The Sermons of Johannes Tauler · 73 of 124

Sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity

For whosover are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. — Rom. viii, 14.

All works of all men, done now and until the end of the world, if done without the grace of God, are simply nothing, even though they be the greatest deeds of history — all of them put together are nothing, in comparison with the least work that God does in man by His grace. As much as God is better than man, so much better are His works than man’s works.

The Holy Ghost often admonishes us in our inmost souls, or by the voice of His authorized teachers, saying: Wilt thou give thyself up to Me? Wilt thou follow Me alone? If thou wilt, I will lead thee by the right road. I will work within thee, and thou thyself shalt work. O children, it is sad that there is scarcely anyone who knows this. Everyone rests in his own guidance, chooses his own methods, blindly follows external ways, content with self-approval, thereby hindering the gracious influence of the Holy Ghost, neither understanding nor even hearing His voice, giving no place to His guidance. Hence the need of my telling you, that there is no better way to eaten the tones of God’s whisper in you than to rest still and attentively listen. When God speaks all things must keep silence. If God shall rightly work in us, needs must we give Him room to work, and rest passive under His action. Two cannot do the same work in us at the same time; one must stop while the other acts.

But do not mistake me. I do not mean that young, ardent, inexI»erienced souls should refrain from good works, waiting for interior guidance. By no means; for these greatly need to follow many good pious customs and do many good works, both in the inner life and the outer. But I refer to souls further advanced, who long sincerely to become God’s most perfect children; the methods of these must be far different from those of beginners.

Take the world all around, we find that men are for thp most part enemies of God. There are some who are friends of God under compulsion; you must drive them to serve Him; what they do is not inspired by love, but by fear — graceless, loveless men, who pray or attend Mass because you force them. Then there are some commonplace and mercenary creatures who serve God because they have ah office and a stipend; were they not sure of their pay they would quit His service and drop back among God’s open enemies. For all of these God has no regard; as far as their service of Hiih goes, it does not make them His beloved children. They may do many outwardly good deeds, but He takes no account of this, for He is’ not chosen as the motive of their works, but rather they are themselves.

Take another class, that are really God’s children, though not the most loved by Him. I mean those who in their outer and inner life act according to their own spiritual methods, and do their own chosen works, and aspire to nothing higher. These souls are content with the bark of the tree of life — they will not climb into its branches after its fruit. Their own ways please them well; they love God indeed, but in their own chosen ways of piety. And God loves them, too, for they are His children, though not the best loved, for they rest in self-chosen ways of religion. Meantime they have no real peace, and they will yet be made perfect.

The best loved children, who are they? St. Paul tells us in our text: “Whosoever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.” How God leads them, St. Augustine tells: “God’s action in man iB twofold. The one is that God’s spirit always admonishes him, drives him forward, allures him on, so that he may lead a wellordered life. This He does in the souls of all who wait upon Him, who give Him place, and who will follow Him. The others are those whom He leads suddenly beyond and above all methods and ways, placing them in a much higher degree, pointing them to an end far beyond their own power to reach: and these are God’s best loved misery to God and avowing to Him thy guilt. And if thou art conscious of grave sin, seek thy father confessor again. Then will the Holy Ghost come and say: Beloved child, if thou wilt but trust Me and follow Me, I will lead thee by a beautiful and a safe way.- O who would not entrust himself to the guidance of such a counselor? Happy the man who gives up self-guidance and resigns himself wholly to that of God’s Spirit. But, alas, many a poor man will not, but prefers his own devices and rests in his own outward methods of sanctification.

But I must not be misunderstood: it is necessary to practice approved devotional methods having an interior influence, but not with a feeling of proprietorship. Bather should one do these good things with a disengaged spirit, awaiting the manifestation of God’s will about them, guarding against self-approval, avoiding rationalising on such matters. One’s soul may be compared to an orchard full ol fruit, but the apples fall from the trees unripe, for they are worm eaten, and thus the worms crawl out of them and injure the good vegetables growing on the ground. Meanwhile the worm-eaten apples

So might it be needful to thee, even if thou hadst the gift of prophecy, and did great signs and wonders, healed the sick, possessed the key of the future — all may be worm-eaten and rotten, if thou dost not stand watchfully on thy guard.

And now let us explain the lowest and grossest case of emptyhearted religious custom. Suppose a man giving alms, and that he begins by being careful that God alone shall know of this good act ol charity; but after awhile he cherishes a sort of longing for human praise, for he is not quite content to be without it: — now this is a worm-eaten apple. Thus it is that one may have selfish motives in wishing that people should praise their good deeds. They put windows and altars in churches with their names marked on them — “they have received their reward.” They defend themselves by saying they wish men to pray for them. Alms pure and simple, known to God alone, in whose bosom it is all hidden, were of more benefit to their souls than if they built great churches before men’s eyes and all the people prayed for them. God would easily make up to them what men might have petitioned for them, did they entrust their good work to Him alone in all confidence.

Alms out of a heart wholly disengaged from men and from created things, are themselves a better prayer to God than the petitions of admiring multitudes. Many a man for lack of this perfectly pure intention destroys the merit of his good works, sometimes all through his life; whether they serve God or men, in vigils, and fasts, and alms deeds, they calculate what return they shall get, either from God (in a mercenary spirit) or their fellowmen — that is all they think of. If these works filled the whole world, they are no better than wormeaten apples. Accept this doctrine, not from me, but from truth itself:

“Take heed that you do not your justice before men, to be seen by them: otherwise you shall not have a reward of your Father who is in Heaven. Therefore when thou dost an almsdeed, sound not a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets. Amen I say to you, they have received their reward. But when thou dost alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doth; that thy alms may be in secret, and thy Father, who seeth in secret, will repay thee.” And he continues: “When thou shalt pray, enter into thy chamber, and having shut the door, pray to thy Father in secret: and thy Father who seeth in secret will repay thee” (Matt. vi:l:6). Children, take heed to these words, which are not mine, but those of everlasting truth; let each one look to God and to Him alone in all the good that he undertakes to do.

