Fr. John of St. Bruno, OCD
The teaching on the "dark night"1 as a stage of particularly intense purification, into which a person enters (or is led by God) on their spiritual journey, is especially associated with the name of the barefoot Carmelite, the mystical teacher, St. John of the Cross. Indeed, St. John has a remarkable merit not only in that he deeply experienced the dark night in his soul but also in being able to express and organize his experience into treatises, in which he systematically discusses the significance and place of the dark night in a person's life.
The Dominican John Tauler2 did not create a synthesis in his work similar to that left by St. John of the Cross. This is certainly also due to the fact that Tauler never wrote a single treatise; all his preserved work comprises about 90 sermons, recorded by his listeners, primarily monks and nuns in Strasbourg and Cologne. Nevertheless, it can be said that darkness or even the whole period of the "dark night" is a theme fairly abundantly represented in the aforementioned sermons and considered – similarly to John of the Cross – as an extraordinarily important, we might even say a breakthrough, stage on the path to union with God or the "birth of God in the soul".3 John of the Cross indeed read the works of his two hundred years older predecessor and was significantly inspired by them.
Let us first examine what place the "dark night" holds within the entirety of Tauler's teaching.
1. God’s intention with man
In the sermon, which is mentioned as the first in the editions, delivered on the Christmas Day, Tauler refers to the three births of the Son of God, which we also celebrate on this day. In addition to the birth "in the divine essence and the distinctness of Persons" and the earthly birth from the Virgin Mary, the mystic knows another birth, which "consists in the fact that God truly spiritually gives birth day after day and hour after hour in every good soul through grace and love."4 It can be said that this idea, although sometimes expressed in different words, will be central in most of Tauler's sermons on various biblical texts read throughout the liturgical year, which will always be interpreted with reference to the union of man with God and the divine birth within man.
In the tenth sermon, he paraphrases Jesus’ words from the high priestly prayer: "May they be one with us, as we are one, I in you and you in me, not connected, but perfectly one; may they also be one with us, not by nature, but by grace."5 This birth through grace is brought about in man by the Holy Spirit. Tauler places great emphasis on the openness of man, on his disposition to receive the Spirit and the birth of God in the soul. In this regard, he presents at first glance almost inhuman requirements: a person must gather themselves and turn all their powers, both lower and higher, so that all distraction may become unified, seeking in everything only God and not seeking comfort anywhere else but in God. Furthermore, it is necessary to free oneself from all clinging and possessing and to attain radical humility, which completely opens itself to God and expects everything only from God, without the claim that one could achieve anything solely by their own efforts or actions.
In the sixteenth sermon, where Tauler comments on the verses from John's gospel (16:7-15) and especially Christ’s statement: "It is for you good that I am leaving. If I do not leave, the Advocate will not come to you," he interprets these passages in the sense that it is necessary for us to go through situations where Christ seems distant to us, and we experience abandonment, desolation, incapacity for any good deed, and feel indifferent, cold, lethargic, and sorrowful.6 The description of these desolate states and feelings is often repeated, although in different words, in many other sermons. In such moments, a person does not have the situation in their hands; we could say in modern terms that they may experience states close to some psychological breakdown, for Tauler warns that there may also arise "uncontrollable sorrow." However, God has the situation firmly in His hands; He only asks man to allow himself to be transformed, purified, to be willing to "bear God."7 If one allows it, an astonishing transformation occurs: multiplicity becomes simplicity,8 suffering becomes joy, turmoil serenity, and every bitterness is turned into true sweetness.
Thus, we have outlined the goal to which God desires to lead man (to the union with Himself, to his own birth in us), as well as the demanding path by which one reaches this goal (the path of ongoing purification). It is this path that we would like to address more broadly in the following point.
