Daily Inspiration Quote by Johannes Tauler

Tauler’s line has the clean severity of a spiritual diagnostic: if your will is trained, everything else is secondary. Coming from a 14th-century Dominican preacher shaped by the Rhineland mystics, it’s not a pious bumper sticker about “trying your best.” It’s a corrective aimed at people who confuse religion with either outward performance (the visible busyness of devotion) or inner fireworks (ecstatic experiences mistaken for holiness). “Good and ready” is the tell. He’s not praising a single heroic act of surrender; he’s describing a posture that can be summoned on demand, even when God feels absent, confusing, or actively disruptive to your plans.

The subtext is quietly anti-ego. A will “to obey” cuts against the medieval (and modern) temptation to treat spirituality as self-curation: accumulating merits, mastering techniques, or auditioning for sanctity. Tauler’s broader project was to move believers from anxious scorekeeping to a stripped-down availability to divine command. That’s also why the phrase is psychologically shrewd. The will is the one part of the self you can offer even when you can’t manufacture purity, certainty, or comfort. It makes obedience less about mood and more about readiness.

Context matters: this is late medieval Europe, scarred by plague, political instability, and ecclesial turbulence. In that world, “what matters most” isn’t an abstract hierarchy of virtues; it’s triage. Tauler is offering a survival ethic for the soul: when everything else is unstable, keep the will supple, and you can still be faithful without pretending to be fearless.