The Sermons of Johannes Tauler · 6 of 124

First Sermon for the Feast of Christmas

For a Child Is born to us, and a Son Is given to us. — Isalas ix, 6.

Today the church celebrates three births, each of which is such a source of joy and delight that we should break forth into jubilation, love and thanksgiving, and whoever does not feel such sentiments should mistrust himself. The first birth and the most sublime, is that whereby the Heavenly Father begets His only Son in the Divine essence, and in the distinction of the Divine persons. The second birth is that which made Mary a mother in virginity most pure and inviolate. The third is that by which every day and every hour God is truly and spiritually begotten in our souls by grace and love. These three births are shown forth by the three masses of Christmas Day. The first is sung at midnight, commencing with the words: “Thou art My Son; this day have I begotten Thee” (Ps. ii, 7), that is to say, in eternity.

This brings home to us the hidden birth accomplished in the darksome mystery of the inaccessible Divinity. The second mass begins with these words: “Today light has shined upon us” (Isaias ix, 2). It figures the glory of human nature Divinely influenced by its union with the Word. That mass is celebrated partly in the night and partly in the day, because the birth it represents is partly known to us and partly unknown. The third mass is sung in the daytime, and begins with the words: “A Child is born to us and a Son is given to us.” It figures that mysterious birth which should happen, and does happen, every day and every instant in holy souls, when they dispose themselves for it by deep attention and sincere love; for one can never experience that birth except by the recollection of all one’s powers. In that nativity God belongs to us and gives Himself to us so completely, that nothing whatever is more our own than He is. And that is what those words say to us: “A Child is born to us, and a Son is given to us.” He is, therefore, our own; He is ours totally and everywhere, for He is always being begotten within us.

Let us speak first of the ineffable birth represented by the third mass of Christmas, and let us explain how it may be brought about in us in a manner the most perfect and efficacious. To that end let us consider the qualities of that first generation, by which the Father begets the Son in eternity. The ineffable riches of the Divine good are so overflowing that God cannot contain Himself, and by His very nature He is forced to expend and communicate Himself. “It is God’s nature to expend Himself,” says St. Augustine. The Father has thus poured Himself out into the other two Divine persons; after that He communicated Himself to creatures. The same saint says further: “It is because God is good that we are good, and all the good that the creature has is good with the essential goodness of God.” What, then, is the peculiar character of the Divine generation? The Father, inasmuch as He is Father, turns inward to Himself and His Divine intelligence; He sees Himself and penetrates Himself with a gaze which wholly embraces His Divine essence, and then, just as He sees and knows Himself, so does He utter Himself completely; and the act whereby He knows Himself and the Word whereby He utters Himself is also the act whereby He begets His Son in eternity. \

Thus the Father Himself remains within Himself in the unity of His essence, and goes out of Himself in the distinction of persons. Again He returns into Himself, and therein He rests in unspeakable selfdelight, and that self-delight goes forth and overflows in ineffable love, which is the Holy Spirit. Thus does God dwell within Himself and go forth out of Himself to return again into Himself. Therefore, is all outgoing for the sake of ingoing again. And hence in the material universe is the movement of the heavenly spheres most noble and most perfect, because it unceasingly returns again to the origin and beginning from which it first set forth. And so also is the course of man ever noblest and most perfect, when it returns again upon its source and origin.

The quality which the Heavenly Father has in this His incoming and outgoing, the same should every man have who will become the spiritual mother in this divine bringing forth. He must enter wholly into himself, and again go out of himself; as the soul has three noble powers, wherein it is the true image of the blessed Trinity — memory, understanding and free will. Through these powers is the soul capable of receiving and clinging to God, and all that God is, has and can bestow, and in this way it can gaze upon Him in eternity. For the soul is created between time and eternity; with its superior part it belongs to eternity, and with the inferior — the sensitive, animal powers — it belongs to time.

But both the higher and lower powers of the soul wander away into time and into the fleeting things of time, and this is because of the kinship between its higher and lower powers. Very easy is it in this straying thus to go astray from eternity. If we would be born again with the Divine birth, then we need to start back again, earnestly struggle inward and there gather up all our powers, lower and higher, if we would restore all dissipation of mind to unity, since united forces are ever the strongest, and they become united when drawn back from multiplicity. When a hunter would hit the mark he shuts one eye in order that with the other he may look straighter; when one would think deeply about anything, he closes all his senses and unites all his powers in his inmost soul, out of which, as branches from a tree, all the senses go forth into activity. When all our powers of sense and motion are thus by an inward movement assembled together in the highest power, which is the force and foundation of them all, then happens an outward, yea, an overflowing movement, beyond and above self, by which we renounce all ownership of will, of appetite and of activity. There remains for thee then only a pure and clear intention to be of God and of God’s purposes, to be nothing whatever of self, or ever to become anything of self, to be for Him alone, to give room to Him alone, whether in things high or low, so that He may work His will in thee and bring about His birth in thee, and therein remain unhindered by thee to the end.

