The Sermons of Johannes Tauler · 31 of 124

Second Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Lent

My time is not yet come. — John vii, 6.

And when He had said this to His disciples, our Saviour added: “Go you up to this festival day; but I go not up to this festival day, because My time is not yet accomplished.” As He had already said to them: “My time is not yet come, but your time is always ready.”

Let us enquire what this festival day is, to which our Lord invites us, and whose time it is that is always ready. It is the greatest of all festival days, namely, the feast of everlasting life, eternal beatitude in God’s unveiled presence. This cannot yet be ours; now our festival day is but a foretaste of that eternal jubilee. It consists in the presence of God in the interior of our souls, to obtain the joy of which, is the object of the seeking and the longing of all our time — the purpose of all work and life and love. To obtain this festival enjoyment of God in our souls, we must journey far beyond ourselves, we must go beyond all that is not God, and this must be done with our whole heart and in all sincerity. The time for doing this is always.

Now, inasmuch as men naturally desire to be happy, so, however dimly, do they desire this festival day by an impulse of nature itself. But such a longing is not enough; it by no means can be naturally satisfied. We must know God better; we must seek Him for His own sake, and that will give us a foretaste of Him. To this happy state many souls would gladly attain, and they complain that they are powerless to do so. When they find no festive joy of God within them, they start to pray, and they practice other devotional exercises, trusting thereby to succeed in their wishes. But when they fail they lose courage, they good works, and in their distress they complain that they have no feeling of God.

Now, no man should act that way. We should never relax our energy in well doing from any such cause, for God is really present with us, whether we feel Him or not. As Jesus did with His disciples, so does God do with us; He comes secretly into our hearts, and where He is there in very truth is the festival day. It cannot be otherwise; God must be with any soul that seeks Him and Him alone, and that in all things. He may be either secretly or openly present; He is none the less there. And whether we are consciously influenced by Him or not, yet must we ever turn inward to Him, passing over and beyond all selfhood. This is what our Lord meant when he said: “Your time is always ready;” that is to say, your time to pass interiorly beyond self and into God. His time is not yet come; that is to say, to reveal Himself to you; leave the choice of that time entirely to Him. Without the faintest doubt He is with you, right there in your soul, but in a hidden manner; pleased that you will think of Him as being there and that you will there commune with Him. Do not, therefore, relax your fervor in your devotions, for He will in His own good time most certainly discover Himself to you.

To this end serve all the pious exercises of our holy religious orders, and all their good works; all sacred laws and rules of what kind soever they may be have this object in view: That we may make ready our souls to hold high festivity with God in the interior life, unencumbered by any other thing whatsoever. In so far as our devout observances minister to this, just so far are they useful and praiseworthy, and where they fail in this the fault is our own; we have caused them to rank only with the observances of the Jewish synagogue. The Old Testament prescribed many things great and holy in themselves, and some of them difficult to perform, and yet all of them taken together could not bring eternal salvation; they were one and all no more than a preparation for the New Testament, to which alone the gates of God’s kingdom were thrown open. So must it ever be with external observances; they are useful as a preparation; and, taken by and in themselves, no man can find in them the Divine festival day. The Old Testament led up to and was ended in the New, because the New alone reached into the depths of the soul. So all devotions and pious works must do, or they serve our spiritual life but little.

We have all vowed and sworn to God in holy baptism that we shall serve and love Him until death, an obligation from which no priest or bishop can ever dispense a Christian. It binds us more firmly than any oath taken in a human court; to break which, nevertheless, makes us liable to the penalties of perjury. How much blacker shall be our perjury, if wilfully and deliberately we forswear ourselves to God, by giving to creatures the hearts and souls that we have vowed to Him. When our’ holy father, St. Dominic, was about to die, our brothers besought him to tell them what was the distinguishing spirit of the holy order, the spirit that inspired him when he made all our rules. They wanted to know the essential reason of those external precepts, all of which they, like ourselves, knew perfectly well. And he gave them the essence of the rule: It is, said he, the love of God, humility and poverty both of spirit and of worldly goods. Thus he would teach us to love God with a whole-hearted love; that, and only that, is the foundation of all; and then to love one another as we love our own selves, being subject to one another in God, in all meekness of behavior; and, further, to be totally void of all sense of ownership, whether of ourselves or of all things else except God alone, our own will no less than the things of this world that may lead us away from God; all this in order that He may enter into our souls. God had made them in His own image, and He wills to take free and entire possession of them, for in that is placed all His content and all His joy.

