Johannes Tauler's Sermons in English - Sermon 2

On the Second Sunday of Advent

The other message.

What great worthiness and blessedness God has given to us through His holy incarnation, and how we are to become one with him.
Eece rex tuus venit tibi, justus et salvator. (Latin from Zechariah 9:9)
Behold, your King is coming; He will justify you and is your savior.

This is a voice of joy and blessedness amongst the houses of sinners. Rejoice, all you mountains and forests in the face of the Lord, for He has come. How thankful mankind should be that the Lord had such great mercy on us poor, little earthworms and sinful creatures. Who has such a stony heart that his soul does not melt and dissolve because of love? He hears about or meditates upon the fact that the highest God took upon Himself our mortal nature in the holy body of his worthy mother, that our Lord became our servant; the Son of God became our groom; the chief judge our brother. He has given us Himself with all his riches and grace, for Jesus the Savior of the world does not come without healing, nor does Christ come without sacred salve, nor does the Son of God come without glory. Now, you should know that all the riches, that the Lord has given us through His holy incarnation, cannot be grasped by either the understanding of the angels or of mankind. Therefore, I am only going to speak a little and not too much about this.

Our beloved Lord has given us his body as a meal for our spirit through the unification of his holy body and soul with his godly nature. No creature (whether spiritual or physical) can eat this meal except for God alone. The creature may taste but not feast (he himself spoke of this: my body is truly a feast). Also, the soul and the body of our Lord are preserved so that they are not confused with other particular human persons (as other humans are, as each human is separated from the others). For the person of the Son comprehends the body and soul of our Lord, even though it may be in all the world and in all things. Therefore, we have the advantage that nothing exists that can be unique to us except for God. For, if God is in us, then nothing is in him of which we will not be receptive or participatory. For, there is not only an essential union but also an actual one so that the primary forces and the understanding behold and the will needs the godly nature on which all blessedness is dependent. From this, we receive that we are receptive to the blessedness in the same way that he is blessed. Also, we receive here a foretaste of the eternal blessedness we shall have. As well, all the lowest forces and physical senses of our Lord Jesus Christ were also united with the Godhead so that we can say: God saw, God heard, God suffered. Therefore, we have the advantage that because of his unification, all of our works may become godly. Furthermore, because human nature is unified with the godly personhood and with the angels, all mankind has fellowship with him. More than some creatures, because they are his members and are influenced by him who is their head. This is the advantage that we have, that we are all his members, and, therefore, have fellowship with each other. All possessions which belong to our dear wife and all saints are also my own, as they are theirs. What has gone up towards heaven since then is mine, and what is mine is also their own, as it is mine through the deep and sweet unification in Christ. We thank him cheaply with our own strength and fortunes; we should praise and love him at all times and forever. Out of this sweet unification, it is possible for us to see and know the Father through and with the Son. For the Son speaks: This is eternal life that they know you, God, and the one whom you have sent, Jesus Christ. No one knows the Father except the Son. Therefore, if a man shall know God (upon which his eternal blessedness rests), then he must be with Christ, God’s own son. If you want to be blessed, you must be a son, united with Christ Jesus.

Not many sons! You may well and should distinguish between those according to their physical birth, but in the eternal birth, one cannot be more than a son. For in God nothing is of natural origins; therefore, nothing is a natural product of the Son. Therefore, if you would be a son with Christ, then you must be an eternal product of the eternal words.

How then shall a man become an eternal son of the Father? Note this well: as the eternal Word, our Lord God, took on human nature, he did not do so according to man, but he took on himself a free, undivided human nature, which is a picture of it. The adoption of human nature from the Word is actually a picture of human nature. For as God became man, so also man has become God by grace. Thus, human nature is pictured in what it has become, in the divine picture, which is a picture of the Father. If you now desire to be a son, then you must separate, leave, and dismiss all those things that make a difference in you. For the man is a chance of nature. Therefore, give up and lose all those things that were brought to you by chance, and take for yourself the free, undivided, human nature. When the son of the eternal God has taken on the same nature (as you have taken), you will also become a son of the eternal Father with Christ through the adoption of the eternal Word. As a result, you will be in the same nature that God has adopted. Therefore, guard yourself that you do not take on the nature of this man or that, but take on the undivided human nature in freedom. Also, if you desire to be a son, separate yourself from all empty things, for emptiness makes a difference.

