The Sermons of Johannes Tauler · 2 of 124

The Interview of Master John Tauler with a Beggar

There was once a famous Master of holy learning who for eight years prayed God to send him a man able to teach him the way of truth. It happened one day that this longing was more than usually earnest within him, and presently he heard a voice from on high, saying: “Go forth to the church door and thou shalt find the man thou hast been looking for.” Going to the church door, the Master met a beggar there. He was in a miserable plight, his feet covered with mud and all his tattered clothes not worth three pennies. The Master said: “Good day, my friend.” The beggar: “I never remember to have had a bad day my whole life long.” The Master: “May God grant thee prosperity.” The beggar: “I never have known adversity.” The Master: “Well, then, may God make thee happy.” The beggar: “I have never been unhappy.” The Master: “At any rate, may God save thee. And I beg thee to speak more plainly to me, for I do not catch thy meaning.” The beggar: “Thou didst bid me good day and I answered that I have never had a bad one.

German critical edition of Tauler that we have followed in our translation. But we give it here because it is inseparably associated with Tauler’s name and career, and is in itself very Instructive.

In fact, when I am hungry, I praise God; when I am cold, or it hails, or snows, or rains, if the air is clear or foggy, I praise God. If I am favored by men or despised, I praise Him equally. And all this is why I have never known a bad day. Thou didst wish me prosperity, and I answered that I have never known adversity, for I have learned to live with God, and 1 am certain that all that He does can be naught but good. Therefore, all that happens to me that is pleasing, or the contrary — sweet or bitter — I receive from Him as being very good for me. Thus I have never been in adversity. Thou hast wished me happiness, and I answered that I have never been unhappy, for I have resolved to fix my affections only on the Divine will. Hence it comes that I desire only what God desires.,, The Master: “But what wouldst thou say if God would will to cast thee into hell?” The beggar: “God cast me into hell? If He did it, I would embrace Him with my two arms. With the arm of humility I would embrace His sacred humanity, and with the arm of love I would embrace His divinity, and I would thus force Him to descend with me into hell. For hell with Him would be more happy than Heaven without Him.” The Master concluded from this that resignation, united to profound humility, is the shortest road to God. Then he asked the beggar: “Whence comest thou?” The beggar: “From God.” The Master: “Where didst thou find God?” The beggar: “Where I left all creatures.” The Master: “Where is God?” The beggar: “In hearts that are pure and in men of good-will.” The Master: “Who art thou?” The beggar: “I am a king.” The Master: “WThere is thy kingdom?” The beggar: “In my soul; for I have learned to order and govern my interior faculties and my exterior senses in such a way that I am master of all my affections and of all the powers of my soul. Now, that kingdom is certainly to be preferred to all the kingdoms of the world.” The Master: “By what means hast thou gained this degree of perfection?” The beggar: “By silence, meditation and union with God. I have never been able to find rest in anything, be it what it might, that was less than God. I have found my God, and in Him I have found rest and peace eternal.”