Ruysbroeck always spoke without any immediate preparation; but it was characteristic of the man that when requested by the Canons or by strangers for a Conference, he would sometimes confess in all simplicity that inspiration was lacking, that he had nothing to say. It was the same with his written treatises: at the close of his life he was able to declare that he had never committed anything to writing save under the immediate motion of the Holy Spirit.

As so often happens with the Saints, Blessed John’s love for the neighbour overflowed in tenderness for his brothers and sisters of the lower creation also. Knowing this trait, the Canons would remark to him on the approach of winter: “See, Father Prior, it is snowing already. What will the poor little birds do now?” And with expressions of heartfelt compassion this sublime mystic, who was habitually lost in dizziest heights of contemplation, would give instructions that the feathered choristers outside the cloister should not be abandoned to perish of hunger.

Very frequently in his works Blessed Ruysbroeck takes occasion to treat of the Holy Sacrament of the Altar, and ever he speaks of this sacred mystery in terms of the most vivid faith and intense devotion, discussing it as a supreme proof of God’s love for men, on a par with the gifts of Creation, the Incarnation, and Redemption. His biographers tell us of his personal love for the Blessed Eucharist, and especially of his ecstatic devotion in offering the great Sacrifice. To the close of his long life, even when his failing sight could no longer distinguish the figure of the Crucified stamped upon the Host, nothing but grave sickness could hold him back from daily celebration. Sometimes he swooned from the excess of the sweetness with which his soul was inundated during the canon of the Mass.

On one such occasion not only did he faint, but he seemed on the point of expiring, so that the terrified server reported the matter to the Provost. Attributing the faintness to advancing age and weakness, the Superior was about to forbid the holy old man to celebrate any more, when Blessed John humbly besought him to forbear, assuring him that the swoon was due not to the failing of years but to the overpowering of divine grace, non propter senium sed divinae gratiae collatum xenium. “Even to-day,” he added, “Jesus Christ appeared to me, and filling my soul with a deliciousness all divine, He said to my heart, Thou art Mine and I am thine.”

Such heavenly favours seem to have been by no means rare with our Saint. He was frequently ravished with a vision of Our Divine Lord in His sacred Humanity. Christ appeared to him, accompanied by His Blessed Mother and a numerous retinue of Saints, and conversed familiarly with him. On one such occasion, penetrating his whole being with a sense of wondrous sweetness, He greeted him with ineffable condescension thus: “Thou art My dear son, in whom I am well pleased.” Then Jesus Christ embraced him and presented him to Our Lady and the attendant Saints with the words: “Behold My chosen servant!”

VII
Ruysbroeck’s Tree

Whenever Blessed John felt the Spirit of God full upon him, even the solitude of the cloister was not sufficiently retired for the intimacy of the divine union. He would wander away into the depths of the forest surrounding the monastery, there to abandon himself to the action of the Holy Ghost undisturbed. On these occasions also he was wont to take with him a stylus and a wax tablet, in order to jot down such thoughts and lights as he was moved to preserve in writing. Of these notes a fair copy was made on his return to the Priory. Towards the end of his days, when his sight was failing and otherwise the effort of making these notes was too much for him, one of the Canons always accompanied him into the forest to write down at his dictation whatever he was moved to communicate. Sometimes days or whole weeks would pass, and for want of inspiration not a line nor a word would be added to the treatise in hand. But when again the Spirit breathed, he continued from the very sentence or phrase where he had paused, just as if there had been no interval between.

One day the Saint had retired as usual into the forest, and the Brethren, knowing his occupation, respected his privacy. But when hours passed and there was no sign of his return, they became alarmed and set out to scour the woods in search of him. One of the Canons was especially intimate with the Prior and loved him most tenderly. Perhaps his anxiety urged him ahead of the rest. In a glade of the forest his eye lighted upon a wondrous scene. He perceived a tree as it were in flames. On nearer approach he discovered that it was in fact encircled with fire. And under the tree, in the midst of the mysterious conflagration, John Ruysbroeck was seated, manifestly rapt in ecstasy.

The memory of this miracle was never lost in the Community. For generations the tree was known and venerated as Ruysbroeck’s Tree. At the close of the fifteenth century the Prior, James van Dynter, planted a lime-tree in the same place, which received the respect shown hitherto to the original, which presumably had died down. When in 1577 the Canons were obliged to abandon Groenendael on account of the vexations of the religious wars, it is said that this tree withered away until only its bark was left; but when the Community returned in 1607, it revived and flourished again.

This episode also has fixed the traditional representation of Blessed John Ruysbroeck. He is usually pictured seated under a tree, a stylus in his hand and a wax tablet resting on his knee, while Saint and tree alike are encircled in brilliant rays of celestial light.