The Sermon.
“Jesus, ô nom qui surpasse
Tout nom qu’on puisse exalter,
Que jamais je ne me lasse
Nom beni, de to chanter!
Seul clarteˊ qui rayonne
Sur les gloires du saint lieu,
Seule nom dont l’echo resonne
Dans le cœur memo de Dieu!
Jesus, c’est l’Amour supreme
De son trone descendu,
Qui ceint de Son diademe
Le front de l’homme perdu.
C’est le Roi qui s’humilie
Pour vaincre le revolte;
C’est la divine folie
Dans la divine bouteˊ
Qui pleura sur ceux qui pleurent?
C’est Lui, l’Homme meprise!
Qui mourut pour ceux qui meurent?
C’est Lui, l’Homme an cceur briseˊ!
De son sang et de see larmes
Il arrosa son chemin,
Et e’est par oes seules armes
Qu’ii mews le genre humain.
Jesus, par qui Dieu pardonne,
Roi d’epinee couronne,
Que le monde t’abandonne,
A toi mon cceur s’est donne!
Ta mort est ma delivrance,
Je esuis heureux sous Ta lot;
O Jesus, mon esperance,
Quel autre auraisle que Toi!”
THE time was come when the Lord would send him forth to speak of the things he had seen and heard, and his heart yearned over the dwellers in the castles and the huts in the country round; and he spoke to them in sweet and simple words of the love of Jesus. He sometimes went into the churches and little chapels amongst the hills, and prayed there alone.
One day, being the 14th of August, the vigil of the festival called the Assumption, he perceived a church near to the house of a certain knight, called Sir John de Dalton. He entered the church, and finding himself all alone, he knelt down in a quiet corner to pray.
Soon after, the family of the knight came in for the evening service, and it was observed that the accustomed place of the Lady de Dalton was occupied by a stranger in a singular dress. But the lady would not suffer him to be disturbed, and he himself, being lost as it were in prayer, did not notice those who came in.
After the service, the sons of the knight, who were students from Oxford, told their mother that the young man so strangely dressed was well known to them, and that he was the son of their neighbor William Rolle.
The next day, as there was a service in honor of the festival, the family were again at church, and the hermit was there in the dress of an assistant. And having asked leave of the priest, he went up into the pulpit, and preached a sermon so wonderful and so entrancing, that all men listened with awe, and felt their hearts as it were set on fire by the power of the Spirit of the Lord.
No record remains of the sermon, but words of Richard Rolle remain, which tell us what was the message that he brought from God. A message, not for the fourteenth century only, but for the nineteenth also.
First, a Latin text. “In English,” he said, “these words stand thus ‘Oil outpoured is Thy Name.’
“The Name of Jesus cometh into the world from Heaven, and straightway it smelleth as oil outpoured. Oil, the salvation that lasteth for evermore. Soothly the Name Jesus is as much as to say in our English tongue Saviour, or Helpful.
“Therefore what meaneth ‘oil outpoured is Thy frame,’ but this, Jesus is Thy Name?
“Jesus! Thou fulfillest in Thy work that which Thou art called in Thy Name; Thou whom we call Saviour, therefore is Thy Name Jesus, the Name of wonder, the Name of deep delight.
“This is the Name above all names—Name the highest of all things that are; Name, without which is no saving hope for men. This Name is in mine ear a heavenly song, in my mouth as honey for sweetness.
“Therefore no wonder that I love that Name, the which comforteth me in all anguish, that causeth my prayer to rise to God, and that is to me unfailing courage and cheer; the blessed Name of Jesus. I savor naught of joy in that which is not mingled with Jesus. Wheresoever I be, wheresoever I sit, whatsoever I do, the savor of the Name Jesus departeth not from my mind. I have set it as a token upon my heart, as a token upon mine arm, for love is strong as death, the love of my Saviour Jesus.
“As death slays all, so love overcomes all. Everlasting love has conquered me, not for to slay me, but for to make me live. But it has wounded me that it should heal me. It has pierced through my heart, that to the innermost my heart should be healed. And now scarcely do I live for joy, for I am not able in this feeble flesh to bear so delightsome sweetness, so mickle majesty.
“But whence unto me such joy but for Jesus? The Name of Jesus has taught me to sing, and has lightened my soul with the glory of unmade light. Therefore I sigh and cry, Who shall show to the beloved Jesus that I languish for love? ‘My heart melts in the fire of that love, yearning for Jesus, and with the sweetness of the Godhead is it filled to the full.
“And finding Thee, Lord Jesus, my heart, captive to Thy love, coveteth Thee alone. Then is the heart touched with sovereign sweetness, and waxeth hot in the love of God, whilst it holds within it the sweetest Name of Jesus. And soothly from thence there floweth forth a mighty river of love, and what thing that love toucheth it ravisheth utterly to itself.
“O Name desirable, lovable, and comfortable, no such sweet joy may be conceived as that which Thou enfoldest― such sweet song may be heard as the sound of Thee. Therefore whosoever thou be that preparest thy heart to love God, if thou wilt stand and not fall, have a busy care to hold the Name of Jesus in thy mind; then shall the enemy fall and thou shalt stand, the enemy shall be made weak and thou shalt be made strong, thou shalt be a glorious overcomer.
