Johannes Tauler quotes - page 2

If we really want to achieve true prayer, we must turn our backs upon everything temporal, everything external, everything that is not divine. (Johannes Tauler)
In the kingdom of heaven it is His work that will be crowned, not yours. Anything in you that He has not wrought Himself will count for nothing. View quote
Johannes Tauler
Judge yourself; if you do that you will not be judged by God, as St. Paul says. But it must be a real sense of your own sinfulness, not an artificial humility. View quote
Johannes Tauler
Man must do his part and detach himself from created things. View quote
Johannes Tauler
This food of love draws the soul above distinction or difference, beyond resemblance to divine unity. This is what happens to the transfigured spirit. View quote
Johannes Tauler
It is certain that if God is to be born in the soul it must turn back to eternity. View quote
Johannes Tauler
Become a fertile ground for the divine birth. Cherish this deep silence within, nourish it. View quote
Johannes Tauler
All its dissipated powers must be gathered up into one, because unity is. View quote
Johannes Tauler
He is then led on a terribly wild path, very gloomy and forsaken. And on this path God takes back from him everything that he had ever given him. Then and there the person is left so completely to himself that he loses all notion of God and gets into such a distressful state that he cannot remember whether things had ever gone right for him, so as not to know any more if he were ever on the right path, whether he has a God or not, nor does he know if God does or does not exist, or if he is alive or dead and whether he is the same person; and he suffers such incredible pain that this whole wide world is too confining for him. View quote
Johannes Tauler
He draws them so mysteriously unto Himself and His own blessedness; their spirits are so lovingly attracted, while they are at the same time so filled and transfused with the Godhead, that they lose all their diversity in the Unity of the Godhead. These are they to whom God makes their work here on earth a delight; so that they have a real foretaste of that which they will enjoy forever. View quote
Johannes Tauler
In this stage the Lord leads a person out of himself into himself. (Johannes Tauler)
Children, to be truly in this stage is the deepest ground of genuine humility and annihilation. This, in truth, cannot be grasped by the senses. For here he receives the most. View quote
Johannes Tauler
The third stage is the transformation to a divine-like existence, into a unity of the created spirit with the very being of the spirit of God. View quote
Johannes Tauler
The gracious, eternal God permits the spirit to green and bloom and to bring forth the most marvelous fruit, surpassing anything a tongue can express and a heart conceive. View quote
Johannes Tauler
Every one should find some suitable time, day or night, to sink into his depths, each according to his own fashion. Not every one is able to engage in contemplative prayer. View quote
Johannes Tauler
If you fall seventy times a day, rise seventy times and return to God so that you will not fall too often. View quote
Johannes Tauler
Never believe that true prayer consists in mere babbling, reciting so many psalms and vigils, saying your beads while you allow your thoughts to roam. View quote
Johannes Tauler
Your meditations may be as profound, as exalted, as devout as you like; you may practise every pious exercise you can manage, but all this is as nothing in comparison with the Blessed Sacrament. What we do may be godly, but this sacrament is God Himself! View quote
Johannes Tauler
Let God and all his creation teach you what your sins are. View quote
Johannes Tauler
Rid yourself of anything that is not directed toward God. View quote
Johannes Tauler
Spiritually good people, pure in heart, who long for the Blessed Sacrament but cannot receive at the time, can receive spiritually... even a hundred times a day, in sickness and in health, with immeasurable grace and profit. (Johannes Tauler)
You don't have to leave the world to be holy and grow closer to the Holy One. View quote
Johannes Tauler
Become a fertile ground for the divine birth. Cherish this deep silence within, nourish it Cherish this deep silence within, nourish it frequently frequently. View quote
Johannes Tauler
This food of love draws the soul above distinction or difference, beyond resemblance to divine unity. This is what happens to the transfigured spirit. When the divine heat of love has drawn out all the moisture, heaviness, unfitness, then this holy food plunges such a one into the life of God. As Our Lord himself said to St Augustine, "I am the food of the strong: believe and feast on me. You will not change me into yourself; rather you will be changed into me". View quote
Johannes Tauler
Children, to be truly in this stage is the deepest ground of genuine humility and annihilation. This, in truth, cannot be grasped by the senses. For here he receives the most If we had here with us a human being in his primal nobility, pure as Adam in paradise...his simple nature unadorned - that person would be so luminous and pure, so ravishing and richly favoured by God that no one would be able to comprehend his purity nor with his reason conceive of it profound insight possible into his nothingness. Here he sinks as deep as it is possible into the ground of humility; the deeper, the higher, because here high and deep are one and the same...In this state one achieves true unity of prayer spoken of in the epistle that truly brings it about that a person becomes one with God. View quote
Johannes Tauler