Whatever troubles may come to you, do not commit the folly of believing that you are set for any other goal than the great God Himself, in the fullness of His being and of His love. Do not let folly or doubt deflect you from any good practice which can lead you to this goal. If you will confide yourself to His love, you will soon grow to your full stature, but if you persist in doubting, you will become sluggish and grudging, and everything which you ought to do will be a burden to you.

Let nothing trouble you. Do not believe that anything which you must do for Him whom you seek will be beyond your strength, that you cannot surmount it, that it will be beyond you. This is the fervor, this is the zeal which you must have, and all the time your strength must grow.

You must choose and love God's will alone in all things—His will for you, for your friends, for Himself, even though your own wish might be for Him to give you consolation, so that you might live your life here in peace and rest.

But today, instead of loving God's will, everyone loves himself. It is everyone's will to have peace and rest, to live with God in riches and might, and to be one with Him in His joy and glory. We all want to be God along with God; but God knows that there are few of us who want to be man with Him in His humanity, to carry His cross with Him, to hang upon it with Him, to pay with Him the debt of humankind.

If we look at ourselves we can see that this is true. We will not suffer anything; we will not endure. Just let our hearts be stabbed by the slightest grief, just let someone say a scornful or slanderous word about us, let anyone act against our reputation or our peace or our will, and at once we are mortally injured.

We know exactly what we want and what we do not want; there are so many different things which give us pleasure or pain; now we want this and now we want that. Our joy today is our sorrow tomorrow. We would like to be here, we would like to be there; we do not want something and then we want it; and in everything all we are thinking of is our own satisfaction and how we can best seek it.

The Pains of False Thinking

This is why we are all still unenlightened in our thinking, unstable in all our being, uncertain in our reasoning and understanding. This is why we suffer so, poor wretched exiled beggars, painfully traveling through a foreign land. And there would be no need for this, were it not that all our thinking is false; and how false it is we show plainly when we do not live with Christ as He lived, do not abandon all as He did, are not abandoned by all as He was.

If we look at what we do, we can see that this is true: Whenever we can, we strive for our own ease. Where we can gain it, we fight for advancement, we fight to get our own way. We know exactly what is going to please us. We seek our own advantage in everything, in spiritual matters as well as worldly, and whatever we achieve in these ways, that is our joy and our delight; and when we have it, we think that now we are something. And just as we say that, we are in truth nothing. This is how we destroy ourselves in our whole way of life, and we do not live with Christ and we do not carry the cross with the Son of God.

Love shall one day reveal Himself.

The cross which we must carry with the living Son of God is that sweet exile which men suffer for their true Love, when in a longing trustfulness we await that great day on which Love shall reveal itself and manifest its noble powers and its great might on earth and in heaven. Then Love shall show itself so mighty to those who love that it will draw them out of themselves, it will rob them of heart and mind, it will make them die to self and make them live in the loving service of true Love.

But before Love shall show itself so greatly, before it calls men so utterly to come out of themselves to it, before it touches them that they become one spirit and one life with Love in Love, men must pay to Love the tribute of honorable service and a life of longing exile: honorable service in all the works of virtue, and a life of longing exile in perfect obedience, always standing ready with fresh zeal and willing hands for every deed in which virtue is exercised, with a will submissive to every virtue which can pay honor to Love. And in all this there must be no other intention than that Love should be enthroned, as it should be, in men and in all creatures, according to Love's pleasure.

This is to hang upon the cross with Christ. This is to die with Him and with Him to rise again. May He help us always to do this; and for this help I entreat Him in whom is every perfect virtue.

For we are obliged to perform virtuous works not to gain admiration or happiness, not for wealth or power, nor for any pleasure in heaven or on earth, but only so that we may be pleasing to God's greatest honor, who created human nature for this, making it to His honor and His praise, and for our joy in eternal glory.

Hadewijch of Brabant (c. 1200s) was an author, poet, and spiritual counselor who devoted herself to a life of service—probably caring for the sick—with the Beguine religious order of women. Most likely a resident of Antwerp or Brussels, Belgium, she was an educated writer who spoke Latin and French as well as her own native Dutch, and she was well-versed in Christian theology. This excerpt is from a collection of her letters and poems.