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The quotes of John Ruusbroec

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C onsolation, peace, joy, beauty, and riches, all that can give delight, all this is shown to the mind illuminated in God, in spiritual similitudes and without measure. And through this vision and touch of God, love continues active. For such a just man has built up in his soul, in rest and in work, a veritable life which shall endure forever… Thus this man is just, and he goes toward God by inward love, in eternal work, and he goes in God by his fruitive inclination in eternal rest. And he dwells in God; and yet he goes out toward all creatures, in a spirit of love toward all things, in virtue and in works of righteousness. And this is the supreme summit of the inner life.

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quote 2837 | John Ruusbroec
John Ruusbroec, adapted from the translation by Evelyn Underhill in Mysticism (London: Methuen, 1911).

U nderstand, God comes to us incessantly, both with means and without means; and he demands of us both action and fruition, in such a way that the action never hinders the fruition, nor the fruition the action, but they strengthen one another. And this is why the interior man lives his life according to these two ways; that is to say, in rest and in work. And in each of them he is wholly and undividedly; for he dwells wholly in God in virtue of his restful fruition and wholly in himself in virtue of his active love. And God, in his communications, perpetually calls and urges him to renew both this rest and this work. And because the soul is just, it desires to pay at every instant that which God demands of it; and this is why each time it is irradiated of him, the soul turns inward in a manner that is both active and fruitive, and thus it is renewed in all virtues and ever more profoundly immersed in fruitive rest….

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quote 2836 | John Ruusbroec
John Ruusbroec, adapted from the translation by Evelyn Underhill in Mysticism (London: Methuen, 1911).

O ur activity consists in loving God and our fruition in enduring God and being penetrated by his love. There is a distinction between love and fruition, as there is between God and his Grace. When we unite ourselves to God by love, then we are spirit; but when we are caught up and transformed by his Spirit, then we are led into fruition. And the spirit of God himself breathes us out from himself that we may love and may do good works; and again he draws us into himself, that we may rest in fruition. And this is Eternal Life; even as our mortal life subsists in the indrawing and outgoing of our breath.

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quote 2835 | John Ruusbroec
John Ruusbroec, adapted from the translation by Evelyn Underhill in Mysticism (London: Methuen, 1911).

T he Divine Persons who form one sole God are in the fecundity of their nature ever active; and in the simplicity of their essence they form the Godhead and eternal blessedness. Thus God according to the Persons is Eternal Work: but according to the essence and its perpetual stillness, he is Eternal Rest. Now love and fruition live between this activity and this rest….

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quote 2834 | John Ruusbroec
John Ruusbroec, adapted from the translation by Evelyn Underhill in Mysticism (London: Methuen, 1911).

T here, their bare understanding is drenched through by the Eternal Brightness, even as the air is drenched through by the sunshine. And the bare, uplifted will is transformed and drenched through by abysmal love, even as iron is by fire. And the bare, uplifted memory feels itself enwrapped and established in an abysmal Absence of image. And thereby the created image is united above reason in a threefold way with its Eternal Image, which is the origin of its being and its life.
Yet the creature does not become God, for the union takes place in God through grace and our homeward-turning love: and therefore the creature in its inward contemplation feels a distinction and an otherness between itself and God. And though the union is without means, yet the manifold works that God works in heaven and on earth are nevertheless hidden from the spirit. For though God gives himself as he is, with clear discernment, he gives himself in the essence of the soul, where the powers of the soul are simplified above reason, and where, in simplicity, they suffer the transformation of God. There all is full and overflowing, for the spirit feels itself to be one truth and one richness and one unity with God. Yet even here there is an essential tending forward, and therein is an essential distinction between the being of the soul and the Being of God; and this is the highest and finest distinction that we are able to feel.

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quote 2833 | John Ruusbroec
John Ruusbroec, adapted from the translation by Evelyn Underhill in Mysticism (London: Methuen, 1911).

A nd therefore, too, such enlightened men are, with a free spirit, lifted up above reason into a bare and imageless vision, wherein lives the eternal indrawing summons of the Divine Unity; and, with an imageless and bare understanding, they pass through all works, and all exercises, and all things, until they reach the summit of their spirits.

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quote 2832 | John Ruusbroec
John Ruusbroec, adapted from the translation by Evelyn Underhill in Mysticism (London: Methuen, 1911).

B ecause they have abandoned themselves to God in doing, in leaving undone, and in suffering, they have steadfast peace and inward joy, consolation and savor, of which the world cannot partake; neither any dissembler nor the man who seeks and means himself more than the glory of God. Moreover, those same inward and enlightened men have before them in their inward seeing, whenever they will, the Love of God as something drawing or urging them into the Unity; for they see and feel that the Father with the Son through the Holy Ghost embrace each other and all the chosen, and draw themselves back with eternal love into the unity of their Nature. Thus the Unity is ever drawing to itself and inviting to itself everything that has been born of it, either by nature or by grace.

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quote 2831 | John Ruusbroec
John Ruusbroec, adapted from the translation by Evelyn Underhill in Mysticism (London: Methuen, 1911).

W ith these three - eye, mirror, and image - we are like God and united with him, for this vision in our simple eye is a living mirror which God created to his image and on which he impressed his image. His image is his divine resplendence, with which he fills the mirror of our soul to overflowing, so that no other light or image can enter there. But this resplendence is not an intermediary between God and ourselves, for it is both the very thing that we see and also the light with which we see, though it is distinct from our eye that does the seeing. Even though God's image is in the mirror of our soul and is united with it without intermediary, still the image is not the mirror, for God does not become a creature. The union of the image in the mirror is, however, so great and so noble that the soul is called the image of God.

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quote 2830 | John Ruusbroec
John Ruusbroec, adapted from John Ruusbroec: The Spritual Espousals and Other Works, translated by James Wiseman (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1985)

R ather, all these things must remain below, for this infinite resplendence so blinds the eyes of reason that they have to give way before this incomprehensible light. However, that simple eye that dwells above reason in the ground of our understanding is always open, contemplating with unhindered vision and gazing at the light with the light itself - eye to eye, mirror to mirror, image to image.

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quote 2829 | John Ruusbroec
John Ruusbroec, adapted from John Ruusbroec: The Spritual Espousals and Other Works, translated by James Wiseman (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1985)

H ere our reason and every activity characterized by the making of distinctions must give way, for our powers now become simply one in love, grow silent, and incline toward the Father's face, since this revelation of the Father raises the soul above reason to a state of imageless bareness. There the soul is simple, spotless, and pure, empty of everything. In this pure emptiness the Father reveals his divine resplendence, which neither reason nor senses, neither rational observation nor distinctions can attain.

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quote 2828 | John Ruusbroec
John Ruusbroec, adapted from John Ruusbroec: The Spritual Espousals and Other Works, translated by James Wiseman (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1985)

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