SERMON IV
On the Feast of St Stephen or of St Lawrence
Of the three Grades of those who learn here to die to
themselves in Nature and Spirit, that they may (like the Grain of Wheat) bring
forth much fruit; viz. of those who are beginning, of those who are advancing,
and of those who are perfect.
Nisi granum frumenti cadens in terram mortuum fuerit, ipsum
solum manet.
"Unless the grain of wheat, falling into the ground, dieth, itself remaineth
alone. But if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."[16]
By the Wheat we understand our Lord Jesus Christ,
Who by His Death has brought forth much fruit for all men, if they are but
willing, not only to reign with Him, but also, and in the first place, desire
to follow Him in a dying life. For this may be called a dying life, when a man
for the love of God refuses to gratify his senses and take his natural
pleasure, and follow his own will; and as many lusts as he dies to, so many
deaths does he offer to God, and so many fruits of life will he receive in
return. For in what measure a man dies to himself, and grows out of himself, in
the same measure does God, Who is our Life, enter into him.
Now mark, dear children, that the path of a man
thus dying may be divided into three stages. Those who have entered on the
lowest stage do acts of self-denial from fear of hell and for the hope of
heaven, with some love to God mingled therewith, which leads them to shun the
most flagrant sins; but the love of God seldom works strongly in them, except
it be stirred up by the contemplation of hell or heaven: for by reason of their
blind self-love these men are terribly afraid of death, and are by no means
eager to set their hand to the work of mortifying their undisciplined nature
which shrinks therefrom; and they have little faith, which is the cause of this
timorous weakness, that leads them to be ever fearing for their own safety;
thus, just as formerly they sought and loved themselves in all kinds of carnal
enjoyments and worldly vanities, and avoided bodily pain and inconvenience out
of self-love, so now is the same motive at work, leading them to shun sin on
account of punishment, in order to escape hell and obtain the rewards of
heaven. And when they are still young in the love of God, they are apt to taste
little sweetness in loving God, save when they hope to enjoy something from His
love; as, for instance to escape hell and get to heaven; and if sometimes they
meditate on the Sufferings of our Lord, and weep over them with strong emotion,
it is because they think how He was willing to suffer so much for their sakes,
and to redeem them by His bitter Death, still (because their love is small)
they are much more inclined to dwell upon the bodily sufferings that He endured
in His human nature, than to reflect how He manifested by His death the highest
perfection of all virtue, as humility, love and patience, and therein so
greatly glorified His Heavenly Father. For this sort of persons set out and
begin to die while as yet they love themselves far too well; hence they are not
yet able to see truly what it is to resign themselves to God, and to maintain a
spirit of submission; and, although God does all things for the best, yet this
they will never believe, and it is a perpetual stumbling-block to them. Thus
they often ask and wonder why our Lord chose to suffer so much and why He leads
his friends and followers to himself along such a path of suffering. And when
they are at the beginning of a dying life, and only half-way inclined towards
true perfection, nor perceive as yet wherein this consists, they oft-times
torment themselves with watching and fasting and an austere way of life; for
whatever is outwardly painful to the flesh they fancy to be greatly and
mightily regarded and prized by God. So, when they eagerly take upon themselves
all the hardships they can, then they think they have reached the summit of
perfection, and judge all other men, nay, even those who are much more perfect
then themselves, and think meanly of all who do not practice outward
austerities, calling them low-minded and ignorant in spiritual things; and
those who do not feel as they do they think to have gone astray altogether from
a spiritual course and desire that all men should be as they are: and whatever
methods of avoiding sin they have practised and still make use of by reason of
their infirmity, they desire, nay, demand that everyone else should observe;
and, if any do not do so, they judge them and murmur at them, and say that they
pay no regard to religion.