Dear Sisters, this is the whole meaning of our order. And it is the same with all orders, all the rules and discipline, laws and observances, even of hermitages, as well as of every manner of living devoutly, no matter what its form or its name. The better they serve to bring God into His chosen abode, our interior life, the more useful are they and the more strictly to be observed. This is the meaning of our vows to God; this measures the extent of our guilt if we are unfaithful. If we fail from this point of view we are forsworn to God; if we are true, then we have the very essence of our order, just as our holy father, St. Dominic, taught, and also St. Benedict, St. Augustine, St. Bernard and St. Francis. One and all, their minds were ever preoccupied with this one essential order, for whose sake all their outward rules were made. Dear children, I bid you learn this rule well and thoroughly: to love God and to have Him ever in view, and to love all things only in so far as they actually help you to that end. Keep this rule, and our Lord will keep with you a great and a perfect festival day.

We must keep many rules. We must go to choir to sing and to read office; this we must do, whether we like it or not. Well, then, let us do this with a festive and joyous soul, rather than with a spiritless observance, dragging ourselves to the task. Let us be faithful to our rules in order not to forfeit the eternal festival day in Heaven. It is, indeed, very true that a man who lives a life free from mortal sin, doing nothing wilfully against God’s law, will hold fast to the holy faith. But if you would enjoy the happiness of God’s festival day in your interior life, then, by way of preparation, you must disencumber your soul of everything that is not God. All true piety of life must have this for its single purpose: That nothing whatsoever shall taste good to thy soul but God alone, whether in thinking or in loving. Such is thy glorious vocation; for that alone has God called thee into this order. For that has He called thee away and freed thee from a deceitful, wicked world, and drawn thee into this holy penitential life; because by our sins we are by nature children of wrath and of everlasting death and damnation. St. Augustine says: “Man is formed of corrupt material, as if he were made of rotten wood and vile earth, and his end is eternal death.” Then, for his salvation, there is granted him a life of penance, the same to which God has called you, by no merits of yours, but only by His free and loving gift And what is that life of penance in very truth and in its essential quality? Nothing else than a whole-hearted turning away from all that is not God, and an equally sincere turning to all that leads to God and means God. The more one answers to that requirement the more penance he does and the better. In this spirit, dear children, must you gladly thank God that He has called you to this order. Your vocation should fill you with confidence that He will finally bring you to His holy company for all eternity; for He has gathered you together here out of a deceitful world, that He might make you His own chosen friends and spouses, and introduce you into most intimate union with Him. It is the plainest sign that God is present in us, when in our early youth he has visited us by our vocation and touched our young hearts with His love. We were by nature inclined to worldly joys, and yet we bridled our appetites and passions, we turned away from the world and all created things, and we followed after God. What if we have no great sensible feeling of devotion, nor lively consciousness of God’s indwelling presence! This one fact stands plain: I gladly suffer pain for His sake. Now, that could not be if God were not with me, in however hidden a manner it may be.

O, dear children, bend all your energies to make sure of the enjoyment of the Divine festival day in your souls, when God shall manifest Himself to your inner perceptions. Let all prayer and work of yours minister to preparation for that close, personal possession of God; for in any other way you cannot feel that you possess Him. He who possesses God in that true way, him also does God possess, and never does He allow him to leave His holy presence. Is not this a happy lot? Is not this the soul’s festival day? Is not our life blessedly happy when we are thus in God and God in us, as well in time as in eternity? May God grant us this. Amen.

. OUR powers of the soul — Hearing His word with an inferior hearing, and the good that may come of it — Bleeding for Christ is by prudent, penitential works by suffering patiently all of lifers ills, and by sadness for Christ’s sake at the sight of sin — A joyful bloodshedding is granted in the bliss of divine interior union.