Part 4
This is perhaps the most discursive of Ruysbroeck's works, and in that sense the most difficult to follow, because of the number and length of the digressions. For instance, when he comes to speak of the planet Venus, he mentions the sign of the Balance, and this suggests a whole treatise of thirty-nine chapters on the _Balance of Divine Love_. The love of God for us, and all the blessings, spiritual and temporal, which flow from it, are cast into one pan of the balance, and we must weigh down the other pan with our virtues; and there follows a long disquisition on the virtues we should practise, prominent among which, as usual, he ranks humility. Here, further, he finds occasion to work out his distinction between the spirit and the reasonable soul; and the whole digression closes with a sad and striking comparison between the fervour of primitive Christianity and the laxity of his own days.
Bossuet very severely criticised this work, holding it up as an example of forced allegories, and so forth, and speaking of Ruysbroeck as involved in the vain speculations of astrologers. This opinion, though not surprising, is not just, for the author is careful to insist that the planets have not influence on the will of man as such. But it is natural that Bossuet should regard such works with suspicion and dislike, for he had considerable trouble with false mystics, the quietists of his own day; and even Ruysbroeck's own friends and contemporaries found much in the volume that was strange, even to startling, and Gerard Groote advised him not to publish it in its entirety.
Of the Twelve Virtues
The reader will not be surprised to learn that Blessed John contrives here to speak of considerably more virtues than just twelve. The principal and first is said to be humility, and this again twofold--one humility inspired by the contemplation of the power of God, the other by the consideration of His goodness. The daughter of humility is obedience, and obedience naturally involves denial of self-will, poverty of spirit, and patience in adversities. He then proceeds to treat very beautifully and at length of interior detachment, remarking that to secure this it is not necessary to flee external occupations, but that the attainment of perfection consists in a perfect abandonment to the will of God and the forsaking of our own will. When we have arrived thus far, we shall no longer sin. For past sins there must be continued sorrow, but external penances are not equally for all. And those who cannot endure great bodily austerities must apply themselves to imitate the austere life of Christ by interior self-denial.
The Letters of Ruysbroeck
These are spiritual letters, of course, conferences in epistolary form.
The first is addressed to Margaret van Meerbeke, the Poor Clare of Brussels mentioned above. Ruysbroeck writes: "When I was at your convent last summer, you appeared sad; methought God or some special friend had forsaken you; therefore am I writing you as follows." And he proceeds to console his spiritual daughter, and to warn her against the dangers which may be found even in the cloister. He declaims against the abuses which sometimes creep into monasteries, and almost always through _self-will_, whereas every Religious should strive to have all things _in common_, to be submissive to superiors and affable to all. The holy author closes with a description of the terrible punishments to be meted out to those Religious who fail to keep their rule and lead a holy life.
The second, addressed to Matilda, the widow of John of Culemberg, is of more importance. After treating of the Apostles' Creed, the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, the Decalogue, the vows of religion and the precepts of the Church, the Incarnation and death of Christ, Ruysbroeck expounds the Catholic doctrine on the seven Sacraments, and especially the Blessed Eucharist. He describes the fruits which flow from a worthy Communion, and treats again of the three ways of the contemplative life, and describes the elements of superessential contemplation.
The third was sent to three Recluses of Cologne. Blessed John exhorts them to persevere in their holy manner of life. He treats of the spiritual life, comparing Christ to the precious pearl, the hidden treasure. And finally he earnestly exhorts them to constant meditation on the Passion of Our Lord.
The fourth was addressed to Catherine of Louvain, a devout young lady living in the world; and the other three were likewise sent to persons in the world. All are full of wise spiritual maxims, and all insist on the need of humility and the abnegation of self-will.
XII
The Teaching of Ruysbroeck[7]
In no one work, as already remarked, does Blessed John Ruysbroeck give a complete outline of his doctrines; the elements rather are to be found dispersed among the various treatises.
In common with most of the German mystics, Ruysbroeck starts from God and comes down to man, and thence rises again to God, showing how the two are so closely united as to become one. In His essence God is simple unity, the one supremely pure and supernatural being, devoid of all mode, in Himself still and immovable, and yet at the same time the first cause and active principle of all things. This principle is the divine _nature_, which does not in reality differ from the essence, and which is fruitful in the Trinity. The Father is the essential principle, and yet He is consubstantial with the other two Persons. The Son, the uncreated Image of the Father, is the Eternal Wisdom. The Holy Ghost, proceeding from the other two, and returning unto them, is the eternal Love, which unites Father and Son. As regards Persons, God is eternally active: as regards essence, He abides in unbroken repose. Creatures have been existing as ideas in God from all eternity.
