Greco-Christian stream·Rhineland Mystics·Heinrich Suso·Chapter XXXII.

Chapter XXXII.

How his sufferings once brought him nigh to death.

It happened to him once during many nights, that the moment he awoke from sleep something began to repeat in him the psalm of our Lord's sufferings, "Deus, Deus meus, re- spice in me" (Ps. xxi.). This psalm was spoken by Christ on the gallows of the cross, when He was forsaken in His distress by His Heavenly Father and by every one. The Servitor was struck with consternation at this continual in- terior whispering when he awoke, and weeping bitterly, he cried to Christ upon the cross in these words : — Alas, my Lord and my God ! if it be meet and necessary that I should once more suffer a new crucifixion with Thee, accom- plish, I beseech Thee, Thy pure and innocent death in me, poor man, and be with me, and help me to come forth victorious over all my sufferings.

When this cross arrived, as had been fore- shown him, sufferings of no ordinary kind, and of whose nature nothing is here said, began to increase continually upon him, and to multi- ply from day to day, until at last they became

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so great, and weighed down the sick man so heavily, that they brought him to the very ex- tremity of death. One evening when he was away from the monastery, and had gone to his bed to rest, there fell on him snch an utter pro- stration of strength, that he thought he must now inevitably die of faintness, and he lay there quite motionless, so that there was no pulse in any of his veins. When this was observed by a faithful and good-hearted man who tended him, and whom he had won to God at great cost to himself, the man ran to him in bitter grief, and pressed his hand against his heart, to try whether there was still life there. But his heart was without movement, and beat no more than that of a dead man would. At this he sank to the ground in great sorrow, and while the tears streamed down his face, he cried aloud with piteous lamentations : — O God ! alas for this noble heart, which many a day has borne Thee, O merciful God, so lovingly within it, and has told of Thee so pleasantly by word and writing, in every land, to so many erring men for their consolation — how has it perished to-day! O what evil tidings is it that this noble heart must rot, and cannot live a long time yet for Thy glory and the consolation of many ! Thus HE COMES NIGH TO DEATH. 143 piteously lamenting with streaming eyes, he bent over the Servitor and touched his heart and mouth and arms, to see whether he still lived or was dead. But there was no motion there. His face was deadly white, his mouth black, and all sign of life had vanished, as from a dead man laid out upon his bier. This lasted as long as it would take to walk a mile. Mean- while the object of his soul's contemplation, while he lay thus in seeming death, was naught else but God and the Godhead, the True and the Truth, in indwelling everlasting oneness. It happened, indeed, that before he became so very weak, and was carried out of himself in ecstasy, he began to speak in his heart fond words to God in this wise : — Ah, everlasting Truth, Thy deep abysses are hidden from every creature. I, Thy poor Servitor, see clearly that there is now an end of me, as my departed strength be- tokens. I speak now at my life's verge to Thee, mighty Lord, whom no one can deceive, because all things are manifest to Thee. Thou alone knowest how things stand between me and Thee. Therefore I seek grace of Thee, faithful heavenly Father; and wheresoever, alas, I have broken out into unlikeness and deflection from the supreme Truth, I grieve for it, and repent me of it with

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all my heart, and I beseech Thee to blot it out with Thy precious Blood, according to Thy gra- ciousness and my necessity. Kemember that all the days of my life I have celebrated and exalted as highly as I could Thy pure and inno- cent Blood, and it must now at my departure wash me clean from all my sins. Oh, kneel down, I entreat you, all ye Saints, especially thou, my kind and gracious lord, St. Nicholas, and lift up your hands and help me to beseech the Lord for a good end. O pure, gentle, kind Mother Mary ! reach me thy hand to-day, and at this my last hour graciously receive my soul beneath thy shelter, for thou art my heart's joy and consolation. O Lady and Mother mine, into thy hands I commend my spirit. O dear Angels, be mindful that, all my life through, my heart has ever laughed within me, when I only heard you named, and forget not how often }rou have brought me in my sorrows heavenly joys, and guarded me from my foes. O gentle Spirits, it is only now that my greatest straits are come, and that I most need your help. Aid me, then, and shield me from the horrible si^ht 0f my foes, the evil spirits. O Lord of heaven, I praise Thee for having bestowed on me at my death-hour such entire consciousness ; and I go HE COMES NIGH TO DEATH. 145 hence in the full Christian faith without a doubt and without fear ; and I forgive all those who have ever made me suffer, as Thou upon the cross forgavest those who slew Thee. Lord, Lord, Thy divine sacramental Body, which I received to-day at Mass, ill though I was, must be my guardian and my convoy to Thy divine countenance. My last prayer which I make now at this my end, gentle Lord of heaven, is for my dear spiritual children, who whether by spe- cial bonds of faithfulness, or by confession, have lovingly attached themselves to me in this mis- erable world. O merciful God, as Thou at Thy departure didst commend Thy dear disciples to Thy Heavenly Father, even so in that self-same love let these be commended to Thee, and grant them also a good and holy end. And now I turn myself away altogether from all creatures, and I turn me wholly to the pure Godhead, the primal fountain-head of everlasting bliss. After he had held much discourse within his heart in this fond loving fashion, he was trans- ported out of himself in ecstasy, and fell into the faint described above. At length, when he and others fancied that he must have departed, he came to himself again, and his affrighted heart began to revive, and his sick limbs to re- L