2. "Dark night" active and passive
It should be emphasized that John Tauler does not use the terminology of St. John of the Cross and does not talk about the active and passive night in his sermons. Nevertheless, it seems that he distinguishes between two basic stages of spiritual journeying. In one, a person is active, seeking God, while in the other, God is seeking man. This is especially evident in the thirty-seventh sermon, in which Tauler presents an allegorical interpretation of the gospel parable about the woman who lost a silver coin (Lk 15:8a): "How does this search proceed within a person? It happens in both an active and a passive manner. The active search consists in a person searching; the passive, in being searched for." The active seeking takes place both "externally," primarily through the cultivation of virtues, and "internally"; and this internal search consists of "a person entering their own foundation, into their innermost self, and there seeking God, as He instructed us when He said: ‘The kingdom of God is within you.’ Whoever wishes to find this kingdom – and it is God with all His richness and in His own being and essence – must seek it where it is: in the innermost foundation, where God is closer and more interior to the soul than it is to itself."9
Following this search, which a person perceives as their own search, comes the search from God’s side: "When a person enters such a house and seeks God there, they turn the entire house upside down. Then God seeks them again and turns the whole house upside down like someone searching for something: He tosses this here, that there, until He finds what He seeks. Just so it is with this person: the moment they enter that house and seek God in the innermost foundation, God comes and seeks the person and turns the whole house upside down."10 The necessity of this divine intervention for someone to become truly a child of God – "noble" – indicates both the inadequacy of the human view of things, which must receive a certain divine stamp, and the absolute primacy of passive asceticism over the active one, which is one of the fundamental aspects of the spirituality of the Rhine-Flemish mystics.11 In the same 37th sermon, Tauler points out that as soon as "God enters this house, into the innermost foundation, all the ways and forms in which God presents Himself in one way or another are taken away from the person and everything is permanently turned upside down, as if the person had never accepted any of that." Here we clearly see the primacy of asceticism which we have called passive: "In such an overturning, if a person can surrender to it, they are led infinitely further than in all those deeds, ways, and intentions that had ever been conceived and invented." How dramatically this "overturning and sweeping the house" is experienced depends on a person's disposition. In his sermon on the Epiphany,12 Tauler allegorically interprets the significance of the gifts brought by the Magi to Bethlehem. Myrrh, which is bitter, is given to a person when they turn away from the world and turn to God. It must banish any delight and satisfaction that a person finds in creation, for it is necessary to exclude any "possessive joy." This myrrh must be all the more bitter the greater the (unrestrained) attachment to creatures was. It is a "bitter bitterness."
3. Three periods of spiritual growth and the necessity of the dark night
Now we will also attempt to define the place of the "dark night" in the overall schema of a person's spiritual development, which can be traced in the sermons, and along with this, to deepen the response to a possible objection: why is it so important to go through moments or even an entire period of suffering that is not given "as a punishment" to a person who is explicitly corrupt and evil, but rather usually to a person who is resolutely striving towards God?
Tauler does not deny that a person is fundamentally good. However, what is important is precisely the understanding of this foundation. It is a kind of "place" within a person, the highest and most sublime that is in a person, where a person is most themselves and where also the image of God resides,13 which is imbued in us. In his sermon on the verse from Isaiah: "Arise, Jerusalem, and shine!" (60:1) John Tauler says: "God desires and needs nothing else in the entire world than this one thing... to find in man a noble foundation, free and well prepared, so that He can realize His noble and divine work in it."14 Once this work is realized, light and energy flows from this foundation to the other, lower parts of a person. In this sense, Tauler probably loosely quotes the saying of Master Eckhart at the chapter meeting: "The light of Jesus Christ shines in our innermost more brightly than all the suns in the sky can shine; it shines from the inner part to the outer part, not from the outside in."15
However, Tauler is aware that very few people live a life emanating from this deepest foundation and thus from God, given the current state of human nature. Many people have created a "false foundation," a kind of merely psychological self, from which all their stances and ways of acting arise. The main feature of such a life is the spirit of possession, which wants everything for itself, relates all things to itself, and not to God, seeking ultimately themselves in everything, not God. Other signs of a life of this more external human plane include "legalism and Pharisaicalness," which one clings to and does not wish to abandon. "By legalists are meant rational people who distort everything according to their reasoning and sensibility; they perceive through the senses and subject everything to reason as a means of comprehending great things; in this behavior, they find their glory and utter great words, but at the foundation, from which truth should spring, they remain empty and neglected." (...) "The Pharisees are those pious people who consider themselves good, have respect for themselves, are adamant in their resolutions and exercises, prioritize their customs above all else, and wish to be honored for this, while at their core criticize all those who do not act as they do."
