Greco-Christian stream·Beguine Mystics·The Flowing Light of the Godhead — Books I-VII (complete)·Book VI

Book VI

Forty-three chapters covering prelates and obedience (I-IV), the eschatological return and martyrdom of Enoch and Elijah (XV — the most extended apocalyptic passage after Book IV Ch XXVII), Christ's soul soaring in the Trinity and Mary's office of intercession (XVI, XXXIX), the threefold place where God speaks with the soul (XXIII), the Trinity-as-orb pre-creation image (XXXI — clote, "ball" or "orb"), the soul's farewell to ten things at death (XXVIII), the long death-prayer of Mechthild's intercession for all states (XXXVII), the closing chapter explicitly attributing the book's authorship to her (XLIII). Named figures: Sir Dietrich the canon (mentioned in marginal note at Ch III); Brother B. of the Preaching Order (Ch XLII — addressed by initial only). Latin preserved: Venite benedicti Patris mei (Ch XI), Ecce agnus Dei (Ch XXXVI), In manus tuas commendo spiritum meum (Ch XXVII closing), Requiescant in pace (Ch XXXVII), Deo gratias (Ch XLIII closing). Glossary anchors from Books I-V hold.

This is the sixth part of this book.

I. How a Prior or Prioress or other prelate shall conduct themselves toward their subjects. The first chapter.

Great fear lies at power. When one says: You are now our prelate or our Prior or our Prelatess²⁷ — God knows, dear person, you are tempted to the highest. Then must you with great humility make your prostration and go at once to prayer, and let God console you. Then you must turn your heart in holy God-love, so that every brother or sister entrusted to you, you love specially in all their distresses. You must be with your subjects and brothers lovingly joyful or kindly earnest, and merciful you must be toward all their labour, and with sweet words you must send them out — to preach boldly and hear confession joyfully, for God has sent them into this world that they shall be redeemers and helpers of the poor sinners, just as Christ was the redeemer of all the world and journeyed down from the high palace of the holy Trinity into this puddled world.

Thus shall you speak to each brother with bottomless humility of your pure heart:

Ah dear person, I unworthy of all goodness, I am your servant with all service that I can render, and not your lord. But alas, I have power over you, and with heart-loving God-love I send you out. I have great mercy on your labour, yet I have the discernment: I rejoice in the highest worth which the heavenly Father has prepared for you. Now I send you in that same name as Jesus went from his Father, when he sought the one lost sheep so long that he died of love. The true God-love must guide you on holy ways and in useful labours. I will send my soul's longing and my heart's prayer and the tears of my sinful eyes with you, that God may, holy and love-full, send you back to me for love. Amen.

Thus shall you console¹ all your brothers as they go out. You shall also gladden them when they come back. You shall go before them into the guest-house and prepare from God's generosity for God's disciples all the needful comfort that you can ever fulfil. Yes, person, you yourself shall wash their feet; you remain yet master or mistress, and are humbly subject to them. You shall not long be with the guests. You shall tend the convent in ordering; the guests shall not long wake. That is a holy matter. You shall every day go into the infirmary and anoint them with consoling God-words, and refresh them with earthly things generously, for God is rich above all cost. You shall keep pure beside the sick, and shall in God sweetly laugh with them. Their secret need shall you yourself bear from them, and faithfully, lovingly ask them what their secret sickness is, and stand by them truly. Then God's sweetness flows into you.

You shall also go into the kitchen and see that the necessity of the brothers of the convent is so good, that your stinginess and the cook's laziness do not steal from our Lord the sweet song in the choir. For a starved priest never sings beautifully; on top of that, a hungry man cannot study deeply. Thus must God lose through the worst much that is best.

In chapter you must with sweet mood be just, and therein punish according to the guilt equally. You must guard yourself greatly that you not follow your power against the brothers' will or the convent's will, for great division comes from this. You must ever bless yourself against the pride-thoughts which alas, with good appearance fall into the heart and say: Yes, you are above them all Prior or Prioress, you may well do what you think good. No, dear person, with this you break the holy God-peace. With submitted bearing and with loving joys you shall speak this: Dear brother or sister, how does this please you, and then according to their best will so order yourself.

When your brothers or sisters of your convent offer you honour, you shall inwardly fear with sharp guarding of your heart, and shall outwardly be ashamed with well-bred bearing. All complaint shall you mercifully receive, and all counsel shall you faithfully give. Would your brothers build high? — that you shall holily turn aside, and say thus: Ah dear brothers, we will build the holy Trinity a blissful palace in our soul with the timber of the holy Scripture and with the stones of the noble virtues. The first stone of the lordly palace, in which the eternal God without end shall lovingly fondle his love-delightful bride after his mighty pleasure and after her tasting longing, is the bottomless humility — which is well shaped with the sweet contentment in earthly transience, where the greedy pride and the cutting empty honour never give their power so greatly that we build as earthly lords or ladies. But we will build as heavenly princes on earth. So we sit on the last day with the poor Jesus, like to the lordly apostles. Dear brothers, we will build our heavenly dwelling with divine joy, and our earthly schooling we will build with cares, for we have no certain term to live until tomorrow.

You shall have an eagle's eye, and mark and look upon your subjects in God, lovingly and not cunningly. Find you anyone secretly tempted, ah, stand by him with all love; so cannot God let it be — he must be intimate with you.

The blessed brothers who have any office, to them I will say this true speech which I saw in the holy Trinity, when I was in my exiled prayer. When the person prays in Christian belief, with such a humble heart that he cannot bear any creature's experience to be in him, and with such an exiled soul that all things must yield in his prayer except God alone, then is he a divine god with the heavenly Father. Yet the person thinks then best how rightly base he is in himself; he also fears himself in the sweet embrace so greatly that nothing is known to him but all God's honour. But when the person labours in right usefulness, through true distress, with the same love with which he has prayed, then is he a human god with Christ. But all that one chatters and labours without usefulness and without need, that is all dead before God. When alone the person for God's love and not for earthly reward teaches the dull, converts the sinner, comforts the troubled, and brings the despairing back to God, then is he a spiritual god with the Holy Spirit.

Yes, the very blessed person who does all things — which are praiseworthy to God and possible for a person to do — that he does them in alike love, to God's praise, with steady meaning of all his heart: so is he a whole person with the holy Trinity. But the dust of sins, which falls upon us almost without our thanks, becomes quickly through love's fire reduced to nothing, as our soul-sinking touches the Godhead with the exiled, sighing, sweet longing which no creature can withstand. When she begins to climb, the dust of sin falls from her; then she becomes with God one God, so that what he wills, she wills, and they cannot otherwise be united with whole union.

Ah person, you shall every day or every night give to our dear Lord God an unhindered hour, that you may without hindrance lovingly pray within. For the heavenly gift with which God is wont to greet and teach his chosen Beloved is by nature so noble and so fine, and flows so sweetly when the eternal God comes to the love-delightful soul in the lordly bride-bed. For he is so sorely wounded by her love that he has refused all things for more than thirty years which were pleasing to him, that he might kiss her through and embrace her with his bare arms. Would you here think — how could you be so vulgar! You must give him against thirty years one hour a day.

When I, the poorest of all people, go to my prayer, I adorn myself after my ignobility. So I clothe myself with the puddle that I myself am. Then I shoe myself with the noble time that I have lost all my days, and so I gird myself with the pain that I have deserved. Then I take about myself a mantle of wickedness of which I am full. So I set upon my head a crown of the secret shame that I have committed against God. Hereafter I take in my hand a mirror of true knowing; so I look into it, who I myself am; so I see, alas, nothing but all O woe!