Now, there are four preservatives against the worm that destroys the fruit of good works. The first is that a man should do all his works of the interior and exterior life, not for himself, but for God alone, thinking of God and loving God while he is doing them. Does he find them sweet to do? Well and good. Does he find them bitter? He yet perseveres to do them, for he never chose them for his own joy, but for God’s.

The second preservative is an immeasureable depth of obedience under God, yea and under all mankind from the lowest to the highest. An example of this is in the life of the great doctor of the Church, St Thomas, who made not the least difficulty of humbly accompanying an overbearing brother with a lantern along the streets of the city. Be subject to every human being for God’s sake. Thou shouldst in all sincerity esteem any man better than thyself; thou shouldst never withstand anyone, but yield gently and humbly to all.

The third is humility, so that a man shall in all sincerity rest upon his nothingness, realizing that it is the only thing he can claim properly as his own, everything besides being not his own. Let him consider as an evil thing whatsoever he has or does on his own account, including his own self. Once as I was in choir alongside of a holy brother of ours, who was a man to whom God had granted many signs of sanctity, and whose holy life was full of marvels of grace — this brother whispered to me from the bottom of his heart: “Brother,

I say to you, that if God has bestowed upon the worst sinner the graces

He has granted me, he would have become a great saint. And a man who is thus grounded in humility is wholly incapable of sitting in judgment upon his neighbor, about no matter what affair. If he sees what is plainly bad, he forthwith turns his attention to the consideration of his own defects.

The fourth preservative is that one shall stand in constant dread of the secret judgment of God, not indeed as one who yields to despair, but rather as one deeply anxious lest he shall arouse a friend’s anger. Now as to these preservatives, St. Bernard says: “Whosoever does not rest securely upon these, let him do all the good deeds in the world, and they are all worm-eaten fruit.”

In the garden of holy Church there grow many and wonderful trees, all full of good fruit; that is to say, many humble-hearted men: on them alone hangs God’s true fruit of virtue. Others are there bearing worm-eaten fruit, fair and red to look at, fairer sometimes than the sound fruit: but wait till a stormy wind blows, wait till the time of trial comes: down they fall, and soon they are rotten and spreading rottenness around them.

These are self-indulgent and unmortified men. They vainly trust to their own showy good works, often seeming to do more of them than the truly good souls. They are absorbed in the practice of devotions that have not been prescribed by holy Church, and upon these, with all their grand show of piety, they rest as uppn their life’s foundation. Meanwhile the weather is calm, their souls are in peace, they bask in the sunshine of their pious observances, they seem to excel God’s true servants in virtue. But presently the storm arises, they are assailed by those temptations against the faith common in our time, and presently they are overthrown — and then the worms of doubt and error creep out of their hearts into the hearts of other men, nninstructed and simple-minded, whom they ruin with their false maxims of liberty and their other false teaching. They have been all along treading a broad yet hidden road of destruction, because they give up to their own inborn unsanctified tendencies. They never entered upon the narrow but true path of sincere self-denial; they would not give up self; they were determined to yield to corrupt nature.

But let us not go too far from our subject in pursuit of these wormeaten souls. “Whosoever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God,” namely, those who perseveringly watch for the will of

God to follow it, who are docile to His inspirations, who obey His interior admonitions. In this way of God they must now and then cross a desert place all fnll of woe. If they bravely venture into it, trusting loyally to God’s Spirit, what a happy lot theirs shall be. Let them but turn inward to their soul’s life and keep careful account of it. What wonders of God’s working are there, surpassing all sense and all understanding. Let such a man give but one year to this holy interior life and to nothing else, and never was a year better spent. Nay, if God but grant him in that whole year only a single momentary glimpse of the action of His Spirit in the soul’s depths, that momentary revelation will give more worth to the year than all the good works he could have crowded into it by immense self activity. He that works with God can lose nothing, and in this holy matter one indeed works with God.

What! Shall we doubt that God is nobler than His creature? So is His work nobler than His creature’s work. With such a man all outward activity not strictly of God’s appointment falls away, for he ever has activity enough within his soul. Herein is found perfect security, herein is perfect joy. Alas, that men will not credit this. They cannot comprehend it. In truth it pertains only to perfect souls who are deep rooted in God in all simplicity of heart As to lower grades of good men, let them be rightly engaged, as indeed they ought to be, in every kind of good works of the active life, lest they lapse into guilty slothfulness.

Believe me, children, “Every plant which My heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up” (Matt xv: 13). Now can you understand how deeply God loves a man who gives Him full room in his soul for His divine work, by which work God is blessed in His own life? It is a love above all love that God bestows on him, and passes all understanding. For such a man is loved with the love wherewith the heavenly Father loves His only begotten Son. No wonder, I say, then, that this spiritual way leads the soul into the abyss of the deity.

The disciples of Dionysius once asked him how it happened that Timothy surpassed them all so greatly in holiness, although they did all the good works that he did. Their master answered: “Timothy is a man who permits God to work within him.” This takes place in a living faith in God, which is unspeakably above all the works that by outward act a man can do. But to follow this method what is should at last make any account of himself, that were indeed a lamentable fall and a dangerous one. May He who alone can give holiness and perfect it, grant us the grace to yield ever to His will. Amen.