He Is Born In Us

“It is certain that if God is to be born in the soul
It must turn back to eternity
It must turn in toward itself with all its might, Must recall itself,
And consecrate all its faculties within itself,
The lowest 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 will to be or become or obtain anything for ourselves.
We must exit only to make place for him,
The highest inmost place,
Where he may do his work;
There, when we are no longer putting ourselves in his way,
He can be born in us.
If one would prepare an empty place In the depths of the soul
There can be no doubt that God must fill it at once.
If there were void on earth The heavens would fall to fill it.
So you must be silent.
Then God will be born in you,
Utter his word in you And you shall hear it;
But be very sure that if you speak
The word will have to be silent.
If you go out, he will most surely come in;
As much as you go out for him He will come to you;
No more, no less.
When shall we find and know This birth of God within us?
Only when we concentrate all our faculties within us
and direct them all towards God.
Then he will be born in us And make himself our very own.
He will give himself to us as our own, more completely ours
than anything we ever called our own.
The text says: ‘A child is born to us and a son is given to us.’
He is ours He is all our own,
More truly than anything else we own,
and constantly, ceaselessly,
he is born in us.”

~ Johannes Tauler (1300 –1361) was a German mystic, a Catholic preacher and a theologian. A disciple of Meister Eckhart, he belonged to the Dominican order. Tauler was known as one of the most important Rhineland Mystics. He promoted a certain neo-platonist dimension in the Dominican spirituality of his time.

Art ~ Leonardo da Vinci's Madonna and Child (Madonna Litta) is 500 years old. It hangs in the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. Mary looks serene and happy, and baby Jesus looks healthy and replete. She is gazing down at her boy; he is looking towards us, his eyelids heavy with sleep now he has had his fill of her milk. Mary's outfit features a detail that was perhaps common in breastfeeding-friendly Renaissance Florence, an opening has been made in the material of her top to provide easy access to her breasts when her baby needs to feed. The Vatican recently announced that it wants to uncover centuries-old art of the Virgin Mary with the baby Jesus at her naked breast. From the earliest Christian times until the late Renaissance, such paintings, dubbed Madonna del Latte, were common – and made sense. Nursing is what poor women did. And the holy family was impoverished. But, during the Reformation, more puritanical ideas took hold – and Mary's breast went under wraps.