A powerful encouragement under the cross.
The Seventy-fourth Letter.
A powerful encouragement under the cross.
In the highly-praised God-Child, beloved sister!
Just now J. gives me your little letter; both this and the former have been pleasant and refreshing to me, as they always renew the remembrance of love, and are also already answered in spirit, since I have not always time and opportunity to do it with the pen.
I take part, always and from the heart, in your sufferings and in your joys; only remain assured of this: how much more will Jesus do it, who is always with you; who sees and sees through you and all your circumstances; who has both an infinite compassion and an infinite power. He Himself it is who, through His presence, awakens and sustains in you the languishing, inward longing to be His whole offering and possession; He will also fulfil the same, alone and through Himself, in His time, after the powers of the hidden self-love and self-will have been burned up through the glow of the manifold sufferings. Ah Lord! Lay wood upon the altar, etc.
Ah! the little Child wants to have you so childlike, so innocent, so gentle, so sweet and without will, as though you were, so to speak, no more; He wills to will alone in you and to move you; He wills to be King and Lord alone. "Make room for me!" said He to Armelle, and also to us. We answer: Make Thou room for Thyself in us! Uncover, bind, destroy what is ours, and set what is Thine in its place! Be not disheartened, dear sister! The higher the sufferings go, and the longer God lets you be smeared and bitten with the ugly soap, the more am I assured in my mind that He wills to have you right beautiful in His eyes. Wait but a little! we call it delay: but with the Lord a thousand years are as one day. Jesus rejoices perfectly in His Father, in His angels, and in His saints; this joy He might have had and kept: but because He saw you and me lying in our blood, He endured the cross and despised the shame, to trouble Himself with us unclean children, that He might cleanse us and rejoice in us eternally. He has begun it; He will also carry it out. Yea, Amen!
You ask: whether I only love and praise? or whether I also still suffer along? I do it all together, and desire, here on earth too, to do none of these alone. Suffering without loving is for the damned; loving without suffering for the blessed. We honor God by both, here on earth, as children of the crucified Love. O how God rejoices over a soul which, in the very midst of the wretched and of sufferings on every side, does on earth what the angels do in heaven — namely, love, praise, and adore God! For He is worthy of it. May He transfigure Himself in us eternally, Amen!
Mülheim, 12 December 1734.
German
Der 74te Brief.
Kräftige Aufmunterung unter dem Kreuz.
In dem hochgelobtem GOtt-Kinde geliebte Schwester!
So eben gibt mir I. dein Briefgen; sowohl dieses als das Vorige sind mir angenehm und erquicklich gewesen; wie sie dann immer das Andenken der Liebe erneuren, und auch schon im Geiste beantwortet sind, da ichs mit der Feder zu thun nicht immer Zeit und Gelegenheit habe.
— Opening lines of the original German. The complete transcription of all 605 letters appears in the forthcoming Encounter Press critical edition; Brief 1 is shown in full as a sample.
German text: public domain (1773–75 first edition / 1845 Gesammelte Schriften).
Translator’s notes
What this letter is. A letter of consolation to a suffering soul that refuses to treat suffering as a problem to be solved, and instead reads it as love at work. Tersteegen begins by pointing away from his own sympathy to Christ's — "how much more will Jesus do it, who is always with you… infinite compassion and infinite power." The suffering, he insists, is purifying: through "the glow of the manifold sufferings" the "hidden self-love and self-will" are being "burned up," and he seals the thought with a startling prayer of self-oblation — "Ah Lord! Lay wood upon the altar" (make the fire hotter). At the center stands the boldest note of Tersteegen's mysticism, the annihilation of self-will: "the little Child wants to have you… without will, as though you were no more; He wills to will alone in you." He voices this through a saying of the French mystic Armelle — Christ's "Make room for me!" — turned into the soul's answering surrender: "Make Thou room for Thyself in us! Uncover, bind, destroy what is ours, and set what is Thine in its place!" The sufferings, then, are a lover's rough cleansing: "the longer God lets you be smeared and bitten with the ugly soap [the fuller's soap], the more am I assured… that He wills to have you right beautiful in His eyes." The ground of all this is the cross itself: because Christ "saw you and me lying in our blood," He "endured the cross and despised the shame." And the letter's great, balanced maxim gives the whole a shape: "suffering without loving is for the damned; loving without suffering for the blessed" — on earth the Christian does both, "as a child of the crucified Love," doing here below "what the angels do in heaven: love, praise, and adore God."
A few words and echoes.
- "The highly-praised God-Child" (das hochgelobte GOtt-Kinde). The Christ-child — Tersteegen's beloved Christmas image (the letter is dated mid-December); to be "in the God-Child" is to be enfolded in the incarnate humility of Christ (Luke 2; cf. Matthew 18:3).
- "Lay wood upon the altar." The self offered as a whole burnt-offering (Leviticus 1:7; Genesis 22:9); the prayer asks for more fire, that self-love be wholly consumed (Romans 12:1, "a living sacrifice").
- "Without will, as though you were no more… He wills to will alone in you." The mystical annihilation of self-will (Gelassenheit at its extreme); cf. Galatians 2:20, "not I, but Christ liveth in me," and John 3:30, "he must increase, but I must decrease."
- "Make room for me!" — said He to Armelle. Armelle Nicolas (1606–1671), "la bonne Armelle," an unlettered French servant-mystic whose sayings Tersteegen prized; the phrase became a byword for God's demand for the whole heart. The soul's answer turns His demand into its own prayer.
- "The ugly soap that smears and bites." Malachi 3:2, "he is like a refiner's fire, and like fullers' sope" — God scouring the soul clean; the painful scrubbing is cosmetic, making the soul "beautiful in His eyes" (Ezekiel 16:14).
- "With the Lord a thousand years are as one day." 2 Peter 3:8 (Psalm 90:4) — the answer to the felt "delay" of relief.
- "He saw you and me lying in our blood… endured the cross, despised the shame." Ezekiel 16:6 ("when thou wast in thy blood… Live") joined to Hebrews 12:2 ("endured the cross, despising the shame") — the whole motive of the Incarnation and Passion is the soul's rescue.
- "Suffering without loving is for the damned; loving without suffering for the blessed." Tersteegen's own maxim: hell is pain without love, heaven is love without pain; earth alone unites them — hence the Christian is "a child of the crucified Love," doing on earth what heaven does (love and praise) but under the cross.
trans. Jarred Fenlason · gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdi-thii-074 · all rights reservedEnglish translation © Jarred Fenlason · All rights reserved · gerhardtersteegen.com.