The Sermons of Johannes Tauler · 97 of 124

Sermon for the Feast of Our Lady’s Conception

Come oyer to me, all ye that desire me, and be filled with my fruits. — Bccli. xxiv, 26.

These words are applied by holy Church to our blessed Lady. Her dignity can in no wise be expressed in words, for it surpasses all human sense. Now as to our theme today, I have before this spoken of the means and methods of beginners in the way of truth, then about those of proficients, and finally of how a perfect man may reach the goal towards which he strives.

The beginner needs to cut off all gross sinfulness, such as impurity, envy, wrath and pride; also all worldly vanity, all silly amusements, all joy in creatures animate or inanimate. In one word, unless a man shall with a determined spirit and with his whole heart turn to God, so that he shall love Him in the depths of his soul and have Him in mind above all things whatsoever, and unless he shall be found thus minded at the end of his days, he shall never come to God. This must be his way and none other. All is profitless otherwise, even though a man had all knowledge, spoke with angels’ tongues, gave all his goods to the poor and his body to be burned; as St. Paul teaches us (I Cor. xiii). Now how can men who wilfully enjoy creatures have their hearts turned to God? for they introduce creatures into the place that God has reserved for His own dwelling. What does God care for what a man does, as long as He is robbed of his heart and his love? What cares He for the chaff if another gets the grain?

These coarse vices are to be cut off as a man shears away his tangled beard with a sharp shears. After that, let him sharpen up his razor very keen and shave his soul clean and pure, so that no evil word or evil joy shall be left. What follows is meditation on the for these linger on from force of habit. They are full of excuses; sometimes they would parade even as virtues; for pride can put on a false show; and often enough a defect we think that we have overcome still lies hidden beneath. Vanity of dress takes the name of neatness; sensual indulgence in eating and drinking is tolerated as a necessity; fierce anger and rash judgment are called zeal and keenness of judgment; utter sloth is named bodily weakness. Children, beware of selfdeceit about these things; for if you are herein misled by self-conceit and high theories, your end will be evil. Then the devil will come, and he will carry you away with him, though you may have thought that all has been well with you.

Especially is there danger in hidden pride, masquerading in the guise of humility, but full of the vanity of intellect and learning. In very truth men thus affected are training under Lucifer’s standard, and the higher they are in their own conceit, the lower in all reality have they fallen down. Children, bear in mind that this is not a matter of trifling importance. If you were shut up day and night in a hot room you would think it a hardship: what shall be the misery of many years in purgatory, or alas! the eternal woes of hell. Children, turn inward; for the Kingdom of God is within you. Diligently study out your place in God’s judgment hall. Examine into the roots of vice, find out the whole truth about your old evil habits. If a man continues in sinful courses one or two years, so deep do the roots of vice sink into his nature even in that brief period, that he can scarcely dig them out with all the zeal he can command. Young people should be especially careful to hinder this deep rooting of sin in them. Let them begin at once to examine and to root out these tendencies, for now the task is not a hard one. Especially should one do four things with all diligence against four kinds of poisonous evil weeds.

The first of these are pleasures of the senses. One can hardly describe how greatly these hinder our progress. Good, well-meaning men, longing to be perfect, begin by absorption in devotional joy of a. sensible kind; they do not strive for the simple truth of spirituality. They do not look inward; their interior life is a closed book to them. Their inner soul is to them a foreign country a thousand miles off.

External practises usurp the place of the interior life and are to them all in all. They mistake their own selves, and know not where they are in God’s sight.

Then comes the discipline of the irascible faculty, which is too often very disorderly. One’s anger should be directed exclusively against what is opposed to God in oneself. This faculty is a very noble one in itself, but is easily led astray by a false self-righteousness. One longs to govern others, to direct the good works and the devotions of others; and in doing so he deceives himself and others by an appearance of zeal. He is full of hard words and angry looks, and he has bullying manners.

The third harm is done by a misuse of the understanding, and this hinders many a one’s progress. For some rely too much on natural reason, losing thereby the reasonable, living and essential truth. Unless a man shall confess this essential truth he cannot profit by it. A man fancies he has full knowledge, whereas his soul suffers from delusions, — the truth of things is far off. Such a one loses the precious jewel of deep seated humility, content with a false show of virtue, self-deceived and deceiving others.

The fourth obstacle to progress is pleasure in interior devotional sentiments, and this is an injury that many suffer from. They mistake joy in God’s gifts for joy in God’s own love. They think sweetness of devotion is God’s own self. When this sweetness goes, their zeal for perfection goes. Children, take heed to this; many a thing seems to come from God’s love, which in reality is but natural feeling, or caused by external devotional happenings. We are often much more influenced by spiritual self-satisfaction than we fancy. Such feelings are due to natural emotional excitability, natural fear of hell or hopes of heaven. Be sure, children, that whosoever does not keep God uppermost in his heart’s purposes shall not have Him for his end and his reward. Children, these four hindrances must be removed; we must go to work with an iron resolve to cut them totally away; we must consider to that end the stern judgment of God that awaits us and His immovable justice in inflicting chastisement.