These clothes are to me far dearer to wear than all earthly goods after wish to have, and yet are to me beside that so heavy in sorrowful impatience that I were rather clothed with hell and ordered with all devils without my guilt. Ah alas, how often the robbers of unsteadiness come and take from us these clothes, when we² please ourselves and we say in our guilt that we are guiltless — then are we with empty honours robbed and with pride struck down, then are we naked more than naked. O woe, how greatly may we then be ashamed before God and before his friends and before all creatures! Will we overcome all our shame with great honours, then must we again with ourselves clothe ourselves thus. Thus adorned I seek Jesus my sweet Lord, and I find him with no things so swiftly; though they be heavy and unfitting. One should rightly joyfully step forward with mighty longing and with guilty shaming and with flowing love and with humble fear; so vanishes the foulness of sins before the divine eyes of our Lord, and so he begins lovingly to light up toward the soul, and she begins to flow with heart-loving love. There the soul loses all her guilt and dries up her sorrow, and so he begins to teach her all his will. So she begins to taste his sweetness, and so he begins to greet her with his Godhead, that the strength of the holy Trinity goes through all her soul and her body, and there she receives the true wisdom, and so he begins to fondle her, that she becomes weak. So she begins to suck, so that he becomes love-sick, and so he begins to temper the measure, when he knows her measure better than she herself. So she begins to desire to keep great faithfulness to him, and so he begins to give her the full knowing, and so she begins joyfully to taste in her flesh from his love, and so he begins to confirm all the gifts with holy will in her soul. Would she then guard herself against the ignoble love of her flesh and against the greedy sweetness of all earthly things, then can she perfectly love and win God many a praise in all things.

Now dear person, yet there are two things from which you shall with holy diligence guard yourself, for they bring never holy fruit; that is, that a man or woman in the devotion of good works and good customs will perform much, that he may be chosen as prelate. To this sense my soul is angry. When they then grasp the power, then become their un-virtues so manifold, that no one is consoled by him, who chose him with great longing. So is he then driven from the honours, and so are his false virtues turned to blame.

The other is, when a person is praiseworthily tempted without all guilt, that he then so transforms himself that he never desires to come out of the testing. That is a sign of many un-virtues. Although he is praiseworthy in it, yet he should also fear and humble himself. A truthful lady and a good man, who would after my death gladly read this little book and cannot speak with me.

II. Of the rule of a canon: how he shall conduct himself. This is come from God.

We shall greet the people in the Holy Spirit with his divine fulness, and we shall thank them for their merciful gift. But we shall more thank with the fellowship of all creatures the heavenly Father for the holy gift which he out of his holy Trinity pours into the sinner's heart from day to day, and without ceasing. — That the eagle flies so high, he need not thank the owl.

I prayed for a lord for his longing. This is the holy answer from God; and he speaks thus to me: His longing is fitting for humble life, and my gift is great which I give him, and his will is holy: yet he shall rightly remain where he is. This rule has God sent him, the high Pope from the heavenly kingdom, and says thus: He shall pray ever, always, without ceasing, according to priestly ordering. To him I will give my divine sweetness, of which he shall enjoy in the wilderness of his heart. When he is tempted, he shall mightily call upon me, then I will swiftly help him. He shall fully pay his guilt and shall make his cost small. He shall have no one in his cost for lordship nor for hire, but he shall keep pure messengers for his right need. He shall not burden himself with his kin, but if one would follow him, he should help. He shall wear such light clothes as he now wears; but beside his skin he shall clothe himself with hard cloth against the manifold sweetness which he in his skin has received. He shall also sleep upon straw between two woollen cloths, and two pillows he shall have under his head, and by day he shall lay a fair coverlet over his bed, and his bed shall stand in the same place where it stood before openly. A mat shall lie before his bed, and a foot-block. Thus with humble heart shall he give good example against an evil life. He shall also have two scourges beside his bed, with which he shall chastise himself when he awakes.

Every day at one time this shall be his prayer at his long prostration thus: Lord, eternal Father, God from the heavenly kingdom, I unworthy person thank you, Lord, that you have inclined your grace to me. Now I beg you, dearest Father, with all your wonder, that your sweet heaven-flood, which pours down without ceasing out of the bottomless living fountain of your whole holy Trinity, must purify my soul without ceasing from all spots. Per Dominum nostrum.

Hereafter I asked: Lord, how shall he conduct himself without sin in the earthly honour? Then our Lord said: He shall hold himself with steady fear, just like a mouse that sits in the trap and awaits its death. The lowest part of the trap, that is this earthly honour; the upper part my almighty strength. The gloss says our Lord: Whoever desires that I taste rightly to him, shall ever at all times in all things shudder before the spark of his flesh, where the heart plays with secret pleasure. Therefore that he eat, he shall be content and measured; when he sleeps, he shall be well-bred and alone with me. When he is with the world, he shall be a mouse in his heart. When he confesses, he shall be truthful and obedient, and all things shall he fulfil with his confessor's counsel.

III. God gives lordship. How the wicked lambs become.³

That this lord himself is chosen lord to dean, that is God's will, for he has spoken thus: I have therefore set him from one chair upon another, that he should be a food of the bucks. Gloss: That God calls the cathedral-canons bucks, that he does because their flesh stinks of unchastity in the eternal truth, before his holy Trinity. The buck's hide is noble; so it is with their lordship and their prebend. But when this hide goes off with death, then has she lost all her nobility.

And our Lord God was asked, with what these buck-lambs might become. Then our Lord said thus: Would they eat the fodder which Sir Dietrich lays in the manger — that is the holy penance and the faithful counsel in confession — then shall they become one kind of lamb that one calls wether-lambs with horns. The horns is the spiritual power that they shall holily enjoy for God's praise. One should be strong, and trust fully in God, for he says: I myself will help to pay the lord's guilt with luck.

IV. Of the discernment and fear which keep the senses from earthly things.

O woe, poor me! I lament to God from the heavenly kingdom that I am now worse than I was thirty years ago, for the creatures that there helped me bear my exile should not be so noble, if the poor body is to recover. Therefore I must without ceasing set two guards between my soul and all earthly things, that they do not taste to me at my flesh more than my poor need shows. They also keep my senses, that these earthly things do not mislead me into a greed to have much, to enjoy long. The one guard is discernment, which orders all things to enjoy perfectly after the will of God, so that the person ever has a strange heart toward all earthly things, and so strange that if the person loses earthly things, his heart becomes light, and his soul so free and his senses so untroubled, that to him it is rightly as well in God as if his dearest friend had taken from him his heaviest burden. For whatever person earthly things are not a heavy burden to, he cannot before God be called a true spiritual person. Therefore our Lord said thus: In distress one uses all things rightly, for the good poverty is needful, therefore it is holy, and there the excess can bring no darkness into the soul.

My other guard, that is the holy fear, which with the God-wisdom watches that my soul to the earthly things which are given her cannot smile; but she receives them, as if it were a temptation, through the anxiety of greed and of empty honours, which has so darkened many a vowed person in spiritual life that he with the light of discernment and the fire of love, and tasting God's sweetness, peace, and mercy, has lost the desire so surely that he himself knows it not.

Thus said our Lord: Yes, they speak fair likenesses; they will therefore love earthly things and draw much to themselves, that they may the better serve me. But they serve themselves more than me. The person who makes some comfort or profit to himself is his own. But every person should be in himself a Christ, so that the person lives to God and not to himself. The very blessed who lives wholly in God — to him it is all one what he has. For the holy poverty into which God casts the person with his power, just as he cast his dearest Son down from heaven into the street, into the guest-manger — thus also our Lord casts his chosen friends from all earthly comfort, that they may hunger after the heavenly comfort. A true holy person fears earthly luck more than he cares about earthly need. Why? Their dwelling is in the heavenly kingdom and their prison is in this world. Therefore our Lord said: Whoever knows the nobility of my freedom and loves it, cannot bear that he love me alone for myself, but he must love me in the creatures. So I remain the closest in his soul.

V. After love and longing, the beauty of creatures gives knowing with sorrow.

The first knowing that God gave me after the touching of love and after the flowing of longing came with a sorrow. When I saw anything that was fair, or that was dear to me, then I began to sigh, then to weep, and then I began to think and lament and speak thus to all things: Ah no, now beware, for this is not your beloved, who has greeted your heart and lit up your senses and so blissfully bound your soul, that this manifold sweetness of earthly things does not draw you from me. But the nobility of creatures, their beauty and their use — there I will mean God within, and not myself.

