Friendship with God

For many people Lent is a time to give up things, perhaps things that could be harmful to us if taken in excess, like smoking, drinking alcohol or overeating.  Forgoing such things can be a good discipline and improve our health, but the real purpose of giving things up in Lent is to unite with Jesus 40 days of fasting in the desert.  

Some saints and spiritual writers see a more basic call to give up all that is not necessary to make room for God to enter and fill us with his Loving merciful presence. Among our Carmelite writers we see it especially in St. John of the Cross, but even further back we find similar ideas expressed by Johann Tauler (1300-1365). He was a Dominican priest and theologian and was a follower of Meister Eckhart, but he holds his own place as one of the Rhineland Mystics, who stressed friendship with God. 

He wrote:

It is certain that if God is to be born in the soul it must turn back to eternity.
It must turn in towards itself with all its might, must recall itself,
and concentrate all its faculties within itself, the lower as well as the highest.
All its dissipated powers must be gathered up into one, because unity is strength.

Next the soul must go out.
It must travel away from itself, above itself...
There must be nothing left in us, but a pure intention towards God; 
No desire to be or become or obtain anything for ourselves.
We must exist only to make a place for him, the highest innermost place where he may do his work;
there we are no longer putting ourselves in the way,
He can be born in us.
If you would prepare an empty place in the depths of the soul,
there can be no doubt that God must fill it at once...
Then he will be born in us and be our very own.

The wording may sound a little strange to modern ears, but it has a beauty and depth of its own. 

Photo details: 
Statue of Johann Tauler in a niche on the south facade of the 'new' St. Peter's protestant church in Strasbourg.  The statue was destroyed in the French Revolution but was reconstructed in 1898. 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St-Pierre-le-Jeune_protestant-Tauler_(2).jpg

Desert photo:
Source unknown 

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