As mentioned, God desires to heal man, to free him from his preoccupation with himself. The "dark night" is a means that God, with immense love, uses to bring about the work of deification, the birth of God within man. It is necessary because the false foundation is often very subtle and hidden, so that a person cannot recognize it, and even when they do recognize it, they are unable to completely – perhaps we could say not even largely – remove it through their own activity and asceticism. The dark night is thus one of the stages of the spiritual journey.
John Tauler divides the spiritual life according to the classical schema: beginner – advanced – perfect, while the transitions between these stages represent two processes of transformation: from dissimilitude to similarity and from similarity to unity. To illustrate this reality, he uses the image of wood, which is penetrated by fire, until it ultimately becomes one thing with it.16 However, before this happens, "nature must endure many deaths." "On this journey, there are many wild, desolate, and unknown paths that God uses to lead a person, attract him, and teach him to die. Oh children, how noble, fruitful, and wonderfully beautiful is the life that grows from such dying!”
Before a person enters this mentioned dying, after God begins to touch them and lead them to Himself, they experience great joy, yet often a joy that is too external and which they use somewhat immoderately. "Let him take as much divine drink as he can and drink in full draughts until he is completely intoxicated and so full of God that in sheer bliss and fullness he forgets about himself. It will seem to him that he can perform miracles, that he could pass through fire, water, across a thousand swords without being harmed, and that he is the courage without fear of death, joy or pain. This is because he is intoxicated; this is called 'jubilation' – jubilieren. Such people shout a moment, laugh a moment, and then sing again..."
Here, however, the first stage ends, and the second begins, the time of night. "When our beloved Lord sees that people want to take on too much for themselves,... He intervenes like a good steward who has a lot of fine wine in the cellar, and as soon as He lies down and falls asleep, his children slip in and get themselves so drunk on this wine that when He wakes and sees what has happened, He grabs a stout stick and whips them until they are as sad as they were happy before, and gives them so much water that they become sober just as they were before drunk.17
This harsh divine education, however, is not purposeless. "He has thus lured them and freed them from themselves and from the captivity of suffering creatures, but they have become too wild, and thus He now wants to bring them to Himself sober. They then calm down nicely and see who they are and what they can do because they come back to themselves. Those who could previously never be bound, who wanted more than anyone could give them, who wanted to suffer more and achieve more, are now thus restrained." 18 The aforementioned quotation already foreshadows what is the most important condition that allows for the coming of the Holy Spirit and the divine birth within us. It is humility, a virtue that is repeatedly emphasized in all of Tauler’s sermons. According to humility or pride, the true friend of God can be distinguished from the false, the true believer from the heretic.19 However, this humility does not arise only from a rational consideration of one’s own ability or inability to accomplish something. It is a posture of complete surrender into God's hands, a genuine self-reality. All the nights lead to this surrender to God that a person can perform when they are stripped of their corrupted nature, which primarily seeks itself (albeit masked and subtly), when true self, hidden in the yet undiscovered foundation, takes the place of the false psychological self.
As an example of a humble person, Tauler gives St. John the Baptist, who in response to the inquiries of messengers from the Jews and Pharisees: "Are you Elijah?..." (see John 1:19-27) answers: "I am not."20 "Almost no one wants to say 'I am not, I am nothing,'" – in the obvious sense: I am not the important one, I am not the one who wants to stand in the foreground. Everyone wants to be 'something'. However, when someone with all their loving heart can say: "I am not," from the foundation of that person, the eternal "I am" springs forth. This seeming paradox points to the fact that when a person is capable of relinquishing their self-affirmation from themselves, their true being is born, the being of God present within us.
