to resist than strenuously, and never to yield to them. To this end nothing is better

All who do not thus govern their outward life are to be reckoned as foolish virgins before God. But it behooves the wise virgins to furthermore adorn their interior souls for their Bridegroom; and the foundation of all this is humility of heart. They should consider themselves God’s sisters because they do His will; and they should not sit in judgment on those who serve God in the married state. They should not strive to please anybody with their virtuous practices except God alone; for that would make them like the Pharisees. Virginity is not a commandment of God, but humility is. A proud virgin is a thousand times worse in God’s sight than a meek housewife. A virgin dare not hate anyone, and must love everybody; she dare not think highly of herself, but ever must stand before God’ in fear and trembling. As sins begin secretly to germinate in the soul and to be pleasing to it, in the same degree does love cool and virtue wane. Virgins follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth only if they maintain chastity and humility; but if they yield to pride, or if they are stained with grosser sins, then will pious married people be alotted places far higher than they.

Virginity has its origin in God Himself, and from Him have the angels learned it, for in heaven is it found, and there it remains till the resurrection at the last day. In heaven there is no marrying nor giving in marriage, but human souls there are like the angels of God, with Whom they have celebrated everlasting espousals. Virgins in this life are exempt from all fleshly bands, and bound only to God in order that they may bring forth eternal fruit. They are endued with great power against the devil. They sing the new canticle before the throne, which none else can sing. In these His chosen daughters has God set His throne, and it is His delight to dwell with them; but that is conditioned on their living an interior life of humility, meekness, self-renunciation, their hearts born again to God in holy love.

To God’s love can no man ever come except through humility, which is a gift of God more precious than all earthly treasures. Humility establishes the heart in true peace, for no man is restless or quarrelsome except first he breaks away from humility. If a man be but truly humble, and so remains, he never will sin again. The reason why

Mary could not sin was because she was truly humble; and where God finds a humble soul, He does great things to it. St. Augustine says: “Whosoever is the humblest man on earth, the same is the greatest saint.”

The signs of a humble man are these: He always begins by considering himself; and he at once acknowledges himself unworthy of every good gift. He accounts it an amazing thing and an injustice that God should think of him at all; that God should have made him a man; that He should continue to feed him and care for him. And yet he unceasingly thanks God for all those gifts with very deep humility. He exalts himself in nothing whatsoever, nor praises nor plumes himself. On the contrary, if he is conscious of virtue, he considers this wholly as God’s gift, and holds himself only the more deeply involved in indebtedness to God on that account. God, in fact, is his last and only intention in everything, and the meaning of every act he does.

A wise virgin shall by no means set two purposes for any of her acts, meaning God for one purpose and some transitory end for the other. If we prize anything, it must be ever in subordination to the love we have for God; it must help us to love God and to come to God: thus acts the wise virgin and not differently. One must hold the Lord more dear than any of the messengers He send a forth — we mean the gifts He bestows.

A wise virgin esteems herself no more for her virtues than if she never had been born. Whatever favors God bestows on her with them He bestows Himself, and the gifts are for the purpose of His own unhindered action within her soul. For that end only God would make her perfect; nor can He ever cease to do so as long as she yields Him place, and her heart is loyal to Him, and suffers His guidance without any mixture of self-love. A humble man deems himself unworthy of whatever place he has, and of whatever company he is in.

He ever seeks the lowest place; he wants the meanest and least share of everything; and this feeling of his embraces everything, extends to all the affairs of life. He complains of his sufferings to nobody. He dares not complain against God in the sorest distress, not even when it grows so bad as to be intolerable; he accepts everything from the hand of God. Nor does he fret against any creature that troubles him, no matter how base may be his enemy. If he is unjustly accused, he cannot lay the blame on others, for he is persuaded that

Behold the shortest road to God, and to the bright company of the wise virgins who follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. How different with the foolish virgins, though they are quite unconscious of it. Whosoever would live truly in God must be made a fool in his own eyes and in those of everybody else. Whosoever would make sure of saving his soul, must give up and lose all the vain honors of this life. Whosoever would acquire humble charity of heart, must learn three lessons — self-renunciation, patience and love.

