Blessed Henry Suso

Extract

’ You must not thitik that you shall take leave from love. Behold, they who said they loved you could not love. And if your heart were as full of love as the bottomless sea, it would all be drunk in by the love of the Beautiful Lover.'—Henry Suso.

The fourteenth century may justly be called the classic period of German mysticism, for it gave birth to the great triad of Meister Eckhart, Henry Suso, and John Tauler, all of them Dominicans.

The conditions in which they lived were, indeed, almost ideal for the development of a Christian mysticism of the highest order. Their time was a time of widespread and intense suffering for Church and people alike. The Church, in the person of the Popes, was persecuted by the Emperors; epidemics were rife in town and country, and frequent interdicts deprived the faithful of the consolations of Religion often for years at a time. Thus, in the desolation of a life whose insecurity and transitoriness were only too apparent, souls sought and found stability in a personal relationship with God which the vicissitudes of earthly existence could not affect and death itself would but transform and fulfil. This close intercourse between God and the soul was cultivated, especially among the nuns and lay communities of women whose direction was entrusted almost exclusively to the Dominicans. This contact between the highly strung spirituality of the nuns and the theological austerity of the disciples of St. Dominic produced a wonderfully enriched mystic life. Securely rooted in Thomistic doctrine, the flower of Dominican mysticism drew from the Angelic Doctor all his learning, sanity, and balance, developing his own mystic elements in the less restrained atmosphere of feminine tenderness and devotion.