But when these great outward hindrances have been shorn away, there yet remain in our inner-nature the roots of former bad habits, the forms and images of evil; these we must banish from the mind by the sweet form and image of our Lord Jesus Christ. The poisoned arrow must be extracted by sinking deep down beneath it the dart of

Christ’s love. This love we must cultivate in our inmost souls with great devotion, so that our unworthiness may be lessened. If God gives healing properties to herbs and minerals for bodily cure, what power, think you, shall not the Son of God have for healing all the soul’s ills? And this healing is applied by the thought of His blessed sufferings and death. As a man can do nothing by himself alone, so must he take refuge with the passion of Christ in holy prayer. Let him prostrate himself at the feet of the heavenly Father, and implore His aid through the merits of His well beloved Son. Let him dwell upon each point of the Lord’s agony and death, begging at every step the Father’s pity: for without Christ we can do nothing. This practise should become habitual: Christ’s passion should never be absent from our heart, and no thoughts alien to it should ever enter there.

After that, a man should lift his very spirit on high to the company of the glorious God-head, gazing upon Him with humble fear and unspeakable longings. When one has thus placed his darkened and ignorant soul with God, the words of the book of Job come true in him: “When a spirit passed before me, the hair of my flesh stood up” (Job iv, 15). Then follows a great interior movement of the soul. Uhe clearer the Spirit is seen as it passes over and the truer it is discerned, so much the quicker is the change wrought in the soul, and the deeper and stronger and more perfect; and the more plainly does the soul learn its own shortcomings. Then comes the Lord in a sudden flash shining in the innermost regions of the soul, making himself the master workman in the work of perfection. To Him does the soul turn over the task, hailing His glorious presence, and then sinking passive and silent into His arms, all its powers hushed. It seems to find even its own good thoughts a hindrance, so exclusive is God’s control: the soul’s part is simply to let God act alone. But when afterwards this close embrace has ceased to be felt so vividly, and the soul is left again to itself, then it must return to its usual exercises of devotion and follow them with all diligence.

Thus it is that one should sometimes work and sometimes rest, according as God guides him; or according as he judges that activity or quiet leads him nearer to God. If a man cannot enjoy the quiet of interior recollection, then let him exercise himself in meditation and other practices. That “being rooted and founded in charity, you may be able to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth, and length, and height, and depth” (Eph. iii, 17, 18).

To attain the perfection of this, children, is impossible. But we must yearn for it with an upright intention and deep love. Our spirit should soar upward towards the height of God in His super-essential being, leaving beneath us all earthly, sensible things; confessing that God who has all might, is nevertheless unable to create any being so noble as to comprehend fully with its natural understanding the essence of the divinity. So too is the depth of the divine abyss inaccessible to our reason, and yet we can sink far down within it by a boundless lowliness of spirit. It was thus that our blessed Lady in her colloquy with the angel was silent about all the gifts God had poured into her soul, and named only her unfathomable depth of humility as having drawn Him to her: “My spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. Because He hath regarded the humility of His handmaid; for behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed” (Luke i, 4748).

By the breadth of God we may understand universal love; for God pours out His love upon men in all places and lands, in all their good ways and works. In every part of the universe nothing is so close at hand as God; nothing is so universal as God; nothing is so nigh to our innermost soul as God. If one will but seek Him, he will find Him day and night in the holy sacrament, in every friend of God, in every one of His creatures. Imitate this divine breadth with great diligence and interior zeal; disencumber thyself of all things else but God. Give thyself up with all thy soul’s powers to God’s presence within thee. By this shalt thou win great freedom of spirit, and very high graces will be granted thee, lifting thee over all created forms and images and all created things. St. Gregory speaks of this: “If we would understand the invisible things of God, then must we transcend visible things.”

The length that is of God is His eternity, having no before and after, for He is a tranquil unchangeableness. In Him all things past and future are eternally present in the divine unvarying self-contemplation. This shall a man imitate by fixing his spirit steadfastly on God, renouncing for His sake all love, all sorrow, all created things whatsoever, so that he may rest trustfully in God alone, confiding to Him all guidance. In this manner shall the invitation, “Gome over to Me, all ye that desire Me, to be filled with My fruits,” be accepted, and the divine generation take place in our souls. It was divinely done in our beloved and blessed Lady, to whom all men, even the