In man, whose body is merely a perishable instrument, there is a spiritual, immortal principle, like unto God, though less than He. In this principle Ruysbroeck distinguishes, with a distinction of the reason, soul and spirit; the former is the principle of the merely human life, uniting together the lower powers; the other is the principle of man's supernatural life in God, gathering together his higher faculties. The soul has four inferior powers: the _irascible_, and the _concupiscible_, which two become bestial when not under the ruling of a virtuous will; _reason_, by which man is distinguished from the brute, and _freedom of choice_, an exercise of the higher faculty of the will. The spirit has the three superior faculties, memory, understanding, and will. In every man likewise there is a triple unity, or oneness: the unity of the lower faculties in the soul, the unity of the higher in the spirit, and the unity of the whole being in God, on Whom all things essentially depend for their being.
Blessed John delivers the accepted teaching of the Church on the Fall, the Incarnation and Redemption, on the need and on the means of divine grace, the institution of the Sacraments, the establishment of the Church, the gifts of the Holy Ghost, etc.
But coming now to his more purely mystical doctrine, we find that Ruysbroeck distinguishes three degrees, or states--the active life, the interior life, and the contemplative life. The active life consists of the effort to conquer sin and to draw nigh to God by exterior works. Here in Christ is the Divine Exemplar, for in His life He practised the three fundamental virtues of humility, charity, and patience. Humility is the foundation of the whole building, and it is exercised chiefly in obedience, which engenders the abdication of our own will, and patience, or submission in all things to the holy will of God. When a man has arrived so far, he can exercise charity, shown at this stage chiefly by compassion for Christ suffering on the Cross for all men, and bringing with her the four cardinal virtues of prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice, whereby also the Christian is enabled to fight and conquer his three deadly enemies, the devil, the world, and the flesh. Perseverance in this active life is crowned by union with God, a union wherein God alone is regarded as the exemplar and the final end, wherein He alone is sought and loved. Thus does a man become a _Faithful Servant_.
As yet, however, there is only an imperfect knowledge of God, and to become more closely united with God, as an _Intimate Friend_, one must strive to attain the second stage of the mystic way, namely the _interior life_. For this three preliminary conditions are requisite. On the part of God, there must be a yet stronger movement of divine grace, and on the part of man, an absolute recollection, with freedom from sensible images, attachments, and cares, and then the gathering together of all the powers in the unity of the Spirit. Christ, then, the Eternal Sun, enkindles in the soul thus duly prepared a divine fire, which engenders a warm, sensible love, a devotion full of ardent desires, with thankfulness for the divine mercies and affliction at one's own unworthiness. Then, as the action of the sun draws up the moisture in the form of vapour, to fall back again in refreshing and fertilising showers of rain, so if the soul persevere Christ sends down a fresh shower of consolations, which fill the whole being with a chaste pleasure and an indescribable sweetness superior to all the delights of the earth, rising even to a species of spiritual intoxication, which may manifest itself in outward acts. As yet there are no severe trials for the soul, but she must beware of pride and presumption, and of leaning too much on these sensible delights instead of on the Divine Giver. Meanwhile the Sun of Justice is reaching its apogee in the heavens, and Christ draws up all the powers of the soul, so that the heart is enlarged and fit to burst with love, and at the same time it begins to suffer from the wound of love, because of the urgency of the power drawing upward and its own impotency to follow; whence also a spiritual languishing, a very madness and impatience, or fever of love, capable even of wasting the bodily strength. Love is liable to be so intense at this stage, that visions and ecstacies are granted; but at the same time care must be taken against the delusions of the evil one.
But thence the Sun enters on the sign of the Virgin and its downward path, that is, Christ hides Himself and deprives the soul of the warmth of sensible love and the like. It is the autumn, the time of gathering the really ripe and lasting fruits; but to the soul a time of seeming abandonment, aridity, darkness, etc. She must then beg the prayers of others, be glad to leave herself in God's hands, willing to suffer and to sacrifice all sweetness. Likewise, she must be careful not to compromise God's favour by seeking earthly pleasures and delights, the consolations of human friendship, and so forth.
Then there is a second coming of the Divine Spouse, bringing with Him the gifts of the Holy Ghost, whereby He adorns the three supreme faculties of the spirit. Pure simplicity empties the memory of all external images and renders it stable. Spiritual brightness gives the intelligence a sure discernment of the virtues. And a spiritual fervour arouses the will to a boundless love for God and men.
There is yet a third coming, which affects the supreme union of the spirit with God. It is a species of intimate contact with God in the very depths of the soul. The intellect cannot comprehend the manner of this union, it can only witness its effects upon the reason and the will. The power of loving increases with the intimacy of this union, and the intimacy increases the power of love; and hence also a kind of loving strife ensues, each wishing to possess the other and each wishing to give himself to the other utterly.