Now, while they thus keep themselves and all that
belongs to them as it were working in their own service, and in this self-love
unduly regard themselves as their own property, they cut themselves off from
our Lord, and from the universal charity. For they ought to cherish continually
a general love toward all men, both good and bad; but they remain absorbed in
their partial and separate affections, whereby they bring upon themselves much
disquiet, and remain a prey to their besetting sin of always seeking and
studying themselves. And they are very niggardly of their spiritual blessings
towards their fellow Christians; for they devote all their prayers and
religious exercises to their own behalf; and, if they pray or do any other kind
act for others, they think it a great thing, and fancy they have done them a
great service thereby. In short, as they look little within, and are so little
enlightened in the knowledge of themselves, so also they make little increase
in the love of God and their neighbour; for they are so entangled with
unregulated affections that they live alone in heart, not thoroughly
commingling their soul with any in the right sort of thorough love. For the
love of God, which ought to unite them to God and all mankind, is wanting in
them; and, although they appear to keep the ordinances of God and of Holy
Church, they do not keep the law of Love. What they do is more out of
constraint and fear than from hearty love; and, because they are inwardly
unfaithful to God, they dare not trust Him; for the imperfection which they
find in themselves makes a flaw in their love to God. Hence their whole life is
full of care, full of toil and ignoble misery; for they see eternal life on the
one side, and fear to lose it, and they see hell on the other, and fear to fall
into it; and all their prayers and religious exercises cannot chase away their
fear of hell, so long as they do not die unto themselves. For the more they
love themselves and take counsel for their own welfare, the more the fear of
hell grows upon them; insomuch that, when God does not help them forward as
much as they wish, they complain; and they weep and sigh at every little
difficulty they encounter, however small, such as being tempted to vanity,
wandering thoughts, and the like. They make long stories of what is of no
consequence, and talk about their great difficulties and sufferings, as if they
were grievously wronged; for they esteem their works, although small, to be
highly meritorious, and that God Almighty owes them great honour and blessings
in return. But our Lord will tell them (as He does in fact afterwards, when He
has enlightened them with His grace) a poor fool loves his own wooden stick, or
any other little worthless article, as much as a rich and wise man loves his
sword, or any other great and precious thing.
All such are standing on the lowest steps of a
mortified life; and, if they do not die to themselves more, and come to
experience more of what a mortified life is, it is to be feared that they will
fall back from that little whereunto they have attained, and may plunge into
depths of folly and wickedness, from which God keep us all! But before a man
comes to such a fall, God gives him great spiritual delight; and upon this he
is so greatly rejoiced that he cheerfully endures all sorts of austerities and
penances; and then he weepeth that he hath arrived at perfection, and begins to
judge his neighbours, and wants to shape all men after his own model, so
greatly does he esteem himself in his own conceits.
Then God comes in His mercy to teach him what he
is, and shows him into what error he has fallen and permits the Enemy to set
before him and make him taste the sweetness of sin; and then, when he has thus
tasted, he conceives an inclination to one sin after another, and he cannot rid
himself of these inclinations. Then he wishes to flee sin that he may escape
hell, and begins to do outward good works; and yet it is a dreadful toil to
perform these good works as a mere labour, and to put himself to pain; thus he
is brought into an agonizing struggle with himself, and does not know which way
to turn; for he dimly sees that he has gone astray. Then must God of His mercy
come and raise him up, and he shall cry earnestly to God for help; and his
chief meditation shall be on the Life and Works and especially the Sufferings
of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The second degree in which the grain of wheat
dies is when a man is called upon to endure insult, contempt, and such-like
deaths; and, so long as his grace lasts, he would fain continue to suffer; for
by the sense of undeserved injury all his powers are but quickened and raised
into a higher state of activity. But when he is bereft of this gracious sense
of the Divine Presence, forasmuch as he is still far from perfection, he cannot
bear up under this spiritual destitution, and, through his infirmity, falls a
prey to mistrust of God, and fancies that God has forsaken him, and is not
willing to help him towards perfection. Often he is in a hundred minds what to
do or not do; and, if our Lord show him some kindness, then he feels as if all
were well between his soul and God, and he feels himself so rich, as if he
could never more be poor, and thinks to enjoy the Presence and Savour of God
(though s yet he is quite untried); just as if the Almighty were his own
personal, special Friend; and he is ready to believe that our Lord is, so to
speak, at his disposal, will comfort him in adversity, and enrich him with all