Notice as well that you are not the one who makes a difference between you and another person, nor is it that or the other person who makes that difference. Therefore, if you want to be the difference, then separate yourself from nothing. For there is a strength within the soul which is separated from nothing and has nothing in common with other things. For in this strength is nothing but God alone who shines merely in this strength. The person who is thus a son takes motion and impact and everything that he takes in their essence and nobility. For in the manner in which the son of the Father is a son for all eternity, he is such from the Father. What he has, he has in him, for he is one with the Father in essence and nature, for he has all essence in himself. And as he spoke: Father, as you and I are one, thus I desire that they will be one. As the son is one with the Father, you be one with him, and you will have all these things through grace that the Father has. This you have from God; do not doubt it. God is yours, and everything that you thus take that is yours. All your works that you do not take in this godly essence are all in vain before God.

These are the works to which you are being moved through foreign influences by which God is not meant, for they do not come from life. They are dead, for only those things are alive that have movement from their origin. Therefore, if your works are to be alive, then they must happen from their own source, in and through God. They must not come from foreign influences outside of God.

Now notice! If you love righteousness since it is righteousness that is in you or over you, then you do not love righteousness as it is in yourself and as it is simply. Otherwise, you are taking only part of righteousness. If God himself is righteousness, then take. However, you still do not love God if He is simply righteousness.

Therefore, you should take righteousness as it is in itself. Then, you will take righteousness as it is of God. You will then always work in righteousness, and it will work through you. You should also take on yourself goodness, wisdom, love, and those characteristics attributed to God. These should characterize your life in contrast to other opinions. Then you will know a true unity with the Son and the Father. May God help us to this simplicity! Amen.

- translated from German to English by Laura Glassel

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What does it look like to follow Jesus? I’ve written a book that walks through the Letter of 1 John and offers practical guidance for spiritual growth. Buy it here!

Grace Upon Grace (31-Day Devotional).
Melanchthon’s German Catechism translated into English.
Connect with me on Instagram, Substack, and Pinterest.
My reading recommendations. My merch store. My Etsy store.

Geraniums and Pansies

Geraniums in bright reds and pinks
Peaking out from brilliant green leaves
Cheerfully greet me from my window.

Quiet pansies in blues and purples,
Yellows and oranges
Add their rainbow to my garden.

Simple flowers in simple pots
Bring their joyful colors to my life
Swaying gently in the breeze.

- by Laura Glassel

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What does it look like to follow Jesus? I’ve written a book that walks through the Letter of 1 John and offers practical guidance for spiritual growth. Buy it here!

Looking for some encouragement in your walk with Jesus? I’ve written a devotional book designed to remind you of God’s abundant grace.

Connect with me on Instagram, Substack, and Pinterest.
My reading recommendations. My merch store. My Etsy store.

July Desktop Wallpaper

Device wallpaper for July 2025. Click on the picture for a full-sized version.

Spine Labels - Set 90

spine labels
noun (plural) - a collection of odds and ends that are as random as reading spine labels in a bookstore

Pasta Fagioli (Pasta and Beans)

Roasted Blackberry Matcha Pops

Cactus Garden with Vintage Salt and Pepper Shakers

Snoopy Perpetual Calendar

Amelia Earhart Wooden Peg Doll

Haikubes - Create Captivating Haiku with a Roll of the Dice

Bath Salts: Lavender Mint

Craft It – A Summer Clutch (No Sewing Machine Required!)

Iconic Libraries Postcards (set of 16)

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What does it look like to follow Jesus? I’ve written a book that walks through the Letter of 1 John and offers practical guidance for spiritual growth. Buy it here!

Grace Upon Grace (31-Day Devotional).
Melanchthon’s German Catechism translated into English.
Connect with me on Instagram, Substack, and Pinterest.
My reading recommendations. My merch store. My Etsy store.

Lord God, To You We Give All Praise

Lord God, to you we give all praise,
with grateful hearts our voices raise
that angel hosts you did create
around your glorious throne to wait.

They shine with light and heav'nly grace
and constantly behold your face.
They heed your voice, they know it well;
in godly wisdom they excel.

They never rest nor sleep as we;
their whole delight is but to be
with you, Lord Jesus, and to keep
your little flock, your lambs and sheep.

The ancient dragon is their foe;
his envy and his wrath they know.
It always is his aim and pride
your Christian people to divide.

As he of old deceived the world
and into sin and death has hurled,
so now he subtly lies in wait
to undermine both Church and state.

A roaring lion, round he goes,
no halt nor rest he ever knows;
he seeks the Christians to devour
and slay them by his dreadful pow'r.