This is the apogee of the interior life, the meeting, the union of the soul with God. It may be brought about in three different ways: (1) Man, struck by a light coming forth from God, forsakes all images; he is plunged into the union of fruitive love; he meets God without any medium, a spirit like unto Him; it is the state of absolute repose in God, utter emptiness and leisure. (2) At other times man adores God and consumes himself in continual love, which ceaselessly feeds on the presence of God; it is the mediate stage, the state of affective love, needful for the attainment of the preceding. (3) Finally, it is possible to unite enjoyment with activity: man enjoys a most profound peace and produces all the acts of love; he receives God; and His gifts in the superior faculties, images and sensations in the lower powers; it is the most perfect state, the state of combined activity and repose.
Even so, it is not the most sublime state. Above the interior life there is the superessential contemplative life; above the _faithful friends_ there are the _Intimate Sons_ of God. This third stage of perfection can never be acquired by any act of the intelligence or will; and so sublime is it that he only who has experienced it can attempt its description, and then in terms the most halting and imperfect. This contemplation consists in an absolute purity and simplicity of the understanding; it is a knowledge and possession of God, without modes, without limits, without medium, without any consciousness of the difference of His qualities. Nevertheless, it is not God, it is the light by which He is seen. It is the death and destruction of self to behold only the Being eternal and absolute. Its essence is union with God, the still contemplation of God, abandonment to God, so that He alone acts, and not the soul. This repose of the spirit engenders a supernatural contemplation of the Trinity without any medium, a feeling of bliss unspeakable, a sublime ignorance; the last consciousness of the difference between God and the creature--being and nothingness--disappears.
This is the honeymoon of Christ with the soul, to which the preceding stages are only a preparation. The spirit is led from brightness to brightness; and since no medium comes between it and the divine splendour, since the brightness by which it sees is the light itself which it sees, in a certain sense itself becomes this brightness; it attains a consciousness of its own superessential being, of the unity of its essence in God.
XIII
Some Appreciations
Arrived thus at the summit of mystic speculation, Ruysbroeck finds himself on the confines of pantheism. However, he constantly insists, as we have already remarked, on the essential difference between the created spirit and the Spirit Eternal. Man, he says, must become deiform as far as that is possible for the creature; in the union with God it is not the difference of personality which is destroyed, it is only the difference of will and of thought, the desire to be anything apart in oneself which must disappear. He declares: "There where I assert that we are one in God, I must be understood in this sense that we are one in love, not in essence or in nature." His own strenuous opposition to the pantheists of his day proves his orthodoxy in this matter; yet it must be confessed again that from the very nature of his sublime discourse, his expressions are at times exceedingly bold and seemingly unorthodox. The truth is that the resources of human language prove inadequate to describe even the foretaste on earth of that "which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive."
In B. John's own lifetime Gerard Groote was alarmed, and wrote once to the Canons of Groenendael of a Doctor in Theology, and of one Henry of Hesse, who had declared that the _Spiritual Espousals_ contained errors. Twenty years after Ruysbroeck's death, John Gerson, the famous Chancellor of Paris, in a letter to one Bartholomew, a Carthusian, who had given him a copy of this treatise, praises the first two books, but declares that the third teaches a kind of pantheism. This charge brought forth a lengthy and spirited defence from a Canon Regular of Groenendael, named John Scoenhoven; and then in a second letter Gerson maintained his objections, but acquitted the holy author of all intentional error. A similar stand was taken later by Bossuet, who excuses Ruysbroeck but condemns his manner of expression. It must be remembered that these two were engaged in confuting false mystics, and naturally they would discredit the writings of even a holy man, however orthodox, which would appear to favour the erroneous tenets of their opponents. Once more, we remark that not only was Ruysbroeck manifestly free from all culpable error, but throughout in his own mind he never lost sight of the essential distinctions, though at times his language must necessarily sound exaggerated to unaccustomed ears.
On the other hand, to outweigh the unfavourable opinion of these two French critics, we have a host of writers of Ruysbroeck's own and subsequent days who not only defend the orthodoxy of his writings, but who also speak of them in terms of the deepest admiration, and regard their author almost as inspired.
We have already seen the esteem in which the holy Prior of Groenendael and his writings were held by Tauler, Gerard Groote, and the Venerable Thomas a Kempis, and the vigour with which his memory was vindicated by John of Scoenhoven, But his advocates were by no means confined to the limits of his own Order, period, or country.
Henry van Herp, a Franciscan, compiled a _Mirror of Perfection_, taken almost exclusively from the _Spiritual Espousals_; and by his means the teachings of Blessed Ruysbroeck were propagated among the followers of St. Francis, particularly of the Third Order.