Since our spiritual ascent is primarily a descent into the abyss of our own poverty, it also implies another seeming contradiction: the very obstacles on our path – falls, unfaithfulness, incapacity to fully surrender, inability to uproot all that is evil in us, can and should become means that lead us deeper into the abyss of our own poverty and open us to the perspective of God’s mercy. "When a field is plowed, often a root of that weed remains in the depths, but no one notices it... when the good seed then grows, the weeds will also grow... Therefore, humble yourselves and patiently watch the weeds within you and act in such a way that they become your purgatory."21
Even further, Tauler goes in his teaching about the obstacles that ultimately lead us to God in a sermon delivered on the day commemorating the revelation of the archangel Michael on Mount Gargano.22 According to him, in addition to the fact that each person has their good angel who protects them, they also have their evil angel who constantly creates obstacles for them and incites them to evil, just as the good angel does to good. However, if a person were wise and conscientious, the resistance and trials posed by the devil would be much more beneficial for them than all that comes from the good angel. Because if there is no struggle, there will also be no victory.23 This teaching may seem somewhat exaggerated, but ultimately it shows Tauler's optimism and faith in the final victory of good. He likely desires to relieve his listeners of excessive fear of the Evil One. After all, he is subjected to God and has no power to ultimately triumph (definitively) over anyone who walks in God's strength. On the contrary, his activity ultimately promotes the ascent of a person to God, thus ridiculing himself. Even in relationship to the evil spirit, it holds: "everything works together for good for those who love God" (Romans 8:28).
When a person has gone through all trials, suffering, and darkness that purify them, and sinks deeply in humility into their foundation, they experience something of divine birth within themselves and become a noble person. Such a person "receives testimony about the light" (see John 1:7) in both lower and higher powers. Thus, in the intellect, "in that inner created light, they see and understand what is divine." From Tauler’s text, it even seems that a person already to a certain extent enters into the perspective of the life of the age to come. "Whoever could penetrate here (namely into the inner foundation) would truly find God and would recognize themselves absolutely and simply in God; because God never withdraws from there... This foundation – if a person pays careful attention to it – radiates into the powers beneath it, and both lower and higher powers it draws back towards their origin and beginning, provided a person is vigilant towards it, remains with themselves and listens to the loving voice that calls in the wilderness in this foundation and continually brings everything into it."
I think that the last lines have given us a glimpse of how John Tauler envisions the ideal contemplative person. This is not a person who has extraordinary experiences and revelations – Tauler rather rejects them – nor is it a person who necessarily lives in solitude – although he repeatedly emphasizes the significance of religious life in his sermons – but it is a person who has been introduced to the deepest sphere of their being, where the image of God shines most clearly, to which we have been made by God, and thus hidden in their foundation, looks at all the “simple and ordinary” things of this world in a contemplative way.
4. An unattainable and never-ending task
A person who reaches the "state of perfection" – which cannot occur before the Lord says to them similarly to the lame man at the pool of Bethesda: "Rise," (see John 5:8) – becomes a true "master of life".24 They experience innate peace and freedom that are very different from the peace and freedom of those who "believe that they will free themselves and break the bonds before it is time." Masters of life are thus those whose preaching and proclamation of God arise from experience, and are therefore beneficial and fruitful.
At the beginning of the article, we mentioned the decisive role of the Holy Spirit on the path to deification. The Holy Spirit brings about divine birth within man. It has been stated that a person must adequately prepare themselves for His arrival. The preparation, which involves both active and passive asceticism, however, exceeds the capabilities of man. Therefore, Tauler says in a sermon delivered on Pentecost: "Where the Holy Spirit is to be received, He must first prepare the place, create through Himself the receptivity and also accept Himself here."25 This, at first glance again unusual statement, perhaps intends to say roughly this: even in the phase, which we perceive as "active," as a phase of our activity and effort, the main agent is God Himself. He is the main agent even when we find ourselves in "the night" and are unaware of God's presence. The time of "Pentecost in our lives" is then the time when we more fully, evidently and deeply become aware of God’s presence and are able to rejoice in it and live from it.
However, because the process of unification can never be completed here on earth, even for the "perfect," there is a constant possibility (and necessity) to grow and diminish. To diminish in one's merely human plans and perceptions and to grow in being a divine child. I would like to conclude this article with the words with which John Tauler concludes many of his sermons: "May all this be fulfilled in us. To this may God help us. Amen."