virtues. But, forasmuch as our gracious Lord sees that such a man will be very
apt to rely upon his imagined powers, and thus to fall grievously, and sees
also that the best and ripest fruit is being lost, inasmuch as the man has not
yet attained to that perfection to which our Lord desires to lead him,
therefore in due tine He withdraws from him all that He had revealed to him,
because the man was too much occupied with himself, with thinking about his own
perfection, wisdom, holiness and virtues; He thus brings him through poverty to
dissatisfaction with himself, and a humble acknowledgement that he has neither
wisdom nor worthiness; then does he begin to reflect within himself how justly
Almighty God has stayed His hand from bestowing any sensible tokens of His
mercy, because he fancied that he was something; now he sees clearly that he is
nothing. He was wont to care for his good name and honour in the world, and to
defend them as a man stands up for his wedded wife, and to count them who spoke
evil of him as enemies to the common good. He was wont to desire and thirst
after the reputation of holiness, like a meadow after the dew of heaven. He
weaned that men's praises of him and proceeded altogether from real goodness
and sympathy of heart, and by God's ordination, and had wandered so far from
self-knowledge as not to see that he was in himself unsound from head to foot;
he fancied that he was really as he stood in man's opinion, and knew nothing to
the contrary.
Here we must mark that he who wishes to heal
himself of such-like grievous mistakes, and subdue such an unmortified nature,
must take note of three points in himself. First, how much he has striven to
endure cheerfully, for the sake of goodness, all the rebuke, slander and shame
that has come upon him, patiently enduring it in his heart without outward
complaint. Secondly, how much in the time of his rebuke, shame and distress he
has praised and glorified God and his fellow-men, and shown kindness to his
neighbour in all ways, in spite of all contradiction against himself. Thirdly,
let him examine himself whether he have loved with cheerful and willing heart
the men or creatures who have thus persecuted him, and sincerely prayed for
them; and, if he finds that he has not done so, and is unwilling to do so, but
is hard and bitter in his grief, then he may surely know, and ought to feel
certain, that there is something false in him, and some resting in the praise
of men and in his own spiritual pride, and that he is not dead. He has not yet
come to the second step in a dying life.
But our kind Lord, like a tender mother who is
full of love, or a wise physician who desires to restore a sick man to perfect
health by his powerful remedies, suffers him to fall many times that he may
learn to know himself; and thus he falls into fleshly unspiritual temptations,
such as he never experienced in those past days, in which he fancied himself
very good and spiritual-minded. Our of mercy God deprives him of all
understanding, and overclouds all the light in which he walked aforetime, and
so hedges him in with thorns of an anguished conscience, that he thinks nothing
else but that he is cast off from the light of God's countenance; and he moans
greatly, and often with many tears exclaims: "O my God, why hast thou cast me
off, and why go I thus mourning all the days of my pilgrimage?"
And when he finds himself thus, from the crown of
his head to the sole of his foot, unlike God and at variance with Him, he is
filled with the sense of his own unworthiness, and with displeasure at himself,
insomuch that he can hardly abide himself; and then he thinks many miserable
things about himself from passages of Holy Scripture, and sheds many tears in
the sense of his sinfulness, till he is weighed down to the earth with the
pressure of God's hand, and exclaims with the prophet: "My sins are more in
number than the sands of the sea; they have taken hold upon me that I am not
able to look up; for I have stirred up God's anger against me, and done much
evil in His sight." These things he saith, and more the like. And at times he
is not even able thus to weep and lament, and then he is still more tormented
with tribulation and assaults; for on the one hand he feels a strong desire to
cast himself down humbly, and die to himself, and on the other he is conscious
of great pride and arrogance about himself, till he is so exasperated at
himself that, but for the dishonour to God, he would fain kill himself. I
believe that all such conflict greatly wears out the intellectual and natural
powers for it is so excessive, that one would rather suffer oneself to be put
to death than endure it. Yet one grace is left him, namely, that he looks on it
all as of no moment, whatever may be poured out over him, if only he may not
knowingly offend God. After a while the grace of tears comes back to him, and
he cried to God and says: "O Lord, rise, why sleepest thou?" and asks Him why
He hath sealed up the fountains of His mercy; he calls upon the holy Angels and
blessed spirits to have pity on him. He asks the heavens why they have become
as brass, and the earth wherefore she is as iron, and beseeches the very stones
to have compassion on his woes. He exclaims: "Am I become as the blasted hill
of Gilboa, which was cursed of David that no rain or dew should fall on it? And
how should my wickedness alone vanquish the invisible God, and force Him to
shut up His mercies, Whose property it is to have mercy and to help?"