By self-renunciation we not only give up great sins, whether of the outer or inner kind, but in the interior life we renounce all joy of ownership in spiritual gifts. In our fasts, vigils, prayers and holy readings; in our devout feelings and pious thoughts; in our flashes of interior illumination; in our hunger and thirst for the rewards of eternal life; in our holy communions, jubilees, visions and contemplations:— in all these things of the spirit we must practice selfrenunciation. One must come to be persuaded, that of all the contemptible men in the world he is the most contemptible, the coldest, the least pleasing to God, the most shiftless and negligent in religious duty. And yet meanwhile he must diligently perform all his spiritual tasks, nor ever pretend that he is exempt from any duty. Thus does a man come to account himself as nothing. Self-will and self-conceit are lost and gone, as well as all self-praise for good works.

The deeper a man’s sincerity in all this the more truly is he humble, and the straighter is his path to God’s own self. For God is in the abyss of our humility; there it is that the soul obtains possession of Him, there God unites the soul to Him. And now such a man is changed in God till he becomes, as it were, another man altogether. This is the work of the Holy Spirit, who now lives in him and rules him.

The second lesson is patience, for humility has need of patience. A man must suffer with as peaceful a mind as possible all kinds of ridicule. Pleasant things or unpleasant, good fortune or ill-fortune, contempt, belittling, losing or gaining — all must be received with equal balance of mind. And this must be so, even when one is persuaded that things are all wrong, that these troubles hinder his virtue, that they destroy his happiness. Give yourselves up to all suffering with the best grace of patience you can command, singleminded for God’s will, trusting Him implicitly, no matter how little you can understand God’s ways. Great fruit of humility comes from all this. Self-complacency and self-conceit will in this manner be wholly rooted out. You will learn to make the best of everything — if you can only learn patiently to suffer. If you sometimes think that harm is being done you in things temporal or spiritual, be sure of a compensation a hundred fold in God, and a great increase in solid virtue, if you will only humbly and patiently endure.

The third lesson is love, which serves greatly to increase humility. For never is love so nobly active as in giving up our own and in suffering. It is indeed true that love greatly increases when one receives God in unity of will with Him; but it is also true that God comes down into the self-abased soul, bringing with Him all that He is. Then and there does the loving soul embrace Him, then and there is it absorbed into Him, lost in Him, returned again to its Divine source of life. In that union is the soul assured, as far as may be in this life, that it will enjoy God forever hereafter. True humility is essential for this happy lot — the contemplation of God to the greatest degree permitted here below.

Three things are needed for this. The first is that a man shall have a pure intention, set and determined to desire nothing but God, to hold nothing dear but God, and Him alone to please and to love. Behold, these are they who contemplate Him rightly in this life.

The second is that we view God’s action upon us with the eyes of self-denying love, sunk down deep in our lowly opinion of ourselves and full of love; carefully repressing all feelings of elation should God manifest hidden mysteries to us.

The third is great earnestness in performing our spiritual exercises, elevating our thoughts to God in whatever way we are led: sometimes in meditating on the Lord’s humanity, again on His divinity, or on the blessed Trinity; or pondering the life and passion of Jesus Christ, the virtues of our dear mother Mary, or those of other saints. Every sentence of holy Scripture contains a divine meaning, did we but strive to find it. Thus will a man obtain from God what God wills him to have, if he cultivates those three virtues, namely, purity of intention, readiness to suffer while waiting on God in all meekness, and diligence in spiritual exercises. To this end a sound bodily constitution helps, a strong brain and a well-balanced

All virtues and all religious good works depend on these six points: First, true humility; second, patience in suffering; third, self-renunciation in all things; fourth, unfeigned love; fifth, to keep Qod in view in everything we do; sixth, earnestness in our spiritual exercises. And may Qod help us to be wise virgins. Amen.