But watchful is the angel band
that follows Christ on ev'ry hand
to guard his people where they go
and break the counsel of the foe.

O Lord, awaken songs of praise
for angel hosts that guard our days;
teach us to serve you and adore
as angels do forevermore.

- by Philipp Melanchthon, translated by Paul Eber

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What does it look like to follow Jesus? I’ve written a book that walks through the Letter of 1 John and offers practical guidance for spiritual growth. Buy it here!

Looking for some encouragement in your walk with Jesus? I’ve written a devotional book designed to remind you of God’s abundant grace.

Connect with me on Instagram, Substack, and Pinterest.
My reading recommendations. My merch store. My Etsy store.

Johannes Tauler's Sermons in English - Sermon 1

On the First Sunday of Advent

That we should rise up from our sins, conquer our enemies, and perceive in our souls the gracious future of our Lord.
Hora est nos jam de somno surgere. (Latin from Romans 13:11)
It is time for us to rise from our sleep.

Today we celebrate the beginning of Advent, that is, the arrival of our Lord. Now begins a delightful time, during which joyful and devout words will be read and sung in the holy church. For as man encounters all other times with desire and joy, so this time is especially intimate and holy as compared to other feasts. This is the time for which all the prophets and saints of the Old Testament for five thousand years demanded and called for with great desire and sighs. Lord, tear apart heaven and come down to illuminate those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. Also, all the stories and symbols of the Old Testament are arranged so that they point to the greatness of him who was to come and now has come. Oh, therefore, let us thank and praise God without end that he has made us in the time of grace and desires to share with us all his graces and riches if only we ourselves so desire.

Now the holy apostle admonishes us that we should rise from the sleep of our sins because the night is past, the day has come; therefore, we should live honestly in the day. Now we should diligently notice how we have fallen from our first innocence and how we are to rise from all sins and faults.

Our Lord created mankind so that the individual places in the heavenly kingdom would be filled with them. Lucifer himself was thrown out of those places along with his company. This same Lucifer, in his fierce hate, also betrayed man so that he disobeyed God and lost all grace and virtue, in which he was supposed to be equal to God and the angels. Lucifer poisoned man’s innocent nature so that it became unclean, and man thereby wounded himself to death with the blindness of his reason, with the follies and wickedness of his will, with wicked desires in his behavior, and with illness in angry power. He was exalted and did not understand it; he has now become equal to dim animals.

Therefore, it follows that three enemies wage war against us, which now unfortunately have prevailed and reign in the hearts of people: the world, the enemy, and the flesh. When these three have their way, the noble soul, which God so graciously chose, is lost. For the souls against which these enemies prevail unquestionably receive eternal death. How cruelly and savagely these three enemies now reign and possess God’s places throughout much of mankind, both spiritually and worldly (as it seems to appear). The friends of God who love and obey God mourn this state of things with bitter tears. For the eternal shame of their nights is a great suffering to them, that their hearts in their bodies might dry up from the great pain in which self-love is rooted, which causes so few people to desire to love and to obey God.

The world reigns with pride both internally and externally. How many people belong to these devilish orders? They want to appear as something and act as if their sins and defects would not be counted.

The kingdom of the enemy leads them to bitterness, to hate and anger, to suspicion, to judgment, to revenge, to displeasure, to rifts. All his disciples are divisive, without love, and mournful in their nights.

Our own flesh wants to squander time and have things done well, and have sensuous pleasure and ease in all things. The people do not know what great harm comes from this, especially those who are blinded by it.

Through these three enemies, most people are misled into eternal damnation.

Whoever, however, desires to return to his first honor and worth, which Adam lost through his sins, and we after him, and who desires to give the future of our Lord place in his soul, must flee the world, overcome the enemies, conquer his flesh in humility, and exercise himself diligently in these six practices. Mankind fell in paradise through two things: lust and pride; therefore, we must counter these with two things, so that nature can regain its strength. We must resist and die to all disorderly lust, masculine and humble. Additionally, we must decrease and suppress our nature with deep humility before God and all mankind against which it has raised itself in pride. Devote yourself always in a humble state so that you may rise to the highest level. With these two practices, your nature will win back its original strength.

A person must further become equal to the angels in two things. He must forgive and excuse all who do him harm. He must be a fair friend to his enemies, as the angels do when we provoke them often to anger with our sins. Furthermore, he must serve his neighbors willingly as the dear angels continuously serve us through God.

