“From what I cited here from the exposition on the Rule, it is evident that Bl. John Soreth had a very systematic way of practising virtue and using prayer; this is in perfect keeping with the time in which he lived and the school which he represented. The question has been raised whether St. Teresa in her wonderful writings about the Way of Perfection and the Interior Castle has not undergone in some degree the influence of the Dutch school of the Devotio Moderna which brings methodical prayer and systematic practice of virtue strongly to the fore in its Exercitia. I am inclined to see some influence but should like to look farther than the works of Thomas à Kempis, Zerboldt van Zutphen and Garcia de Cisneros and look to Bl. John Soreth and the influence which he has had in the Order. His mysticism is doubtless very firmly bound up with that of the Devotio Moderna. He lays great stress on active holiness and the exercise of virtues and in this he proves himself a child of his time and of the country in which he laboured for the benefit of the Order. But in this case, the connection which is found between the demand for a more methodical mode of prayer and the school of St. Teresa is at the same time an indication that St. Teresa built on the foundations of John Soreth, on what he had stressed so particularly in his reformation and his institution of the Carmelite Sisters.“
Bl. Titus Brandsma
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