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cover strength, and he got well and returned to life again, as before. Chapter XXXLTL How a man should offer up his sufferings to the praise and glory of God. When the suffering Servitor had deeply meditated upon this long and weary warfare, and moreover had come to see in it God's hid- den marvels, he turned one day to God, sighing inwardly, and said: — Alas, Lord, these suffer- ings are in their outward aspect like sharp thorns which pierce through flesh and bone. There- fore, gentle Lord, cause some sweet fruit of good instruction to issue forth from these sharp thorns of sufferings, that we, poor men, may suffer more patiently, and be better able to offer up our sufferings to Thy praise and glory. After he had continued for a long time ear- nestly beseeching God for this, it came to pass one day that he was rapt in ecstasy, and his bodily senses being abstracted, it was sweetly said to him within his soul : — I will show thee to-day the high nobility of My life, and how a HOW TO SUFFER FOR GOD. 147 sufferer should offer up his sufferings to the praise and glory of the loving God. At these sweet interior words his soul was melted within him, and his bodily senses being stilled in ecstasy, the arms, as it were, of his soul stretched themselves forth, out .of the un- fathomable fulness of his heart to the far-off ends of the universe, even to heaven and earth ; and he thanked God with a boundless heartfelt yearning, saying: — Hitherto, O Lord, I have praised Thee in my musings with the aid of all that is pleasant and delightful in all creatures ; but now I must joyously break forth into a new song, and a strange kind of praise, which I knew not before, since I have only now come to know it by suffering. And it is this : I pray from my heart's bottomless depths that all the sorrow and pain wThich I have ever suffered, as well as the woes and agonies of every human heart, the smarts of all wounds, the anguish of all the sick, the groans of all sad souls, the tears of all weep- ing eyes, the misery of all the oppressed, the distress of all needy widows and orphans, the pining want of all the poor and hungry, the out- poured blood of all martyrs, the crushing of self- will in all who are young and blooming, the afflictive exercises of all God's friends, and all

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the secret and open pains and sorrows, which I or any other poor sufferer ever endured in body, goods, or honour, in weal or woe, or which any one will ever have to suffer from now to dooms- day,— all these I pray may he an everlasting source of praise to Thee, O Heavenly Father, and an eternal honour to Thy only-begotten suffering Son from everlasting to everlasting. And I, Thy poor Servitor, desire to-day to be the faithful representative of all sufferers who perchance have been unable to turn to full ac- count their sufferings, by patient thanksgiving and praise of God for them ; and I wish in their place to offer up their sufferings in praise of God, however they may have borne them ; and I now offer them up to Thee in their stead, just as if I myself alone had suffered them all in my body and in my heart, as it is my heart's wish to do ; and I tender them- all this day to Thy only-begotten suffering Son, that they may be an everlasting praise to Him, and that the suf- ferers may be comforted, whether they are still here in this vale of sorrow, or in the next world in Thy hand. O all ye who suffer with me, look at me and give ear to what I say to you ! We, poor mem- bers, ought to console ourselves and rejoice in HOW TO SUFFER FOR GOD. 149 our venerable Head, God's lovely only-begotten Son, that He lias suffered for us, and never passed one pleasant day on earth. Behold ! if there is only one rich man in a poor family, the whole family rejoices in him. Ah, venerable Head of us all, Thy members, be gracious to us, and where through human frailty true patience fails us in any affliction, do Thou make it up for us before Thy Heavenly Father. Bethink Thee how Thou earnest once to the help of one of Thy servants, and when his courage was all but failing him through suffering, Thou saidst to him : — Be of good cheer and look at Me. I was noble and poor ; I was tender and in misery ; I was born from out the fulness of all joys, and yet I was full of sorrow. Therefore, as valiant knights of our imperial Lord, let us not lose heart; as noble followers of our venerable Leader, let us be of good cheer, and rejoice to suffer; for if there were no other profit and good in suffer- ing, than that we became more like the fair bright mirror Christ, the more closely that we copied Him in this, our sufferings would be well laid out. It seems to me in truth, that even if God meant to give the same reward hereafter to those who suffer and to those who do not suf- fer, we ought still to choose suffering for our lot,

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were it only to be like Him ; for love produces likeness and devotion to the beloved, so far as it can and may. But oh ! how dare we pre- sume to take upon ourselves that we ought to resemble Thee, O noble Lord, in our sufferings! Thy sufferings and our sufferings how unlike they are ! O Lord, Thou alone art the sufferer who hast never deserved to suffer. But where is he, alas, who can pride himself that he has never given cause for sufferings I For if on the one hand he is guiltless in that for which he suffers, on the other he deserves punishment on other counts. Therefore we place ourselves, I mean all we who have ever suffered, in a great wide ring round and round; and we place Thee, our dear gentle Lover, in the midst of us, even in the ring of us suffering mortals, and we spread out far and wide our thirsty veins with great long- ing towards Thee, the rich outbursting foun- tain of all grace. Behold and marvel. Just as the earth which is most cracked with drought takes in best the stormy streams of watery rain, even so we heavily-laden men, the more guilty we are towards Thee, the more closely do we clasp Thee to us with outspread hearts, and our longing desire is that, come what may, ac- cording to the promise of Thy divine mouth, we THE REWARDS OF SUFFERING. 151 may be washed in Thy streaming and trickling wounds, and be set free thereby from every sin ; for all which Thou shalt receive everlasting praise and honour from us, and we shall obtain grace from Thee, since all unlikeness will be removed from us by Thy almightiness. After the Servitor had remained sitting with- out movement for a long time, during which all this was revealed to him with great solem- nity in the innermost interior of his soul, he rose up joyfully and thanked God for the grace which he had received.

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