In due course Canon Hinckaert procured for his nephew one of the lesser
prebends of St. Gudule's, and John was ordained priest in the year 1317,
at the age of twenty-four. His good mother did not survive to witness
this happy event in the flesh, nevertheless even beyond the grave she had
good cause to rejoice therein. After her departure from this world she
had often appeared to her son, lamenting her pains, beseeching his
prayers, and sighing for the day when he would be able to offer for her
the holy Sacrifice. And John was unceasing in his supplications. But
immediately after the celebration of his first Mass, as he related to his
Religious Brethren later, God granted him a vision full of consolation:
when the sacred oblation was accomplished, his mother came to visit and
thank him for her deliverance from Purgatory. The touching incident is
well worth recording, if only to show that it was through no lack of
natural affection that the child John had so unceremoniously forsaken
home and mother. Moreover, of these two holy souls it was singularly true
that _having loved each other in life, in death they were not parted_,
for they were privileged often to converse together, and finally it was
from his mother that Ruysbroeck learned the date of his own approaching
departure.
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."
"Then you know nothing of the delights which God bestows, or of the
delicious savour of the Holy Ghost," thought Ruysbroeck to himself, for
he happened to overhear the words, and he proceeded tranquilly on his
way.