Their general chapter meeting takes place twice a year for the good and benefit of Christianity: in summer in the woods, in winter in the town hall. Whoever wants to enter this order should himself have two books at hand. He shall preach from the larger book. The first thing that is written in this book is the Credo in deum,50 and thereafter it is filled with learned sermons all ordered according to the articles of Christian faith. From the smaller book he shall recite to our Lord the hours of the Holy Office. The first master51 who will take up this way of life will be the son of the king of Rome. His name before God in German is Alleluia. The pope shall invest him with his immediate power. After that he shall himself choose and shall receive this way of life from the pope.52
Then many important masters shalljoin him. They should not be younger than twenty-four years of age. They shall accept no one except those who are healthy and have had advanced studies. They must all be priests, confessors, and sound, well-qualified masters. The first master shall be called their prince and should be accompanied by three brothers, because the Christian faith shall undergo trials most frequently in his case. There should be one master for every thirteen of them. They shall call him their protector, and he should be accompanied by two brothers. Their power is very great, for no bishop is their equal. Wherever they go, they shall be authorized to preach, hear confessions, and sing and say mass. In each diocese there shall be seven of them, signifying the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. In an archdiocese there shall be thirteen of them, signifying the holy convent of our Lord.53 At Rome there shall be thirty of them, signifying the blessed selling that took place with Christ." The greatest number of them shall be in Jerusalem where Jesus suffered death for our sake. Their small chapter meeting shall be held every three weeks, signifying the complete union with the Holy Trinity; by five brothers, signifying the five wounds; or by seven, signifying the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit; and thereafter by as many as can gather together. Wherever they eat or drink, the oldest in the order shall speak for a while about Christ's deeds and his holy life, and the others should be silent.
I also saw their bed-how they should lie on straw between two white woolen blankets with a pillow under their head. This should be placed under the bottom blanket on the straw. Their loins shall never sit nor lie comfortably, for they shall be hardy all their days until their holy martyrdom, as was the case with Christ. However, if an old master who has served well, and because of age cannot practice austerity up until the end of the order, should become sick or weak, he should be bedded in comfort and lovingly cared for, because they are still capable of giving much holy advice. And they should also be given the best nourishment. This holy life shall continue in great tranquility for thirty years. During that time they shall so greatly illumine and instruct Christians that no one shall turn away from the Christian faith because of untutored simplicity.
Woe, thereafter calamity shall strike! The Antichrist shall come55 and assume power over the secular princes by means of gold, precious stones, and unimaginable deceptive cunning, to which they are now so drawn. Hence they follow him quite happily and say that he is their god and lord, and they follow him in solemn procession, presenting him with their seal and proclamations. Alas, then he comes to the spiritual powers. There he also discovers greed and brings such great perverse wisdom that very few bishops, priors, and priests withstand him. But these blessed brothers shall put their life on the line and preach fervently the Christian faith. And they shall give true indulgence for all sins to all those who die in the Christian faith with true sorrow, so that they will be saved without purgatory. Because these pious brothers dealt with people in such a pious manner earlier, many a holy martyr among them shall triumph. Many Jews and some wise heathens shall receive holy baptism and the Christian faith from these brothers. This shall so enrage the Antichrist that he shall impose his stern prohibition and intense severe oppression upon all those who go to their sermons. Whoever then goes there and stands by them is certainly a blessed person.
Then tribulation begins. The good separate from the evil and risk their bodies and all that they have. The Antichrist's messengers arrive there and, first of all, stab the holy preacher with an iron pole because of his Christian faith. God's dear friend must hang there writhing in front of the children of God. Thus do they carry the holy man impaled between them for all the world to see. The evil ones laugh, the good weep. And he sings with the voice of the Holy Spirit: "Credo in deum," and he consoles and calls out: "Follow me, ye holy children of God!" All who then follow him are captured, have their eyes bound, are struck with scourges, and are driven like sheep being stolen to a place where a flood of water is passing by. There, their blessed heads are all chopped off and hurled into the water. Where there is no water, they are driven onto a field and martyred. God gives the evil ones the idea to bind the eyes of the good so that in their prison they may not see the great splendor, the enormous power and honor that the accursed ones have from their lord, the Antichrist. So may they the better persevere; for they, too, are just human, as are these. They take the dead blessed preacher and put him high up on the same place from which he spoke God's word and was martyred. Those who wish to preach there according to the Christian faith have to be living martyrs and great saints.
The Antichrist's power is so great that no one is his equal. When the pope can no longer do battle against him, he turns to the holy brothers and suffers what they suffer. Then Enoch and Elijah come to their aid.56 They are now in sweet paradise, living there in both soul and body in the same bliss and eating the same food that had been given to Adam if he had remained there. They, too, in obedience to God, must avoid the same tree from which Eve and Adam ate the apple when they broke God's commandment. I have seen this tree. It is not large, and its fruit is outwardly quite lovely and desirable like a rose; but under the surface it is by nature very sour. That signifies the bitter harm of sin, which God never intended for man. Because this fruit is so detrimental for a noble person that it is still poison for us, God has put his prohibition on it, for he never wanted to cause human beings distress.