VI. In the last time you shall have love, longing, fear, contrition — threefold.

I asked my Lord, how I should conduct myself in the last time of my end. Then our Lord said: You shall conduct yourself at the last time as you conducted yourself in the first time. You shall hold yourself in love and longing, contrition and fear, for these four things were a beginning of your life; therefore they must also be your end. Then I said: Dear Lord, where remain yet two things that are foundation and a crown of the heavenly honour? — that is Christian belief and true trust? Then our Lord said thus: The belief has become a knowing, and the longing has transformed itself into a true certainty. This gloss I saw in his words and know it also in my heart. My threefold contrition lies in three things.

My sins now most regret me; that comes from the love. But the pain of contrition I have lost in the love all-loving. I regret all people's sins, so that to me it is rightly as to one sick who delights in such a noble thing, which he cannot have, or alas seldom. — Of that must my heart be sorrowful, and my soul hunts with her longing after the great wild beast. Therefore our Lord said: One cannot catch the great wild beasts, unless one chase them into a water. So no sinner is ever converted unless he be chased with hasting longing of holy people into the deep tears of their heart.

All good works that I have neglected from my love of flesh without true distress regret me. Of this our Lord said: One cannot build any dwelling unless one have a place;⁴ so one can receive no reward in the heavenly kingdom without good deed of good works. — Let our Lord, through heart-loving love, that he may say to every soul: Take, my dearest, this manifold worth which you yourself have earned, that God may speak this word with truth to the soul's honour and love, just as if he were not the cause of her blessedness, and she may receive full honour at body and soul.

Therefore it is to our Lord toward our labours, toward our poverty, toward our pains so heart-loving dear what we here in true love bear, that he so nobly yields his justice as ever befits his Godhead. That I have grasped in the heap of God-gifts.

VII. Our own will can withstand the back-hooker.⁵ The good soul is swift toward God.

In my fellowship is a spiritual person, from whom I suffer many a distress for his evil customs, so that the person will follow me in no thing. That I lamented to God with all my longing, and greatly wondered whence that could be. Then our Lord said: See what it is. Then I saw that a singular devil clung to the person and drew her back from all good things. Then I said: Who has given you the power, that you do God such great disgrace at this person? Then said the devil: No one has given me the power but only her own free will.

In these words I saw that the devil follows all spiritual people with such mocking ridicule who give him leave at themselves, so that they live lyingly, that he excuses himself before God and all creatures. Then I said: Who shall help this poor person, that she may be redeemed from you? Then said the devil, compelled by God: No one can help her but her own free will, for God has given her the power that she may turn her senses about. Whenever she does that, I must flee from her. — Now I ask you in the eternal truth: what is your name? Then said the devil: I am called the back-hooker, and this throng you see behind me are all my companions of the same office that I have, and there are so many of us as we find many persons who do not follow their faithful mastery in good things.

By this my soul became so swift toward God that she rightly raised herself without labour of herself, and wound herself rightly into the holy Trinity, like a child winds itself into the mantle of its mother and lays itself rightly on her breast. Then my soul said with the might and with the voice of all creatures thus: Ah, dearest, now consider my distress in this person, that you, Lord, transform her senses with your divine sweetness. — No, said our Lord, of my sweetness she is not worthy, but I will make her sick in her body, that she from the pain becomes so lame that she rarely walks sinful ways. And I will make her so dumb that she shall keep silent of evil words. She shall also become so blind that she shall be ashamed to see emptiness. But whatever one does to her, one does to me. Truly that happened afterwards within fourteen days. Alleluia.

VIII. Between God and Lucifer is twofold purgatory. How the devil torments the souls.

Our human brother Jesus Christ has with all virtues ascended into heaven into the height of his Godhead, and no one can follow him there unless he have also all the virtues, just as the holy Trinity has lordly set itself above all things into the blissful height with all its virtuous friends, after that ever lordly fair and joyful, as they bring the praiseworthy likeness of his divine virtues with them. Yes, every virtue that here on earth is performed with good will without falseness, adorned with love and fulfilled without sin — these are in the heavenly kingdom the strings that ring there ever without end out from the faithful soul and from the good-willed body into the holy Trinity; so that the Father thanks his Son that he has drawn them with virtues there, and that the Son honours the Father that he has created them, and that the Holy Spirit tenderly compels the Father and the Son, that the holy Trinity so mightily flows toward her and so sweetly sings, that they all mean and love all things with God.

So is the sinful devil Lucifer sunken down beneath all things, with all those alone who love and mean un-virtues. Between God's heights and the devil's abyss is yet twofold purgatory. In the two purgatories is manifold pain and distress. The first purgatory is the useful trouble that we in this world suffer in manifold pains. The other purgatory is after this life so great that it begins before hell's mouth and ends before heaven's gate. But the devils cannot torment the souls further than upon earth, in the air, and in all the places where the person sinned, and in all the heights where he has defiled the air with his sins. Therewith the devil shows them that their shame and their pain may be the greater for all the sins that here remain unchanged.

But when they become so blessed that they are released from the devils' hands, then they burn in themselves painfully through small need. After that they come with help and suffering above all distress — that is, so near to the heavenly kingdom, that they have all joy, save threefold joy they have not yet: that they do not see God; that they have not received their honour; that they are not crowned. Thus is the purgatory upon earth and in the air between hell and the heavenly kingdom. It is, however, in a spiritual way that the soul can suffer no pain from earthly things when she comes from this body.

IX. He who honours the saints, them they honour and console at death.

That one honours the saints with fair remembrance and with all the company one can have on the day when God has honoured them with a holy end, that is to them so welcome that they come present there with all the lordship that they from merit have received. That I saw truly on Saint Mary Magdalene's day, when one honoured God with praiseworthy song for the great honour she has received in reward. She started in the choir after the holy song, and she looked into every singer's eyes, and she stepped and said: All those who honour my end — to their end I will come, and I will honour them again; all after as they can receive, so will I serve them. Four great archangels who bore her between them, and of the little angels there were many beyond human counting. Then I asked, what the four princes were called. Then she said: The first is called strength, the second longing, the third good will, the fourth steadfastness. For with these four virtues I have overcome all my heart-sorrow; therefore God has given me as reward both servants, lords, and crown. Of other saints it is also thus. Then said our Lord: When one blows the smallest spark, it gives heat and shining in the heaven-fire, beside which burning saints are.

X. Prayer, masses, God-words, good people's life, fasting and carrinae (forty-day penances) free the souls from purgatory.

I prayed for a soul; the body was murdered in a sinful life. Then said our Lord thus: Seven years' fasting and seven carrinae⁶ would be as a raindrop in a great fire. Within thirty years he is not begged off from me, for he with foolish pride lost his body thirty years before his time which he must pay me in distress. The soul said: Ah Lord, yes he yet may wait for your goodness. God says: Yes, where two strive with each other, there the weaker must go under. The weaker will I be, although I am almighty. Three thousand masses is his ransom, for he never heard a whole Mass, unless he did it for shame. (Soul): Lord, with what was he kept? — (God): When he heard my word, he sighed; for that I rewarded him, when he at last lived, that he then sighed for his sins. — Lord, if his mother's brother — who is a spiritual man, has seen great labour and trouble from his youth to his grey hairs — would offer that for him, and would go out and set himself in the place where he was first known for your love, would you not let the soul go? — Yes, said our Lord. Would I be so greatly compelled, I must give all that one would. — Lord, if the spiritual man gave his good works to the poor soul, how would it then happen to her?

At once God let me see the blessed, to whom I could not come for his unchaste pain, which my soul cannot bear. Then he was fairer than the sun, and he soared in clear bliss high above all earthly sorrow. Then he said joyfully and was very merry: Tell my friends: were the earth golden and the clear sun therein, shining without ceasing both day and night, on top of that the sweet May air, fair flowers with full fruit, I would not one hour be there, so blissful is this life. Yet he was not in the eternal heaven come.

XI. How a scholar has died, and [appears as] a preacher.

Thus says our Lord: I tell you with my burning Godhead and with my living manhood, that his nature is dead a holy death, so that he never does mortal sin again on earth. Then he was seen like to a preacher, and stood upon a red marble pillar and preached to the people thus: Venite, benedicti Patris mei.⁷ Come to me all the blessed and go from me all the unblessed. Then was seen and known that all preachers preach to us and teach from these two words.