In the second stage of the dying life God leads
the soul through these exercises and operations of His hand, as through fire
and water by turns, until the workings of self-sufficiency are driven out from
all the secret corners of the spirit, and the man henceforward is so utterly
ashamed of himself, and so casts himself off, that he can never more ascribe
any greatness to himself, but thoroughly perceives all his own weakness, in
which he now is and always has been; and whatever he does or desires to do, or
whatever good thing may be said of him, he does not take it to his own credit,
for he knows not how to say anything of himself but that he is full of all
manner of infirmity. Then he has reached the end of this stage; and he who has
arrived at this point is not far from the threshold of great mercies, by which
he shall enter into the Bride-chamber of Christ. Then, when the day of his
death shall come, he shall be brought in by the Bridegroom with great
rejoicing.
It is hard to die. We know that little trees do
not strike their roots deep into the earth, and therefore they cannot stand
long; so it is with all humble hearts, who do not take deep root in earth, but
in heaven. But the great trees which have waxed high, and are intended to
endure long upon the earth, these strike their roots deep, and spread them out
wide into the soil. So it is with the men who in old times and now at this
present have been great upon earth; they must needs through many a struggle and
death die unto themselves, before all the self-sufficiency of their heart can
be broken down, and they can be surely and firmly rooted for ever in humility.
It does however happen sometimes that the Holy Spirit finds easier ways than
those of which we have spoken, whereby He brings such souls to Himself.
The third degree in which the grain of wheat dies
belongs only to the perfect, who with unflagging diligence and ceaseless desire
are ever striving to approach perfection. These men's state is one of mingled
joy and sorrow, whereby they are tossed up and down; for the Holy Spirit is
trying and sifting them, and preparing them for perfection with two kinds of
grief and two kinds of joy and happiness which they have ever in their sight.
The first grief is an inward pain and an overwhelming sorrow of heart, in the
sense of the unspeakable wrong done to the Holy Trinity by all creatures, and
specially by the bad Christians, who are living in mortal sin. The second grief
consists in their fellow-feeling for and experience of all the grief and pain
which the Human Nature of Christ has undergone.
The first of the two joys lies in this dying; it
is clear intuition and a perfect fruition to which they are raised in Christ
by the power of the Holy Spirit, that they may enjoy the fruition of Him, and
triumph in all the joys which they hope and believe after this life to behold
in all their perfect fullness. The second triumph is that they are fulfilled in
all the joys which the Human Nature of Christ possessed. This joy such a man
hopes to share as a member of Christ; and, even if he cannot fathom the Abyss
of God, he rejoices therein, for he sees that the overflowings of God's mercy
are unspeakable, and feels that it is good for him that he is vanquished in the
effort to comprehend God's power, and bends down beneath God in his
self-dying.