A person must finally become equal to God in two things. The first is right obedience, as our Lord gave to his heavenly Father even unto death. The second is that he is to grow and persist in obedience and in all virtues until the end of his life.

Through these practices, people will become faithful, heavenly hearts and will become one spirit with God in foundational humility, willful calm, gentle patience, mere poverty of the spirit, and fiery love of God. And all who follow this kingdom (of whom there are unfortunately few) will overcome their enemies, and God will redeem them from their heavy burdens and will help them to carry their trials. For God imposes on them manifold trials. The faithful God does this so that four things may be born in them. The first is that the individual would come to his senses and see from where the trial is coming, and would look carefully at himself because of the trial, and would know himself. The other thing that he questions is why God has laid on him the burden of suffering. Wherever God desires to lead him in suffering, there he follows God and submits himself in his godly will. The third thing is that the individual would leave himself and all created beings behind. The fourth is that the individual would learn true patience through diverse sufferings. What is now true patience in suffering? Is it that the individual is unmoved on the outside? No. But true patience is that the individual finds that in his essence and in reality, no one can deal or attempt injustice against him. He also finds that what he suffers is just, and that he should suffer more and more, should torment him. He learns to have merciful compassion towards all who cause him to suffer. Those who follow the humble Christ and in whom he reigns find this lesson. He spoke to them, saying: “If you remain in my words, you will truly be my disciples and you will know the truth and it will set you free.”

Now, there are two types of people who follow the word of Christ. There are those who hear it with joy, and they follow after it, and it comes true to them. They receive it with their minds, there they contemplate it and evaluate it by their natural light. What they cannot taste or feel, they reject and pursue more with their senses in order to hear new things and understand them. They do not understand that in these pursuits, they must die. If they want to grow, they must pursue a different path.

But the others tend to themselves and contemplate within themselves and take simply as true the rules from God. In reasonable clarity, they wait internally for their charge and call as God desires. They take all things as God’s means. The means that are given to finite creatures are distasteful and are also veiled and diverse, and have a taste of bitterness. He desires earthly things that must be stripped and exposed if he is to taste the spirit in truth and if he is to come to his true senses. For those who perceive within themselves the gifts and rules of God, whether by this means or that means, they take it from their reason and carry it again into the reason of godly goodness. These are those who draw and taste from the right well, but the first ones of whom we spoke seek only their own good. In all ways and means, they want to always stand in their own strength. In the truth, they do not find their own as loud and as certain as in the internal sense without means.

Now you might ask, how should one be made aware of these unexpected rules of God? Through the diligent, internal life and thought of one’s self. Therefore, the individual should be an inhabitant of himself and should let his doubts and choices be. If he spends time with himself, he will certainly become aware of what he needs to do, what God has commanded him to do internally, without means, and externally through means. Then he will let himself be and follow after God in whose way the loving God will direct him. Whether the means be by sight, through miracles, through practical or enjoyable means, he will follow God, whether in suffering or in joy. And, if God gives him none of this, so he will still trust God in simplicity and go without these things, following God in love and bringing himself into the inner sanctuary and sitting himself before the lovely image of our lovely Lord Jesus Christ. He worked all his work through three things.

The first one: he said that we should not seek anything in his works, because the glory of his heavenly father and of himself is not in individual things, whether large or small, for he bore all things in himself.

The second: he sought and said from his entire foundation the salvation and sanctification of mankind so that he saw all of mankind and brought them the knowledge of his name according to the words of St. Paul, “God desires that all men would be saved and come to the acknowledgement of his name.”

The third: he said with all his words, works, and life that he gave us a true example and image of a perfect life to the utmost.

Those who stand in this, in truth, are the finest, loveliest people. Those who are born into this community are the greatest, richest treasure of holy Christendom, and their work at all times is the best. They do not stand on small or great works, on more or less. They stand alone in God’s will in all things. For this reason, they find all their labor is the best. They also do not stand on whether God will exalt or lower them, for they desire nothing except the will of God in all things.

May God grant that this all happens to us. Amen.

- translated from German to English by Laura Glassel

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What does it look like to follow Jesus? I’ve written a book that walks through the Letter of 1 John and offers practical guidance for spiritual growth. Buy it here!

Grace Upon Grace (31-Day Devotional).
Melanchthon’s German Catechism translated into English.
Connect with me on Instagram, Substack, and Pinterest.
My reading recommendations. My merch store. My Etsy store.