matter to the Provost. Attributing the faintness to advancing age and weakness, the Superior was about to forbid the holy old man to celebrate any more, when Blessed John humbly besought him to forbear, assuring him that the swoon was due not to the failing of years but to the overpowering of divine grace, non propter senium sed divinae gratiae collatum xenium. “Even to-day,” he added, “Jesus Christ appeared to me, and filling my soul with a deliciousness all divine, He said to my heart, Thou art Mine and I am thine.”

Such heavenly favours seem to have been by no means rare with our Saint. He was frequently ravished with a vision of Our Divine Lord in His sacred Humanity. Christ appeared to him, accompanied by His Blessed Mother and a numerous retinue of Saints, and conversed familiarly with him. On one such occasion, penetrating his whole being with a sense of wondrous sweetness, He greeted him with ineffable condescension thus: “Thou art My dear son, in whom I am well pleased.” Then Jesus Christ embraced him and presented him to Our Lady and the attendant Saints with the words: “Behold My chosen servant!”

VII
Ruysbroeck’s Tree

Whenever Blessed John felt the Spirit of God full upon him, even the solitude of the cloister was not sufficiently retired for the intimacy of the divine union. He would wander away into the depths of the forest surrounding the monastery, there to abandon himself to the action of the Holy Ghost undisturbed. On these occasions also he was wont to take with him a stylus and a wax tablet, in order to jot down such thoughts and lights as he was moved to preserve in writing. Of these notes a fair copy was made on his return to the Priory. Towards the end of his days, when his sight was failing and otherwise the effort of making these notes was too much for him, one of the Canons always accompanied him into the forest to write down at his dictation whatever he was moved to communicate. Sometimes days or whole weeks would pass, and for want of inspiration not a line nor a word would be added to the treatise in hand. But when again the Spirit breathed, he continued from the very sentence or phrase where he had paused, just as if there had been no interval between.

One day the Saint had retired as usual into the forest, and the Brethren, knowing his occupation, respected his privacy. But when hours passed and there was no sign of his return, they became alarmed and set out to scour the woods in search of him. One of the Canons was especially intimate with the Prior and loved him most tenderly. Perhaps his anxiety urged him ahead of the rest. In a glade of the forest his eye lighted upon a wondrous scene. He perceived a tree as it were in flames. On nearer approach he discovered that it was in fact encircled with fire. And under the tree, in the midst of the mysterious conflagration, John Ruysbroeck was seated, manifestly rapt in ecstasy.

The memory of this miracle was never lost in the Community. For generations the tree was known and venerated as Ruysbroeck’s Tree. At the close of the fifteenth century the Prior, James van Dynter, planted a lime-tree in the same place, which received the respect shown hitherto to the original, which presumably had died down. When in 1577 the Canons were obliged to abandon Groenendael on account of the vexations of the religious wars, it is said that this tree withered away until only its bark was left; but when the Community returned in 1607, it revived and flourished again.

This episode also has fixed the traditional representation of Blessed John Ruysbroeck. He is usually pictured seated under a tree, a stylus in his hand and a wax tablet resting on his knee, while Saint and tree alike are encircled in brilliant rays of celestial light.

VIII
A Director of Souls

It is no wonder that as the fame of these and similar marvels spread abroad, multitudes of the faithful, young and old, clergy and laity, flocked to see and hear the holy Prior of Groenendael. They came to him from Flanders, Brabant, Holland, Germany, and France. Ruysbroeck received all with unvarying simple courtesy, and his unpremeditated words were ever found to meet exactly the needs of each. Many placed themselves unreservedly in his hands, and frequently sought his direction by correspondence, or came long distances to consult him in person.

One of these penitents was the Baroness van Marke, of Rhode-St.-Agatha, which lies midway between Groenendael and Louvain. This lady conceived such a veneration for the holy Prior that when she went to visit him, she walked the journey, pilgrimwise, barefoot. Finally, his exhortations to flee and despise the passing vanities of the world prevailed so much with her that she entered a Convent of Poor Clares in Cologne, and her son Ingelbert joined the Community of Groenendael.

We are told of another disciple, who once fell into a grievous sickness and at the same time into a still more grievous affliction of spirit. She sent for Blessed John, begging him to visit her. She told him of her distress; behold, she was abandoned by God, on the one hand no health or strength was left her to perform her accustomed works of mercy, and on the other hand physical suffering took away all taste for prayer! What was she to do? “You can do nothing more pleasing to God, my dear child,” responded the Saint, “than simply and utterly to submit to His holy will. Strive to forsake your own desires and to give Him thanks for all things.” Such unction accompanied these simple and characteristic words that the good lady felt deeply consoled, and she repined no more.

Among the more famous to frequent Groenendael, there to sit and learn at the feet of Ruysbroeck, is mentioned the well-known German mystic Tauler. But authorities are divided at present as to whether or no these visits to Groenendael can be fitted in with other ascertained facts of Tauler’s life. However, it is certain that Tauler was well acquainted with the writings of our Saint; to a great extent he followed his method, and at times, in the free-and-easy style of those days, he did not hesitate to transfer bodily from Ruysbroeck’s volumes into his own.

IX
Ruysbroeck and Gerard Groote

A greater than Tauler, and one whose influence was eventually far more widespread, undoubtedly owed much to the recluse of Groenendael and freely acknowledged Blessed John his master. This was the famous Gerard Groote, the founder, as already noted, of the Devout Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life, and through them of the Windesheim Congregation of Canons Regular. The occasion and circumstances of Groote’s first visit to Groenendael are narrated by the Venerable Thomas à Kempis in his Vita Gerardi Magni. The passage is so graphic and characteristic that it is well worth transcribing.^[4]

“The pious and humble Master Gerard, hearing of the great and widespread fame of John Ruysbroeck, a monk and Prior of the Monastery of Grünthal, near Brussels, went to the parts about Brabant, although the journey was long, in order to see in bodily presence this holy and most devout Father; for