To this state a man cannot attain except he unite
his will with God, with an entire renunciation and perfect denial of himself
and all selfish love of himself; and all delight in having his own will be
over-mastered and quenched by the shedding abroad in his heart of the Holy
Spirit in the Love of God; so that it seems as if the Holy Spirit Himself were
the man's will and love, and he were nothing and willed nothing on his own
account. Yea, even the Kingdom of Heaven he shall desire for God's sake and
God's glory, because Christ hath earned it in order to supply his needs, and
chooseth to bestow it on him as one of His sons. When in this stage, a man
loveth all things in their right order, God above all things--next the blessed
(Human) Nature of Christ, and after that the blessed Mother of Christ, and the
Saints of all degrees, each according to the rank which God hath enabled him to
attain. When his affections are thus regulated, he sets himself in the lowest
place at the wedding-feast of the Bridegroom. And when the Bridegroom comes Who
has bidden him to the feast, He saith unto him: "Friend, go up higher." Then is
is endowed with a new life, and illuminated with a new light, in the which he
clearly perceives and sees that he alone is the cause of his own evil, that he
cannot with truth throw the blame either on nature, the world, or the devil.
Yea, he confesses that God has appointed him all these exercises and assaults
out of His great love, in order that he may glorify God in overcoming these,
and deserve a higher crown. Further, he perceives and sees that it is God alone
Who has upheld him and stayed his steps, so that he has no longer an
inclination to sin, and Who has removed the occasion to sin that he might not
fall. Yea, what is still worse, he is forced to confess that he has often been
dissatisfied that he was not able to derive more enjoyment from his sins. Thus
all his being is swallowed up in sorrow and remorse for that he is still laden
with his boundless infirmity.
But he hath delight and joy in that he seeth that
the goodness of God is as great as his necessities, so that his life may well
be called a dying life, by reason of such his griefs and joys which are
conformable and like unto the Life of our Lord Jesus Christ, which from
beginning to end was always made up of mingled grief and joy. Grief, in that he
left His heavenly throne and came down into this world; joy, in that He was not
severed from the glory and honour of the Father. Grief, in that He was a Son of
Man; joy, in that He nevertheless was and remained the Son of God. Grief,
because He took upon Him the office of servant; joy, in that He was
nevertheless a great Lord. Grief, because in human nature He was mortal, and
died upon the Cross; joy, because He was immortal according to His Godhead.
Grief, in His birth, in that He was once born of His Mother; joy, in that He is
the only-begotten of God's Heart from everlasting to everlasting. Grief,
because He became in time subject to time; joy, because He was eternal before
all time, and shall be so for ever. Grief, in that the Word was born into the
flesh, and hath dwelt in us; joy, in that the Word was in the beginning with
God, and God Himself was the Word. Grief, in that it behooved Him to be
baptized like any human sinner by St John the Baptist in the Jordan; joy, in
that the voice of His Heavenly Father said of Him: "This is my beloved Son in
Whom I am well pleased." Grief, in that like others, sinners, He was tempted of
the Enemy; joy, in that the Angels came and ministered unto Him. Grief, in that
He oftentimes endured hunger and thirst; joy, because He Himself the Lord of
men and Angels. Grief, in that He was often wearied with His labours; joy,
because He is the rest of all loving hearts and blessed spirits. Grief,
forasmuch as His holy life and sufferings should remain in vain for so many
human beings; joy, because He should thereby save His friends. Grief, in that
He must needs ask to drink water of the heathen woman at the well; joy, in that
He gave to that same woman to drink of living water, so that she should never
thirst again. Grief, in that He was wont to sail in ships over the sea; joy,
because He was wont to walk dry-shod over the waves. Grief, in that He wept
with Martha and Mary over Lazarus; joy, in that He raised their brother Lazarus
from the dead. Grief, in that He was nailed to the Cross with nails; joy, in
that He promised Paradise to the thief by His side. Grief, in that He thirsted
when hanging on the Cross; joy, in that He should thereby redeem His elect from
eternal thirst. Grief, when He said: "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken
Me?" joy, in that He would with these words comfort all sad hearts. Grief, in
that His soul was parted from His body; and He died and was buried; joy,
because on the third day He rose again from the dead with a glorified body.
Thus was all His life, from the Manger to the
Cross, a mingled web of grief and joy. Which life He hath left as a sacred
testament to His followers in this present time, who are converted unto His
dying life, that they may remember Him when they drink of His cup, and walk as
He hath walked. May God help us so to do! Amen.
[16] John xii. 24.