XII. How you shall conduct yourself at fourteen things.

When you pray, you shall make yourself small with great humility. When you confess, you shall be truthful. When you do your penance, you shall be diligent. When you eat, you shall be content. When you sleep, you shall be well-bred. When you are alone, you shall be faithful. When you are with people, you shall be wise. When one teaches you good customs, you shall be obedient. When one blames your wickedness, you shall be patient. When you do anything good, you shall think yourself wicked.⁸ When you do evil, you shall at once seek grace. When you are empty, you shall fear. When you are troubled, you shall have great comfort in God. When you labour with your hands, you shall haste much. So can you drive out evil thoughts.

XIII. How spiritual people from blindness guard themselves from the loving-inwardness. Of sixfold power of God's gifts.

Ah, dear Jesus, God from the heavenly kingdom: I must, Lord, of one thing ask you — I cannot longer bear it for the great blindness that I see in this, that spiritual people guard themselves from the divine inwardness thus: When God deigns that his divine heart from love lights up toward the very blessed soul so much that a small spark flies hither into the cold soul, and kindles her so much that the person's heart begins to burn and his soul to melt and his eyes to flow — then our Lord would gladly make an earthly person so heavenly that one might truly follow God in him, love, and know him. So speak the human senses: No, I can well be useful in outward things. Thus speak certain cloister-people, when they are most wise. To this our Lord answers thus:

My Godhead came to earth, my manhood did the labour; my Godhead stepped onto the cross, my manhood suffered death; my Godhead rose from death and bore the manhood into heaven.

All who drive me from them shall by me be driven away. What can the person do in himself? Nothing more than sin! Since manhood never fulfilled anything, save only what my Godhead foreordained.

They say: Lord, it is wisdom that one spare the body when your divine breath, which from your holy Trinity flows down so sweetly and through the soul so mightily presses, takes from the body all its might — then the person is unfruitful.

This says our Lord: One shall not the king's food in vain set down before one has well eaten the earthly need. My singular gift brings singular worth to the person in soul and in body. It gives teaching to the dull and consolation to the wise. It gives also eternal praise and endless honour to the bottomless fountain from which it has flowed, when she with full fruit again swings up where she flowed down from me. Yes, the grace that God is wont to give the person with power and foresight is in itself so noble, and it comes with such great friendship of God, that the person commits not one little sin which would for transient cause turn it from him. O woe, ignoble soul, how can you bear that you turn God from you before you have well used him after his will, for his highest delight in you is hidden. Will you know how to use the holy God-gift and to consume it after God's will?

Yes, she shall well herself teach you, if she be welcome to you. With outward virtues and with inward longing shall you receive her. With humble fear shall you keep her, subject in all distresses. Give her time and place in you; she begs nothing else. She shall melt you so deeply into God that you know his will: how long you shall follow his lordly fondling in yourself, and at what time, and how you shall labour for the sinners and for those in purgatory. And look at every person's distress, whether he be living or dead.

As you have fulfilled this within according to God's delight and according to your soul's might — for she becomes weary in herself while she is bound to her mortal body — after this enjoyment the soul says thus: Lord, flow now from me within and stand by me without. That all my works sink after your gift, and I gladly necessarily lament trouble.

XIV. Complainers in the pain do without six things. How one shall bear sickness, disgrace.

Whoever laments his hindrance in the pain is dull in his knowing, or he is despaired of patience, or he is cooled at love and aged in the virtues, or he is foolish in his senses and also dull in good words.

Therefore our Lord said thus: The person will not be sick and will not be despised; and on what should I then build his honour? — Lord, when the person is sick and despised, with what shall he build the honour? — When he is sick, he shall honour me, serve, love, with only joyful patience; when he is despised, he shall love me and be patient. For that the preachers and confessors are so constrained by their office that they cannot practice it, and yet have holy will — that is not a hindrance of their blessedness; it is an adornment of their aureole.

XV. Of Enoch and Elijah's pain, and of the last preachers, and of Antichrist's wickedness.

O mighty God-love, you have laid on me such sweet distress that my soul torments for wonder. When I think that my body must thus extinguish with death, that I no more shall suffer or praise my dear Jesus, then it is so woe to me, that I then desire — were it possible — to live unto the last day. There compels me the faithful love which is of God to me and not mine. Therefore our Lord said: Shall you die, let it grieve you all your time, however holy you are. Ah Lord, I beg you that my longing die not, when with my body I can no longer earn. Then our Lord said: Your longing shall live, for it cannot die, because it is eternal. Does it labour thus for me until the last time, then shall soul and body come together again. There I set her then back in, so she praises me without end, and she has served me since the first beginning, since you would with Adam have been until now for my love. Thus you would for my love all people's trouble and all people's service fulfil for me. I say more: Your being shall stand until the last person.

Ah very dear of mine, how shall the last person be to whom my life shall be joined? For spiritual people's life becomes at the end of the world very precious.

Thus answers our Lord: Enoch shall be the last person who shall tend spiritual life. After this God showed me the end of this world again, when the last brothers shall be martyred thus: their hair which they shall never cut off, that is from a singular preserve of God's will; with it Antichrist commands them to be hung on the trees. There they hang and die very beautifully, for their heart burns within from the sweet heaven-fire as greatly as the body languishes in the distress. Therefore, between the comfort of the Holy Spirit and the pain of the poor flesh, their soul parts from their body without any shudder of pain.

Elijah and Enoch⁹ wander from India to the sea, and each of them is followed by a great throng who are all Christian people, and from Antichrist flee to them. They are all struck dead, just as one chases mad dogs in the street. They are unforgiven and may not longer live. So follow them others who are secretly Christian, for they know well from God that they cannot otherwise escape the unbelief. Elijah is first martyred and is bound to a high cross and nailed through his hands.

This they do for the fierce hatred that he ever spoke of the saints and what to Christ there happened. They give him no death, but that he may so long languish that he shall renounce the Christian teaching and so turn to Antichrist. So stands the holy God-dear and is never tired of his pains. He comforts the holy Christendom three days and three nights, until his soul goes out. I saw the heavenly Father at his end, and he received Elijah's soul into his human hands,¹⁰ and he said: Come, my dear, it is time at you! And in a heaven-glance God bore him hence.

The unblessed person, the Antichrist, allows not that one may bury the God-dear — that he wills that all Christians despair; in this he is deceived. For all who look upon the body are moved to Christian belief, and would worship him, for they become so full of sweetness from the holy body's presence that they forget the tormenting of death and all earthly good.

Enoch yet lives, for Antichrist delights in this, that he should hear all the wisdom which Enoch knows from God, that he may openly pervert it with his false teaching; and if he could Enoch to himself convert, then would all the world be his with great honours.

Meanwhile, so many of the wicked are by Antichrist drawn, that he sets upon Enoch with horrible words, and then first Enoch tells Antichrist the whole truth thus:

You are a scourge of all the world sent from God for the wicked's wickedness and the good's holiness. You can well the scripture of the old law and as well of the new law, now see how you shall fare after your works. Hereto have you diligently chosen, after the scripture you must be lost. That can you yourself read well. You have also not made the earth nor the heaven; you give the angels not the eternal life; you have not made the person — neither soul nor body. You have to no creature given his natural body; how could you then be God? Your works all with lies and false cunning; the eternal truth is Jesus Christ, who is an eternal God with his Father.

Antichrist says with fierceness: How dare you take my enemy before me, to whom you above me my honours acknowledge? I will console myself for you and I will redeem all the world from you. Take him quickly with my power and pour boiling pitch into his mouth and bind his throat tight, so my enemy is at once silent. Could I hear his words, I would gladly let him longer languish. Hang him thus dead high above all murderers, that all who look upon him shall renounce the Christian faith. He has spoken against my honour; no one needs his teaching. I am long ago foreseen, it shall go for me after my teaching.¹¹

Enoch speaks his holy prayer in his heart thus:

Eternal Father and Son and Holy Spirit, you eternal God undivided, I thank you, Lord, for your long choosing of me, and I praise you, Lord, now in this tormenting. I beg you, Lord, for your and my sheep, who now without shepherd remain; keep them, Lord, especially, and console them secretly. Now receive, Lord, my soul. I have to my body no earthly love.