If two are to be made one, then must one stand passive and the other active. If my eye is to receive an image, it must be free from all other ~ images; for if it already has so much as one, it cannot see another, nor can the ear hear a sound if it be occupied with one already. Any power of receiving must first be empty before it can receive anything. Hence St. Augustine says: “Empty thyself if thou wouldst be filled. Go forth, if thou wouldst enter in.” And elsewhere he says: “O noble soul,

O noble creature of God, wherefore goest thou outside thyself in search of Him who is always and most certainly within thee, and through Whom thou art made a partaker of the divine nature? What hast thou to do or why dost thou concern thyself with creatures?”

When a man thus clears the ground and makes his soul ready, without doubt God must fill up the void. The very heavens would fall down to fill up empty space, and much rather will God not allow thee to remain empty, for that would be against His nature, His attributes; yea, and against His justice. If, therefore, thou wilt be silent, the Word of this Divine birth shall speak in thee and shall be heard; but, if thou speakest, be sure He will be silent. Thou canst not serve the Word better than by being silent and by listening. If thou goest out of self, He without doubt goeth in, and so it will be much or little of His entering in, according to much or little of thy going out.

An illustration of this going out of self is given in the book of Moses, how God made Abraham go forth from his country and his kinsfolk, so that He might show him all good thingB. The Divine birth in the soul of man — that means certainly all good things, and that alone is its meaning. The country or region out of which the soul must go — that means the body, with its lusts and concupiscences of whatever kind. The friends he must have — these are hiB inclinations and the sensitive or sensible powers with their images, which draw him on and fasten him down. These set love and pain in motion, joy and sorrow, longing and dread, care and frivolity. These friends are very near akin to us; against them we must be strictly on our guard if we would wholly elude them, and if we would have born in us the all-good that this Divine birth really is for us. A proverb says: A boy kept too much at home behaves like a calf when away from home, which means that men who have not gone beyond their natural life, nor raised themselves above what the senses furnish to be seen, heard, tasted, moving about — men who have thus never gone forth from this the native home of all sensible life, are veritable animals when there is question of understanding the high things of God. Their interior being is like a mountain of iron, in which no gleam of light ever shines. When outward things and images and forms are gone, they no longer know and feel anything. They are, indeed, at home; but for that very reason they do not experience this wonderful resignation. Therefore did Christ say: “If any man come to Me and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple” (Luke xiv, 26).

We have so far spoken of the first and last births, and how by the last we learn a lesson about the first. And now we shall instruct you about the second birth, in which this night the Son of God is born of His mother and becomes onr Brother. In eternity He was born a Son without a mother, and in time He was born a Son without a father. Now, Saint Augustine tells us: “Mary is much more blessed because God was born spiritually in her soul than because He was born her fleshly Son.” Now, whosoever would experience this spiritual and blessed birth in his soul, as Mary did in her soul, should consider the qualities of Mary, that mother of God both fleshly and spiritual. She was a virgin, all chaste and pure, and yet she was retired and separated from all things, and so the angel found her. It is thus that one must be who would bring forth God in his soul. That soul must be chaste and pure. If it has strayed away from purity, then must it come back and be made pure again; for the meaning of virginity in this teaching, is to be outwardly unfruitful and inwardly very fruitful. And this virgin soul must close its outward senses, having little external occupation, for from such it can have little fruit. Mary thought of nothing else but of Divine things. Inwardly the soul must have much fruit; the beauty of the King’s daughter is all within. Hence must this virgin soul live in detachment in all its habits, senses, behavior, in all its speech. Thus will it bear many and great fruits, namely, God’s Son, God’s Word, Who is all in all and contains all things in Himself.

Mary was a wedded virgin, and so must the soul be wedded, as St. Paul teaches. Thou must sink thy tickle will deep into the Divine will, which is immovably steadfast, so that thy feebleness may be strengthened. Mary lived retired, and so must the soul espoused to God be in retirement, if it will experience the interior regeneration. But not alone from those wanderings after temporal things which appear to be faulty, but even from the sensible devotion attached to the practice of virtue, must the soul refrain. It must establish rest and stillness as an enclosure in which to dwell, hiding from and cutting off nature and the senses, guarding quiet and interior peace, rest and repose. It is of this state of the soul that we shall sing next Sunday in the introit of the mass: “While all things were in quiet silence, and the night was in the midst of her course, Thine Almighty Word, O Lord, came down from Heaven, out of Thy royal throne” (Wisdom xviii, 14-15). That was the Eternal Word going forth from the Father’s heart. It is amid this silence, when all things are hushed in even eternal silence, that in very truth we hear this Word; for when God would speak thou must be silent. When God would enter in, all things must go out. When our Lord entered Egypt, all the idols in the land fell down. However good

Divine generation in thee it is an idol. Our Lord tells us that He has come bringing a sword, cutting off all that clings to men, even mother, brother, sister; for whatever is intimately joined to thee without Qod is thy enemy, forming, as it does, a multitude of imaginations covering and hiding the Divine Word.

Although this tranquillity may not as yet wholly possess thee, nor last all the time within thee, yet thou shouldst so constantly cultivate interior silence as a means of experiencing the Divine birth, that it shall finally become a spiritual habit. What is easy to a well-practiced man may seem impossible to an unpracticed one, for practice makes perfect. May God grant us all the grace of inner stillness, and thereby the birth of His Divine Word in our souls. Amen.