In this final agony, after these blessed brothers have consoled the simple folk until no good person is left who has not suffered a martyr's death, most of these brothers will be still alive. Though innocent, their suffering is so great and their prayers so holy, that God then sends Enoch and Elijah to them, who console them and lead them out of the woods so that they might go preach again and prepare for death. These two lords, who then come from paradise, are so wise in divine truth that by their might they turn the Antichrist around and drive him off. They tell him clearly who he is, from what power his emblems derive, how he has gotten where he is, and what sort of end he shall have. When the perverted ones hear what a pitiful god had been given them because of their great greed and because of their lust for the many kinds of evil that God sees in their hearts, then many a noble man and many a fair woman among Christians who had followed the Antichrist are converted. And so these blessed must be martyred, for then the Antichrist is given supreme power on earth. He commands that all the men be rounded up so that he can test their Christian faith. On the streets red-hot griddles are made ready to which they are then driven all together. Their wives and fair children are summoned. Then they are commanded to choose: whether, by denying their faith, they prefer to keep their lovely wives and dear children, their riches and honor or, by keeping their Christian faith, they are willing to cook on the griddles and lose their lives. The men say: "Oh, dear wives and children, do not think about me; remember rather that you are Christians and offer your bodies to God. Then we shall not be separated."
Then the men are bound hand and foot and are thrown onto the griddles. The women and children say: "Lord Jesus, Child of Mary, for love of you we gladly want to suffer the same torment."
Then a pit filled with fire is made ready. The children and the mothers are hurled into it, and firewood and straw are heaped upon them. Thus are they burned to death.
28. The Fivefold Power of Love. Because of the Weakness of People and the Treachery of the World One Must Remain Silent About the Truth
This book was begun in love, it shall also end in love; for nothing is as wise or as holy or as beautiful or as strong or as perfect as love. Our Lord Jesus Christ said: "Speak, Father; I shall now be silent as you are silent in the mouth of your Son, angered because of the weakness of people. Just so did my humanity speak trembling at the treachery of the world; for it rewarded me with bitter death."
1. Three Kinds of Sorrow, Ten Kinds of Benefits, and the Path of Angels and Devils
here are three kinds of sorrow by which the sinner conforms himself again to the seal that was inscribed on the cross when sins crushed us. The first is sorrow for guilt, which has three qualities: bitterness in the heart out of which the sin flowed; shame in the senses that took pleasure in the sin; a clear image of the life in which the person became evil. This sorrow reconciles the sinful soul to the heavenly Father and frees her from the eternal pains of hell. The second is sorrow of penance, which also has three qualities: intense striving and constant aspiration and pure victory over all temptations. This sorrow completely frees the sinner from purgatory. The third is sorrow out of love, for it is true to God alone. It considers an insult to God much more serious than harm to itself or its own interior suffering. Also, it would rather go body and soul to hell than sadden its lover with a serious sin. This sorrow out of love makes people on earth holy and perfect, and raises them up before God in heaven. When the blessed soul is in such a state, God is dearer to her than she is to herself, and sin is her most serious regret.
The blessed person who has these three kinds of sorrow receives the honor here on earth that God lets his fiery spirit shine forth unceasingly from his Holy Trinity into this loving soul, just like a bright sunbeam shining forth from the hot sun lights up a new golden shield. The radiant light of God and the loving soul that so delightfully sparkles forth from both of them has such great power and shines so brightly for all who are in heaven, purgatory, and hell that the highest angels, Cherubim and Seraphim, feel an intimate closeness to the loving soul, and in this same light, on fire with boundless love, they descend to the soul as it flames with love.' That is the path of the noble princes2 to the pampered soul in this poor body, for the angel and the loving soul are from God a whole nature in their innate chastity and in the fire of love in the Seraphim. But acquired chastity, adorned and illuminated with the flowing fire of divine love, beams forth downward into the Cherubim.' Toward them in turn fiery bright joys of love burst forth from the Seraphim, for they4 are on fire with love. This is why the exquisite radiance travels down, causing them5 to flash with love. The angels that are given to us in baptism cannot tend this burning love, for God has not given them the heat. Rather, they are given to us to cultivate our virtue; and their noble presence and our best free will sanctify all our actions and drive the devil's cunning and power away from our five senses. But the great fiery radiance that lights up everything, as it descends from the Holy Trinity into the loving soul, strikes such fear into the devils that they dare not pass through this holy ray. Because of it they suffer much humiliation. The paths that God has allowed them in the air-these can be taken from them by an earthly human being through union with God. They can freely travel over those paths where evil wants them to be. But where they sense a loving soul in a body, they must pass by under the earth. Also, they cannot foul the air where they find those blessed who truly live free of serious sin. All the sins they bring to us they must always begin on earth. As we then ascend to God with our Christian faith in our best strivings, they lose all their power and must hasten away from us.