The answer that God then will give him, and his thanks and his prayer that here stands written, that I saw, and I read it in the holy Trinity written thus:

Dear Son, now haste sorely to me, I am truly in you. Your friends for whom you have prayed me, they shall themselves baptize their children; I will soon free them from Antichrist. They shall in their heart Christian remain, and I will keep them from all doubt. Come, dear darling, I wait for you, and my heart plays toward you.

XVI. How the soul of our Lord dwells in the Trinity and of her office. How she speaks for the sinner, and of the office of our Lady.

As I awake in the night, I test with wisdom my power, whether I, poor one, can pray for this faithless Christendom, which does my body so much sorrow. Sometimes it draws me another way, without bridge and without stair, where I must follow it, bare and barefoot, from all human things. Who can manhood so softly compel? Who can the soul so softly raise up? Who can the senses so highly enlighten, as God who has made them? He does with us wondrous deed. Thus I thought in one night on the holy Trinity, with sweet flowing of my soul, without labour. Then I saw in the height of the whole holy Trinity ungrudgingly²⁸ the soul of our Lord Jesus. His soul dwells steady above all worth in the holy Trinity; there is she surrounded and marvellously worked, and she shines lordly above all creatures fair through the holy three Persons. Then I desired with great breeding, as one is wont to do at court, that I might speak to his honour with the soul of our Lord, for I knew that she did singular wonder.

Then I soared so near to her, that I greeted her thus: Blessed be you, very dear! What wonder you work in this eternal mirror, in which all blessed so marvellously look upon themselves! You have sweet labour in blissful unrest. Then said the soul of our Lord to the other soul thus:

Welcome, my likeness, for I am also a soul as you are. And I have all souls' burden borne with my guiltless body. This is my office. I touch without ceasing this bottomless Godhead, with that I admonish the heavenly Father of his endless love which he toward the human soul bears. I greet also my divine manhood and thank him for my blessedness and admonish him of his fellowship, for he himself was an earthly human, that he remember whence he is come. How great and how noble his kinship with humans is, and let not the human be lost, for no one has himself begotten nor born. Therefore have you overcome all your distress without sin. Thus I admonish God's manhood to singular mercy. And that he think how weak the human is and that he is not created free from his enemies. And that the human must ever more strive like a well-armed man whose eyes yet are bound. That is their dark manhood with which they are bound. Think, noble God-son, how sorrowfully I on earth was in this trouble, and stand by all people in fatherly fashion who bear my likeness in them, for I am your soul. I must also the Holy Spirit to his gift compel, for he must all blessedness to the human from the heavenly kingdom into the earth bring. Should you, eternal Father, shove the bolt of your justice so fast before the heaven's fire, that the poor sinners cannot get in, I lament it to Jesus your dear Son, who has the key of your kingdom in his human hand with your almighty power. The same key was forged in the same land by the Jew's hand. When Jesus turns the key, the cast-off sinner can come to your blessed ones.

This is the heavenly Father's word: My soul cannot bear it that I drive the sinner from me; therefore I follow many a one so long until I grasp him, and keep so narrow a place for him, that no one with his followers can come to me.

Now speaks again our Lord's soul thus: That is my worth and thus am I adorned; the Godhead is my crown, his manhood I have as reward. The Holy Spirit has embraced me and so blissfully gone through, that no creature can equal me nor reach me. Thus I bear without ceasing in this holy Trinity all earthly sinners from hour to hour, that God yet let them not fall into the eternal abyss.

But the Maiden, in whose body I was for lodging when I from the holy Godhead came into her Son's manhood, the Maiden is a shielder of all chastity and a pleader for the tempted, who fear with contrition here before the holy Trinity, where the judgment yet at her hands stands.¹²

XVII. God looks upon the sinner as good. What is right will. Of the good burden.

It is bottomless, that God looks upon the sinner as a converted person; and that is right will, to serve God, that one hastens to me and not back-looks. And I bear all burdens that for my love are taken.

XVIII. You shall look at your heart at all times.

Look into your heart at all times with the Holy Spirit's truth, so all lying becomes bitterly woe to you; for lies drive away divine love and steady in the mood the covered false senses, hatred and fierceness.

XIX. Of the good will that one cannot bring to the deed.¹³

I have many a sorrow borne, that I good will to good works could not bring. That takes from me unsteadiness and powerlessness, and that no one dares counsel me on it, and I dare it, alas, not against my nature venture. This comes from this — since God let me fall from the bliss of the height after my own free choice. When I was so greatly changed that I could find of these things no end, because the mighty love had drawn me with the flame of its fire. So has she pressed me into a bottomless puddle, where I find no ground; that is all that I suffer. This I call not pain, for I would gladly be further in the right least place, that is cast away like a mad dog and no person's friend, in exile, unknown, with poor people in strange land. Now I will be without obedience not, for the holy humble obedience is of all virtues a seal. The good will that the good person has and cannot bring to good deed likens itself to the noble fair flowers with sweet smell without fruit. So has God consoled me: that all good will of the merry good living shall become the eternal bliss flowers, where God for his endless high-time will make crowns, which his chosen ones there shall wear, who him here so faithfully went over land with so manifold good will, which they could not to good works bring. Ah, mild God, now reach me yet your fatherly hand and lead me into love's land, for I have alas lost long fair time. Of this I would, Lord, yet with you recover, for body's comfort and the senses' consolation — these must one with humble fear receive if one shall in the whole truth stand.

XX. This book is come from threefold gift. Love flows. She is rich and good. She becomes sick. Who has riches. God gives pain and also comfort.

This gift which in this book stands written has been given me in threefold fashion: first with great tenderness, then with great intimacy, now with heavy pain. Therein will I gladly remain rather than in the other two; therefore: although the tenderness and the intimacy of God are eternal and in themselves noble, yet are they in this world alas so strange. All who truly know them cannot take them. And also I fear myself in delight most. For so many a sharp distress Christ in this world bore.

But love's nature is, that she at first out-flows of sweetness, then becomes she rich in knowing, the third time becomes she greedy in cast-off-ness. Yes, you are quite unsteady; but alas the right God-love becomes sometimes so sick from the wicked sweetness of empty honours, and from the fondling of pride, and from the sorry raging of wrath, and from the broad longing for earthly things, that she becomes lamed in all her limbs — that is, in all the beginning of her exercise which she has from nature on her. But no one has a whole heavenly kingdom in his heart save him alone who has given himself up from all comfort and from all graces in this world. For delight has sundered us from God, with whom we must with pain come back. Yet God can not let it be, and we can not do without it. He give us his delights in all that we do, leave, and suffer.

XXI. How wicked priesthood shall be lowered. How preachers alone shall preach and be bishops, and of the last preachers.¹⁴

O woe, crown of the holy Christendom, how greatly are you tarnished! Your precious-stones are fallen from you, for you weaken and shame the holy Christian belief. Your gold is rotted in the puddle of unchastity, for you are impoverished and have not the true love. Your chastity is burnt in the swift fire of gluttony, your humility is sunk in the swamp of your flesh, your truth is brought to nothing in the lying of this world, your flowers of all virtues have fallen from you. O woe, crown of the holy priesthood, how have you vanished. You have nothing more than the un-fall of yourself, that is priestly power; with this you fight against God and his chosen friends. Therefore will God lower you before you know,¹⁵ for our Lord says thus: I will move the Pope's heart in Rome with great sorrow, and in the sorrow I will speak to him and lament to him that my shepherds from Jerusalem have become murderers and wolves, for they before my eyes murder the white lambs, and the old sheep are all sick of the head, for they cannot eat the good pasture that grows on the high mountains — that is divine love and holy teaching. Whoever does not know the hell-way, let him look at the debased priesthood — how their way rightly goes to hell, with women and with children and with other open sins.

So is it needful that the last brothers come, for when the mantle is old, then is it also cold. So must I give my bride the holy Christendom a new mantle — that shall be the last brothers as is written before. Son Pope, this shall you fulfil, so can you lengthen your life. That your predecessors live so unlong comes from this — that they do not fulfil my secret will. Thus I saw the Pope at his prayer, and there I heard that God made known this speech to him.