“Soothly nothing so quenches fell flames, so destroys evil thoughts, so drives forth venomous affections, so does away from us curious and vain occupations, as the Name of Jesus. For it poureth in the savor of heavenly things, and consumes discord, and brings in peace, and gives untroubled rest; turns all earthly things to naught, and fills the loving soul with ever-lasting joy. Therefore is it said― ‘They that love Thy Name shall be joyful in Thee,’ and ‘Thou Lord shalt bless the righteous, with favor shalt thou compass him about as with a shield.’
“Soothly know we well that thus is it in the love of God, that the more we love the more we long to love. Surely naught of joy shall be lacking to him who loveth Him whom the angels yearn to behold, but his joy is full, and eternal, and glorious. Therefore, Lord Jesus, all shall joy that love Thy Name; now by the outpouring of Thy grace, and in the time to come by sight of joy; for the flower of love is joy, and he that loveth not shall for evermore be withouten joy.
“Whatso ye do, if ye give all ye have unto the needy, yet love not the Name of Jesus, ye labor in vain. Know ye all that the Name of Jesus is healful, and fruitful, and glorious. Who then shall have salvation that loves it not? or who shall bear fruit to Christ who beareth not the flower? Joy shall he never see who has not loved the Name of Jesus.
“I went about seeking after riches, and I found not Jesus. I ran after the wantonness of the flesh, and I found not Jesus. I sat in companies of worldly mirth, and I found not Jesus. Amidst all these things I sought for Jesus, but I found Him not, for He gave me to wit by His grace that He is not found in the land of soft living.
“Therefore I turned by another way, the way of poverty, and I found Jesus poor, laid in a crib, and wrapped in swaddling clothes. I went by the way of weariness, and I found Jesus weary in the way, hungry, thirsty, and cold, filled with reproach and blame. I sat alone, fleeing the vanities of the world, and I found Jesus in the desert, fasting on the mountains and praying. I found Him bound and scourged, gall given Him to drink, nailed to the Cross, hanging on the Cross, dying on the Cross.
“He is found not in wanton joying, but in bitter greeting (weeping), not among many, but alone.
“Soothly I wonder not if the tempted fall, who keep not the Name of Jesus in lasting mind. In serving and delighting in Jesus Christ there is nothing of the world’s thoughts. It is a delight wonderful and pure, holy and steadfast, and when a man feels in him that joy, then is he of the spiritual circumcision.
“Then all other wants and affections and thoughts are drawn away out of his soul, that he may have rest in God’s love without entanglement of other things. The delight is wonderful. It is so high that no thought may reach thereto to bring it down. For the heart is kept aloft in the light, upholders by the Holy Ghost, above all earthly thoughts, and above all lower things.
“And then does the Name of Jesus sound in his heart delectably, as it were a heavenly song, and this comfort and sweetness is so mighty that it draws all the wits of the soul thereto. And when a soul offers this song to Jesus, truly and meekly, putting all his trust and desire in Him, our Lord Jesus purifies the affection of the soul, and fills it and feeds it with sweetness of Himself, and makes His Name to be felt in the soul as honey or as minstrelsy, or as all delightsome things.
“Nevertheless in this manner of feeling, a soul may be turned aside by vain glory; not in the time that the affection sings to Jesus, and loves Jesus in sweetness of Him; but afterward, when it ceases, and the heart cools of love to Jesus, then enters in the vain glory.”
Thus has one written five hundred years later: “I am a man in Christ, because Christ is my life. This is the place in which we are set, in Christ in the presence of God. In the case of S. Paul, when this truth was carried to the highest possible realization, he was in the third heaven. But Paul gets back to the world, and the flesh comes in. He had been in the third heaven, he had had this wonderful abundance of revelations, and the flesh says to him, There has not been a person in the third heaven but you.’ He is not puffed up when he is there, because it is the presence of God, and nobody can be proud in the presence of God.
“Persons fancy that it makes people proud to be in the third heaven. Never! The danger is when you get out of the third heaven, of the flesh being proud of having been there. Wherever it works, it makes mischief, and if there were a fourth heaven, and a man could have been there, it would only be worse. Therefore, what does God send? A thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet him.”
And thus also does Richard Rolle repeat his warning: “Therefore I hold it sicker (safe) that a man be meek in his own conditions, and that he suffer not his heart to be gaping after some strange stirring, or some wonderful feeling, but be it enough for me and for you to have desire and longing to our Lord; and if He will of His free grace send us more of spiritual light, and open our spiritual eyes for to see and know more of Him than we have known before, thank we Him thereof.
“So I have told ye in this matter a little as methinketh, not affirming that this sufficeth. But it sufficeth to me to live in truth principally, and not in feeling. Saint Paul says that as long as we are in this body, we are pilgrims from our Lord; that we walk by faith, not by sight, that is, we live in truth and not in feeling, and we have a desire to be absent from the body, and be present to God.
“Nevertheless we may not yet, wherefore we strive whether we be absent or present for to please Him, having a desire and a great yearning for to be present to Him, to see Him in His bliss, one with Him in His eternal love.”
And having ceased to speak, he broke forth in a joyful song, so strong and sweet, that those who listened seemed to themselves to be borne away into the gladness of the City of God.