2. Two Kinds of Suffering, Four Kinds of Benefits, and the Manifold Host of Sins
I thank God for all goodness and I find fault with myself the while I live, for God does not punish without a reason. As long as a person has the ability to sin, he needs suffering as well as virtues. That suffering is very profitable which a person inflicts upon himself for the love of God after seeking counsel. But that suffering is much nobler and more useful which God inflicts upon us by means of his enemies or his friends, since he is nobler than all tormentors. Christ did not redeem us with the pain that he inflicted upon himself; rather, he taught us how we should serve him in toil and suffering. But he redeemed us with the suf fering that his enemies inflicted upon him, despite his innocence, and with his woeful, shameful death, when no one remained his faithful friend except one maiden: Mary, his mother, was truly inwardly united to him, as she outwardly remained there standing near him.
As I, in my disloyalty, was being ill-tempered because of my suffering, God gave me this consolation and said: "Look, no one can do without suffering because it purifies a person of his many sins from hour to hour." Alas, I saw such a huge and frightening host of sins of all kinds following us, as though all the mountains, all stones, every drop of rain, all grass, trees, greenery, and sand were all living persons and were trying to crush us so that we would never ascend to God. Alas, for the pitiful mote sins that we cannot express in words; for them that suffering is visited upon us here which we carry secretly on our wretched body. Second, the bitterness of suffering protects us from a future fall, which often causes a pure heart to tremble, though it carries enclosed within it God's spirit. Third, the nobility of suffering makes us worthy to receive God's favor; for if I receive all my comfort, my necessities, and my earthly consolation with fear, with dread, and with a lonely heart, then God is present with his consolation.
3. God Shall Weigh All Innocent Suffering and Also the Blood of Three Kinds of People
On the last day, Christ Jesus shall hold aloft a glorious scale before his Father. Upon it will lie his holy toil and his innocent suffering, and in it and next to it all the blameless torment, humiliation, and interior pain that was ever suffered by human beings for the love of Christ. Indeed, when the right side of the scales sinks, those rejoice the most who have much upon it. The blood of virgins by its nature, the blood martyrs shed for their Christian faith, and other blood spilled through killing but shed in innocence during justified self-defense: this is what the holy Son of God shall weigh together with his blood, because it was poured out in true innocence. Marriage blood is not put onto the scale. Why? It is beforehand impure, but it extinguishes that very sin that arises from carnal knowledge.6
4. The Power of Marvelous Love Is Manifold; How the Soul Sinks. Four Kinds of Humility. The Sevenfold Beauty of the Loving Soul
O wondrous Love of God, you possess great sacred power, you illumine the soul, teach the senses, and bestow full strength on all virtues. Fortunate am I, poor village maid, that I ever beheld you, dear Lady. 0 Love, you are full of delight and worthy of praise in all your acts. This is what I experience in my soul. All virtues are your subjects. But sinking humility that has not been fouled with arrogance in spirituality, and chastity-innate or acquired, that are both completely pure-these two virtues must accompany love, though they are subject to her.
This love passes through the senses and storms the soul with all its might. All the while that love grows in the soul, it ascends to God longingly and, richly flowing, opens up to receive the wonder that is approaching. It dissolves through the soul into the senses. Then does the body gain its share, so that it is refined with respect to all things.
Can someone who loves God have evil habits? Nowhere do I find this to be the case; such great power does genuine love of God have. And yet the soul is never so utterly flooded with divine love that she is no
t often tempted by earthly things. This love a soul can never receive that is riddled with false love. When love has grown to ripeness in the soul, it has also ascended as far as is humanly possible. For love is limited in its capacity. If it did not have a limit, alas, sweet God, how many a pure heart would burst in sweet bliss.
When the soul in her pursuit of love and the great longing of her God-stalking heart has ascended the lofty mountain of powerful love and beautiful knowledge, she acts like the pilgrim who has climbed mountains with great zest but then climbs down the other side in great fear, so that he does not take a tumble. Just so, when the soul has been permeated by the radiant heat of long love and has thus become faint in the embrace of the Holy Trinity, she begins to sink and to cool, as does the sun when it descends from its highest point and sinks down into the night. God knows, this is what happens to the soul and also to the body. The soul, rich in love, sinks downward under the pull of profound humility and constantly retreats from what God does to her out of love. This is very agreeable to her because of her noble nature, which God and she fill to the same single end. Also, she turns the eye of her desire from all things in order to be able to gain much praise for God. The body, too, sinks far down when it serves its enemy,' obeys without complaint, and avoids its friends to God's honor. The soul sinks deeper still because she has more strength than the body. She sinks with great zeal to the lowest place that God holds in his power. Oh, how dare I name this place for those who know nothing of sinking humility.
The Flowing Light of the Godhead Page 16