XXII. Of seven things, of which one finds five in the heavenly kingdom and two on earth.

Seven things I must speak to God's honour. Lord God, if it is possible, give it me, that I may never forget them on earth. Five one finds in the heavenly kingdom, two must remain here. The first is the harm of my guilt, for I have sinned and the neglect of good works which I could well have done. The second, that I, Lord, without ceasing wait for you, when you will come, in whatever manner you will keep faith with a holy end to me. The third, the fiery longing that I have after you. The fourth, my burning and extinguishing in me for you. The fifth, your first answering-glance of your lordly face toward me. That could in earth alas after my longing never happen to me; of this my soul often sings, O woe! The sixth I scarcely dare name, I would become dumb, as I know it — I have never heard it named on earth — that is the playful love-flood which from God secretly flows into the soul, and back into him with his strength after her might. What between them then is bliss, no one knows of the others where they work, the one with the other, for everyone finds his part; what he here has laid out is to him there all given back.

This is the heavenly God-love which here in this world very small begins and there never wins end.

The seventh one can scarcely with words move; with Christian belief one can fill it — how great, how high, how wide, how blissful, how lordly, how full of joy, how unspoilable of joys full. Well is he who there shall eternally dwell! The joyful face full of all delight and the holy enjoyment after wish, the over-sweet longing — blissful, hungry, love-full, that flows ever more into the souls overpoweringly from God. Yet then the soul keeps her sweet hunger and yet lives without sorrow.

XXIII. How in three places God speaks with the soul.

In the first place the devil often speaks to the soul; in the other two places he cannot do it. The first place is the person's senses. This place is in common to God, to the devils and to all creatures — to journey in, to speak after their own will. The other place where God speaks with the soul is in the soul. Into this place no one can come save God alone. But when God speaks in the soul, that happens without any knowing of the senses with great, mighty, swift union of God in the soul. Then the senses cannot understand the blissful speech. They become so humble that they cannot bear any creature under them. Shall the person humble himself under the devils? Yes, with such devotion, that it must seem to him that he has offered God such great disgrace with his life, that he has often painted the devil's likeness on his soul with daily dust-sins, and sometimes with the mortal sins struck great wounds on his soul.

The soul who is surrounded by the Holy Spirit cannot contain herself; she must sink from all earthly comfort and delight in the comfort. But the soul who is surrounded by her own free will inclines herself with much delight to earthly things.

The third place where God speaks with the soul is the heavenly kingdom, when God lifts up the soul with his will's delight and hangs her thereon where she of his wonder must enjoy.

XXIV. How in sicknesses Christ reveals his guiltlessness. Four things knock before the heavenly gate.

In my great sicknesses God revealed himself to my soul and showed me his heart's wounds and said: See how woe they have done me! Then my soul said: Ah Lord, why do you suffer such great distress? Since so much of your red blood was poured out in your pure prayer, the whole world should rightly have been redeemed. No, said he, my Father was not so contented; for all the poverty and all the labour and all the martyrdom and disgrace were all one knocking before the heavenly gate, until the hour when my heart-blood poured upon this earth. Then was the heavenly kingdom first unlocked. Then the soul said: Lord, when this happened, then you were dead; I wonder of a dead one, how can he bleed. Then said our Lord:

My body was then humanly dead, when my heart-blood with the ray of the Godhead through my side flowed. That blood came from grace, just as the milk which I from my maidenly mother sucked. My Godhead dwelt in all my body's members, while I was dead, as before and since. My soul rested while in my Godhead after her long sorrow. And a spiritual image of my manhood, that soars ever without beginning in my eternal Godhead.

XXV. Of the burnt love.

Ah dear Lord, have mercy on him who is here burnt in your love, gone far and vanished in your humility, and brought to nothing in all things. God says:

My Godhead has burnt you, my manhood has known you, my Holy Spirit has sanctified you at the poverty. Those who much love keep gladly silence, those who love not are ever further from love.

XXVI. Thinking on death and long living are good.

I am very wondrous and I wonder in my human senses that my soul is so wondrous. When I think on death, my soul rejoices with such great strength toward the going out, that my body soars in inhuman softness, and my senses know unspeakable wonder in the soul's going out. Thus I die most pleasantly in the time which God has foreseen. Now I speak again the other way: I will live most pleasantly until the last day. And now my longing strengthens itself far into the time of the martyrs, that I yet my sinful blood in true Christian belief might pour, for Jesus whom I love dear. That I dare say this, that I have God dear, to that compels me a singular gift, for when one offers me with insult and pain, at once my soul begins to burn in the fire of the true God-love with such blissful sweetness, that my body soars in divine delight. But my senses keep a sorrow and beg God for all those who insult or shame me, that God may keep them from sin.

XXVII. How you shall thank and beg.

Lord Father, I thank you greatly that you have made me. Lord Jesus Christ, I thank you that you have redeemed me. Lord Holy Spirit, I thank you that you have purified me. Lord, whole undivided holy Trinity, I beg you that you now think of all faithfulness and send me now a merciful death which loose me from all distress. In manus tuas commendo spiritum meum.¹⁶

XXVIII. When you shall die, take leave of ten things.¹⁷

When I shall die, I take leave thus of all that I shall part from:

I take leave of the holy Christendom, and I thank God for it, that I am a Christian person, and have come to the true Christian belief; and if I remain longer here, I would gladly with labour be a help to the holy Christendom which stands in many sins.

I take leave of all the poor souls who are now in purgatory. Did I remain longer here, I would gladly help to pay your guilt; and I thank God that you shall have grace.

I take leave of all those who are in hell, and I thank God that he exercises his justice on them. Did I remain here, I would never wish them good.

I take leave of all the sinners who lie in mortal sins. I thank God that I am not their companion, and did I remain here, I would gladly bear their burden before God.

I take leave of all the contrite ones who stand in their penance. I thank God that I am their companion. Did I remain longer here, I must have them dear.

I take leave of all my enemies. I thank God that I am unovercome by them. Did I remain longer here, I would lay myself under their feet.

I take leave of all earthly things. I lament to God that I never enjoyed them according to his holy ordering.

I take leave of all my dear friends. I thank God and them that they have been my help in distresses. Did I remain longer here, I must of my un-virtues be ever ashamed which they know in me.

I take leave of all my wickedness. I lament that to God, that I have his holy gift in my soul so spoiled, that no fault was ever so small but that it is in the heavenly kingdom known on my soul. However it has been changed, the harm is still there. Lord Jesus, I lament it to you; yet the disgrace is all yours.

I take leave of my sorrowful body. I thank God for it, that he has in many a place kept me from many a sin. Did I remain longer here, his wickedness is so manifold, I should never become rightly fond of him.

XXIX. Of ten pieces of divine fire from the nobility of God.

An unworthy person thought simply about the nobility of God. Then God gave him to know in the senses and to behold with the soul's eyes a fire that burned without ceasing in the height above all things. The fire had burnt without beginning and shall yet burn ever without end. This fire is the eternal God who in himself has kept the eternal life and out from him given have all things. The fire's sparks who are flown are the holy angels. The fire's flashes which are come are all God's saints, for their life has given many a fair flash to the Christendom. This fire's coals still glow; that are all the blessed who here burn in the heavenly love and shine with good example; those who are cooled in their sins may warm themselves at the coals. The fire's ashes are blown and are come to nothing: that are all the blessed bodies who in earth yet wait for the heavenly reward. The fire's mastery shall yet come — that is Jesus Christ to whom his heavenly Father has committed the first redemption and the last judgment. He shall on the last day from the ashes make the very fairest cups for the heavenly Father, in which he in his eternal high-time himself will drink all the holiness which he with his dear Son in our soul and in our human senses has poured.

Yes, I shall drink out from you, and you shall drink out from me, all that God has of good kept in us. Well is he who now stands fast,¹⁸ and not here sours what God in him has poured.

The fire's smoke is all earthly things, which one often uses with unrightful delight. However fair they shine in our eyes, however delightful they play in our heart, they bear yet many a bitterness in them hidden, for they vanish like a smoke and make blind the highest, yes, they make also sour-eyed the holiest.

