2 December 1381 A.D. Mystic John
Ruysbroeck Dies
Graves, Dan. “John
Ruysbroeck Urged to Know God Directly.” Christianity.com. Apr 2007.
http://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1201-1500/john-ruysbroeck-urged-know-god-directly-11629866.html.
Accessed 2 Dec 2014.
To Ruysbroek's contemporaries,
this sounded dangerously like pantheism. Pantheism teaches that God is
everything and everything is God. John was quick to assure his readers that
what he meant is that we can become one with God in love,--not in our nature
or essential
being as Christ was.
John was just eleven when he
left home without even saying good-bye to his pious mother. He wanted to be
with an uncle who was eager to live the kind of simple life that he imagined
the early Christians
lived. John was infected with the same ideal. Like his uncle he desired a deeper
spirituality. In due time John was given a church position and his mother moved
to Brussels to be near him.
Until he was fifty, John lived
in Brussels. Then he joined his uncle and a like-minded man in a hermitage at
Groenendael. So many men followed them that they had to organize themselves
into a regular church body.
John began to write in order to
battle the teachings of false mystics. He wandered the woods with a note pad,
thinking about God. When any understanding came to him, he wrote it down.
Although he was a Fleming and wrote in his native language, rather than in
Latin, his writings had a great impact because they were translated into the
major languages of Western Europe.
Mysticism did not make John
impractical. On the contrary, he was so good at helping others see how they
ought to act in given situations that many crowded him for advice. His writings
were eagerly copied and passed on to others. Gerard Groot, one of the great
Christians of the age, became his close friend. Through Groot, John also
influenced Thomas á Kempis, author of The Imitation of Christ. Tauler, who
would become one of the most famous German mystics, visited the hermitage and
was deeply influenced by John.
John died on this day, December
2, 1381at Groenendael. In 1908 the pope declared him blessed.
Bibliography:
1. "Ruysbroeck or Ruusbroec, Bl Jan van." The Oxford
Dictionary of the Christian Church. Edited by F. L. Cross and E. A.
Livingstone. Oxford, 1997.
2. "Ruysbroeck (Ruusbroec, Ruysbroek), Jan Van." New
Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge. Grand Rapids:
Baker Book House, 1954.
3. Scully, Vincent. "Blessed John Ruysbroec." The Catholic
Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton, 1914.
Last updated April,
2007.
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