Denys the Carthusian is unstinted in his praises. He calls him the _Divine Doctor_. "I name him the Divine Doctor," he writes, "because his only master was the Holy Ghost. Of this the abundance of wisdom wherewith he was gifted is a sure guarantee.... Ignorant man as I am, I confess that nowhere have I found such sublimity and such knowledge, save in the works of Denys the Areopagyte. But in his writings the difficulty arises especially from the style, whereas it is not so with the Prior of Groenendael.... As they say of Hugh of St. Victor that he is another St. Augustin, so I will say of Ruysbroeck that he is another Denys the Areopagyte."
Thomas of Jesus, a Carmelite, in his _De Divina Oratione_, frequently quotes from Ruysbroeck and adopts his method.
The Carthusian Surius translated all the works of Ruysbroeck into Latin, and this translation has been the chief source of familiarity with the Belgian mystic for readers and writers not acquainted with his native tongue. The following extracts from the _Introduction_ to Surius's translation seem worth quoting for the sake of some who may imagine that the works of Blessed John Ruysbroeck can be of profit only to those who are far advanced in the contemplative life:
"I do not believe there is a man who can approach these magnificent and simple pages without great and singular profit. Let none excuse himself from reading this book on the plea of the inaccessible sublimity of Ruysbroeck. The great man has accommodated himself to all, and the most abandoned soul on earth may find again on reading him the path of salvation. Arrows dart from the pages of Ruysbroeck, aimed by no hand of man, but by the hand of God; and deeply they embed themselves in the soul of the reader who is a sinner. Innocent reader, reader of unstained robe, Ruysbroeck is at once most lowly and most sublime. In his description of the _Spiritual Espousals_ he surpasses admiration, he surpasses praise; all the commencement, all the progress, all the height, all the transcendent perfection of the spiritual life is there."
It was from Surius that the Benedictine Blosius, or Louis de Blois, learned to know and appreciate Ruysbroeck. His works are impregnated with the teachings of the Mystic of Groenendael, and his well-known _Consolatio Pusillanimum_ (_Comfort for the Fainthearted_) is replete with extracts taken from Ruysbroeck.
Lessius, the Jesuit Theological Professor of Louvain University, used to say that he read Blessed John Ruysbroeck daily; and he would add that if his holy works had emanated from the Society they would not have remained in obscurity so long.
In more recent times Ernest Hello brought our Saint to France by a translation of extracts, prefaced by an anonymous contemporary life, which was first published in 1869. In his own _Introduction_, Hello writes: "Among those who, soaring beyond the realms of human light, have sought refuge in the shadow of the great altar, the grandest, according to Denys the Carthusian, are St. Denys the Areopagyte and John Ruysbroeck the Admirable. St. Denys lays down the general laws of mystic theology, John Ruysbroeck applies them. St. Denys presents the lamp, John Ruysbroeck kindles the flame. Both are blind with excess of light, both immovable with excess of motion. Speech with them is a visit paid to men from motives of charity. Silence is their native land. The beauty of their language is the condescendence of their goodness; the sacred darkness in which they spread their eagle wings is their ocean, their booty, their glory."
Reviewing the work of Hello, Louis Veuillot, the French Catholic publicist, remarked:
"Ruysbroeck was illiterate. He was a humble Flemish priest of the fifteenth century. None the less, in the order of genius the uncultured Ruysbroeck, as a theologian, and consequently as a philosopher and a poet, is as far above Bossuet as Dante, for instance, is above Boileau. Face to face with the mysteries that shroud God and man, Bossuet seeks, argues, and, so to speak, gropes; Ruysbroeck knows, describes, or rather sings, and contemplates. This illiterate mystic of an obscure age finds himself at home in the sublime as in his own sphere; he speaks of what is familiar to him; the wise doctor of the world remains without. Bossuet does not enter, he does not open, he does not see. Bossuet spins words, Ruysbroeck pours out streams of light. It seems as if Bossuet were that mighty wind which was heard in the Upper Chamber; the brief words of Ruysbroeck are the tongues of fire, living and enlightening flame."
Truly has Time brought its revenge in such a comparison by a compatriot of Bossuet with Ruysbroeck.
Finally, Maeterlinck brought out his translation of the _Spiritual Espousals_ in 1891 with a characteristic appreciation of the Flemish mystic. And Maeterlinck's name has given a strong impetus to the popularity, so to speak, of Blessed Ruysbroeck in modern France. But neither of these translations can be regarded as authoritative or exact.
The real, scholarly work towards extending and encouraging the cult of Blessed John Ruysbroeck, whether among the learned or the devout, is being performed, as is seemly, in the Catholic University of his native Belgium, namely, at Louvain, where a Chair has been instituted for the study of Old Flemish, chiefly for the sake of a correct understanding and rendering of the writings of the Holy Mystic of Groenendael.