The comfort of this fire is the blissful delight which our soul inwardly receives from God with such holy warmth of the divine fire, that we here burn back in the divine fire and stand with virtues, that we extinguish not. The bitterness of the fire is the word that God shall speak on the last day: Go from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire. The shining of this fire is the bright beholding of the divine face of the holy Trinity, which our body and our soul shall light up, so that we there see and know the marvellous blessedness, which we now here cannot take.

These things are from this fire come, and flow back to him, each according to God's ordering with eternal praise.

Whoever wishes to say more of this, let him lay himself in the fire, and see and taste how the Godhead flows, how the manhood pours, how the Holy Spirit wrestles and many a heart compels, that it God manifoldly loves.

XXX. The pure love has four things.

The pure God-love has these things on her, so that one is one with God, whatever happens to us without sin, that we thank God for it with inwardness. The second, that we orderly use the gifts we have from God in body and in soul. The third, that we purely live in good customs without all sin. The fourth, that we have all virtues on us. O woe, that I had these and truly in all things fulfilled them! That would I take above all the contemplation that I ever heard of. What avail high words without merciful works? What avails love for God and fierceness toward good people? Then you say: Give it me, God; I would gladly do it. Hear now: The virtues are half gift from God and half virtues at us. When God gives us knowing, then we shall use the virtues.

XXXI. How God has made the soul from delight and pain. How God is like to a ball.¹⁹

I said in one place in this book that the Godhead is my father by nature: do not so understand and say: All that God has done with us is all from grace and not from nature. You are right and I am also right. Now hear a likeness: However fair eyes a person has, he can see over one mile of way; however sharp senses the person has, he can grasp insensible things only with belief and grasp like a blind man in the darkness. The loving soul, who loves all that God loves and hates all that God hates, has an eye which God has lit up. With it she sees into the eternal Godhead — how the Godhead has worked with her nature in the soul. He has shaped her after himself, he has planted her in himself, he has united himself most of all with her among all creatures. He has enclosed her in himself and has poured so much of his divine nature into her, that she cannot otherwise speak than that he with all union more than her father is.

The body receives his worth from the Son of the heavenly Father in brotherly fellowship, and at the reward of the labour. The God-Son Jesus Christ has also worked his work in heart-loving love through distress, in poverty, in pain, in labour, in disgrace, until his holy death. The Holy Spirit has also worked his works, as you say, with his grace in all our gifts which we ever received.

These works are threefold, yet has them one undivided God in us worked. Two things work on earth and in the purgatory with the God-strength without ceasing; the one works alone in hell — that is delight in heavenly kingdom without pain, and pain in hell without delight.

Where was God before he made anything? He was in himself, and to him all things were present and open, as they are today. How was our Lord God then shaped? Rightly like as he were a ball,²⁰ and all things in God enclosed without lock and without door. The lower part of the ball is a bottomless firmness beneath all abysses. The uppermost part of the ball is a height above which nothing is. The compass round about of the ball is a circle ungraspable. Yet then God was not creator become; when he then all things created, then was the ball unlocked. No, he is still whole and shall ever remain whole. When God became creator, then became all creatures in themselves manifest. The person to love God, to enjoy and to know, to remain obedient — birds and beasts to know their nature, the dead creatures to stand in their being. Now hear, what we know is all nothing, we love then God orderly in all things, as he himself all things in orderly love has created, and to us himself commanded and taught.

XXXII. How we become like God, Saint Mary, and the angels.

As much as we love mercy and steadfastness, so much we are like to the heavenly Father, who these things without ceasing practises in us.

As much as we here suffer poverty, disgrace, orphanage, pain, so much we are like to the true God-Son.

As much as we here out-flow with all generosity of our heart, to give our good to the poor, to serve our body to the sick, so much we are like to the Holy Spirit, who is a mild out-flow of the Father and of the Son.

As much as we are truthful, measured and discerning in holy simplicity, so much we are like to the holy Trinity, who is a true God and all his works in orderly measure has worked and still works.

As much as we are chaste with all purity, humble with all submission, eager-to-serve with all holiness, guiltless of all wickedness, so much we are like to our dear Lady Saint Mary, who with these virtues is ennobled, so that she has become maiden mother and mother maiden has remained, and is alone empress over all creatures.

As much as we are gentle, lovely, peaceful, so much we are like to the angels who never do cunningly.

As much as we holily live in exile and in trouble unconsoled, so much we are like to Saint John the Baptist, who is exalted above many a saint.

As much as we have longing for God's praise, knowing in the gift, orderly enjoyment of God's will, so much we are like to the prophets and the holy fathers who have compelled themselves with great virtues in God.

As much as we learn wisdom, and convert other people therewith, and stand with God in all distress, so much we are like to the holy apostles, who had given themselves up unto death.

As much as we have patience in all distress and as great as our Christian belief is unto death, so much we are like to the holy martyrs, who with their blood have sprinkled for us the true heaven-way.

As much as we with diligence bear the distress of the holy Christendom, both of the living and of the dead, so much we are like to the holy confessors, who with many labours wake and with care hear confession.

As much as we have strife and overcome and maidenly honour keep, so much we are like to the holy maidens, who have not lost the true victory.

As great as our contrition is and as manifold as the holy penance we perform, so much we are like to the holy widows, who after the sins have earned such great honour.

As much as we have all virtues at us, so much we are like to God and all his saints who with all probity have followed God.

XXXIII. Of the sharp chapter, where the pilgrim came to it who appeared as a great lord.

A person performed long that he with a sharp chapter went into his heart and looked at his harm and God's disgrace at himself. Then he cast out from his heart all sinful taste of his flesh and set therein all pain gladly to suffer for God. He cast out also all delight of his kin and friends and set therein the disgrace that his tempters wished to do him. He cast out also all love of riches and honours, in which the sinful world rejoices, and set therein all the poverty that is possible to suffer according to counsel.

Into this chapter came our Lord Jesus Christ like a poor pilgrim. Then the person's spirit was so enlightened that he knew it was our Lord, and said: Ah dear pilgrim, whence come you? Then he answered: I come from Jerusalem; there I was sorely wounded, there I suffered great disgrace, poverty, and pain, that have I brought you. — Of this I thank you, very dear Lord, and that I have known well many a day. Then our Lord took a simple crown and set it upon the person's head and said: This is the crown of the poverty, the disgrace, and the pain; this crown shall yet be adorned with my own image. Then the pilgrim journeyed hence. The person became troubled and said: O woe of my dear pilgrim! Yes, for I would gladly have spoken more with him.

Then she²¹ looked up into the height; there she became aware of him. There he was like to a mighty lord and was wrapped in heavenly bliss, and said: I bless you and greet you! My peace be ever with you. Amen.

XXXIV. He who despises the world shall be honoured with eight things.

A voice was heard and these words were spoken thus:

Yes, see, she comes who has despised the world and has fled the lie and has loved the truth, and has blessed her.

One shall receive her with all honour, one shall steady her in the truth, one shall bless her without end, one shall clothe her with all beauty, one shall crown her with all worth, one shall set her upon the throne of the eternal comfort, one shall greet her with all tongues, one shall serve her with all gift, one shall gladden her with all gift.

XXXV. How the blessed soul speaks to her body on the last day.

Stand up, my very dear, and recover from all your pain, all your sickness, all your disgrace, all your sorrow, all your exile, all your sore, all your labour. The morning-star has risen up —²² that is Saint Mary's birth and her life. The sun has given her shining — that is when God became human, his work and his ascension. The moon shall ever steadily stand; that is, that we then shall ever steadily be in the eternal life.

Once lay all my salvation in you, now lies all your comfort in me. Were I not come back to you, out of these ashes you would never be taken. The eternal day is risen for us; now we shall receive our reward.

XXXVI. That John the Baptist sang Mass for the poor maid, that was spiritual knowing in the soul.²³

One cannot grasp divine gifts with human senses; therefore those people sin who do not have the open spirit of the unsensible truth. What one can see with fleshly eyes, hear with fleshly ears, speak with fleshly mouth, is as unlike the open truth of the loving soul as a wax-candle is to the clear sun.

