A Mediaeval Mystic

For twenty-six years in all Blessed John lived as a secular priest in Brussels. Content with his modest chaplaincy in the Church of St. Gudule, and with his holy companions Hinckaert and van Coudenberg continuing happily in apostolic simplicity and poverty the Common Life on which he had entered a mere child, Ruysbroeck passed his days in peaceful retirement and almost uninterrupted prayer and contemplation. A characteristic episode of this period reveals to us the man as in a flash, his mean garb, his emaciated figure, his absorbed demeanour, his utter abandonment in God. He was passing through a square of Brussels one day, silent and recollected, as was his wont, when two laymen remarked him. "My God," exclaimed one, "would I were as holy as that priest!" "Nay, for my part," returned the other, "I would not be in his shoes for all the wealth of the world. I should never know a day's pleasure on earth.