Today dear children we visit a Dominican friend from the 14th Century, Henry Suso (1295 -1366) . Henry is one of the Rhineland Mystics and came from a noble Swabian family near lake Constance which borders Switzerland and Germany.
He later became a student of Meister Eckhart, of whom we have explored a little on our Monday visits.
His writings include: Horologum Sapeintiae, Or the Computer of Wisdom
And another Book entitled The Little Book of Wisdom
Today I want to share with you a section on self abandonment and the fruits of the union of man with God.
The first "self" he has in common with a stone, and that is existence. The second he has in common with a plant and that is growth. The third with the animals and that is feeling. The fourth with all men, is that he has a human nature like they. The fifth belongs to him individually, it is his personality, both according to the essential and to the accidental. Now what is it that leads a man astray and robs him of his salvation? Only his "last self" by means of which a man turns away from God and toward himself . . .he thoughtlessly makes himself a "self'"of his own. That is he blindly appropriates for himself what is God's, makes this his goal and eventually falls into sin.
This is his description of a truly self abandoned man:
He is quite dead to himself, is entirely lost in God , has passed into him and has become one spirit with him in all respects, like a little drop of water which is poured into a large portion of wine. Just as this is lost to itself, and draws to itself and into itself the taste and color of the wine, so it likewise happens to those who are in the complete possession of blessedness. All human desires fall away from them in an inexpressible manner, they met away into themselves and sink completely into the will of God.
Oh to find oneself so abandoned, so that it is "I who no longer live but Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2:20)
Perhaps, someday with lots of prayer and fasting and more prayer. Only this I want.
Pax
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