That John the Baptist sang the poor maid's Mass — that was not fleshly; it was so spiritual that the soul alone beheld and enjoyed. But the body had nothing from it, save what he from the soul's nobility could grasp in his human senses; therefore must the words humanly sound.

My Pharisee said upon this speech that John the Baptist was a layman. The very holiest that is at the Mass is God's body. The same God's Son did John the Baptist touch with humble, trembling fear, in such great worth of his holy life, that he heard the heavenly Father's voice and understood his words and saw the Holy Spirit and knew him in them both. John the Baptist also openly preached to all people the holy Christian belief, and pointed with his fingers the people to the true God's Son who was there present: Ecce Agnus Dei.²⁴ That John the Baptist spoke God's word, so far can it never be fulfilled by Pope nor bishop nor priest, save only with our insensible Christian belief. Was this a layman? Inform me, you blind ones; your lies and your hatred shall never be forgiven you without pain.

XXXVII. You shall praise God, lament, and beg twelve things.

Blessed are you, dear Lord Jesus Christ, God of the living God's Son in the watch of my belief; so I know truly that you are here present, true God and human. In that same name I beg you, Lord, today as my God and my Lord, as my Creator and my Redeemer, as my dearest in many ways and dearest of all lords today and ever more.

Lord, heavenly Father, now I lament to your holy Trinity that I before your eyes have sinned without fear and without shame. O woe, help me today, mild God, with your whole favour, for my heart is dark from the habit of sins. Cleanse, Lord, today my heart of all earthly love, and pour, Lord, down your heaven-flood into my dry soul, that I may weep for your great disgrace and the sorrow of my sins.

Lord, I thank you for all the grace which you, dear Lord, have done with us, and now do with us, and eternally with us will do. I beg you, Lord heavenly Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, that you cleanse me with your grace of all my sins, and shield me from all sin, and sanctify me with all virtues into the eternal life.

I beg you, Lord Jesus Christ, by your holy death and through the sorrowful distress that your holy body on the holy cross suffered, that you, Lord, with the eyes of your divine mercy and your human faithfulness and your Holy Spirit's favour, may look upon all my distress and my last death. And give me, Lord, then your own body, that I, Lord, may then receive it with true Christian belief, with heart-loving love, so that your holy body must be and remain the last food of my body and the eternal bread of my poor soul.

I beg you more, very dear Lord, that you may comfort my poor soul with yourself then and free me from all enemies. I beg you, very dear Lord Jesus Christ, that you may receive my poor soul into your fatherly hands, and bring me with all joy out of this exile into your blessed Father's land, where I, Lord, with all blessed saints may bless and praise you, who are now there and shall yet come.

Grant this to me, dear Lord Jesus Christ, and to all who with me are merciful and faithful to me for your love, and help also all those with me who against your favour are unfaithful and ungracious to me, and the common all those with me who are believing Christians.

I beg you, Lord, through your own honour, that you give us Christian people without ceasing in the seat at Rome a head full of all Christian virtues, by whom the holy Christendom may be spread in the community, and freed from all sin and sanctified with all virtues, so that you, dear Lord, today with your almighty hand may deign to free Jerusalem and all the cities and the lands that are troubled with unjust power, through your three holy names.

With all saints I beg you, very dear Jesus Christ, for Christian peace and for needful fruits and for gracious weather²⁵ for this land and all Christian lands.

I beg you, Lord, that you keep your friends in your service, and convert your enemies and weaken them in their wickedness.

I beg you, Emperor of all honours and Crown of all princes, Lord Jesus Christ, for the princes in this land and in all Christian lands, that you, Lord, today may deign to unite them with your Holy Spirit, so that they never institute any sinful campaign against your favour and against their blessedness.

I beg you, dear Jesus Christ, for all the Christian persons who are today in distresses — in water-distress, in sickness, in captivity, in trouble, in too-great poverty. I beg you through your mild goodness that you today may so comfort them that they may never lose your eternal comfort and your blessed favour.

I beg you, holy Father from the heavenly kingdom, for all the Christian souls who today part from their body, that you, merciful God, will be their keeper, and free them into the eternal life.

Ah, dear Lord, have mercy on the souls of my father and my mother and on all the souls that are in purgatory. Free them, Lord, through your holy three names in this hour: Requiescant in pace, Amen.²⁶

I beg you, dear Lord, for my benefactors, that you may give us all the virtues which cleanse and sanctify our life, to your praise and to the help of the holy Christendom. Now receive, Lord, today this prayer and my lament, and grant me after your graces. Amen.

XXXVIII. No one can disturb God's heaven. God shall destroy hell.

Ah dear Lord, almighty God, how long shall I stand here in the earth of my flesh like a stake or a target to which the people run, throw, and shoot, and long have aimed at my honour with swift wickedness? Hear now this answer: No one is so cunning in his shooting, no one is so wicked in his fierceness, that he can destroy, break, or harmfully touch my heaven where I am dwelling within. But those who today draw me into the lodging and tomorrow drive me out — they liken themselves to the hell. Whose foundation I am, whose temple I will also remain. Ah Lord, who shall help me, that I walk all my ways so, that if I slip, I fall not. The fear shall hold me up, the God-will shall lead me.

XXXIX. Of the answering-glance of God's shining at our Lady, and her power.

The three Persons have one name in one God undivided. They flow toward Mary's face blissfully in one stream, undivided, with full flood, in mild gift with clear shining of the heavenly honours. With unspeakable greeting he touches her heart, so that she shines and lights up thus, that the high answering-glance of the holy Trinity stands before our Lady's face.

He flows yet further and fills all humble loving vessels, and gives them shine and honour far above the others.

In the answering-glance our Lady may well wait; but would she beg, that she can humbly do, for God with his love in her humility became human. Our Lady needs humility in the heavenly kingdom no more, except that she honours the almighty God above herself in submission, with all the blessed who follow her image.

Our Lady's answering-glance is brightened with all the gift unspoiled which she received from God. She is also adorned with all virtues perfectly; she is crowned with all worth. With this she flows back into God full of all acceptability.

How our Lady enjoys the holy Trinity and how God unites himself with her above all pure people is unspeakable; but as much as they here were united, so much our Lady enjoys, and so much our Lord pours above all saints into her. Our Lady has power over all devils to hinder them from the persons. Therefore we gladly perform our Ave Maria in her answering-glance, that she think of us here.

XL. Temptation, the world, and a good end test us.

No one knows how fast he stands, unless he be first thrust with the temptation of the body.

No one knows how strong he is, unless he be first assailed by the world's wickedness.

No one knows how good he himself is, unless to him come a good end.

XLI. Of the answering-glance of God in humans and in the angels. Five things hinder the writing.

You wish that I should write further, and I cannot. The bliss, the honour, the brightness, the fondling, the truth, is above me so great that I would become dumb to speak further what I know. But a mirror was seen in the heavenly kingdom before the breast of every soul and body, in which shines the mirror of the holy Trinity, and gives truth and knowing to all the virtues which the body ever performed, and to all the gift which the soul on earth ever received. Therefrom shines the lordly answering-glance of every person back into the high majesty whence she has flowed.

The angels' answering-glance is fiery love-clear, for they have great love for our blessedness. They serve us without labour and their reward grows while this world stands. The true God-love has the same power at the angels as she has at the humans. That we serve with labour is because we are sinful.

XLII. This wrote Sister Mechthild on a slip to her brother B. of the Preaching Order, and said:

The greatest joy that is in the heavenly kingdom is the will of God. That un-will should be his will — from this comes divine joy into the troubled person's heart. That is a spiritual person's confession, that one despises the gift which comes from God. Painful gifts shall we with joy receive. Consoling gifts shall we with fear receive — so we can make all things useful to us that go over us. Dear darling, be one with God and rejoice in his will.

XLIII. This scripture is flowed out from God.

This scripture which stands in this book has flowed out from the living Godhead into Sister Mechthild's heart, and is here so faithfully set as it from her heart is given by God and written from her hands. Deo gratias.

Here ends the sixth part of this book.

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