is now ; for active intellect has no accidents nor any capacity to receive more than it contains innately. It follows that when we are beatified we shall be completely deprived of potentiality and shall conceive happiness only actually, after the manner of the divine nature. As David says: ‘ Lord in thy light shall we see light ’: with the divine nature we shall conceive the perfection of the divine nature, which alone is our entire felicity, here in grace and there in perfect happiness.
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THIS IS MEISTER ECKHART FROM WHOM GOD NOTHING HID
Meister Eckhart said in a sermon, The work wrought by God in the God-loving soul which he finds empty and detached enough for him to bring himself to spiritual birth in her, this work, he said, gives God greater pleasure than any work he ever did with any creature and is far nobler than the creation of all things from nothing. ;
On being asked the reason why this work gives God such pleas- ure, he said it was because God has no creature but the soul of large enough capacity for him to empty his entire might, the whole ground of his being in, as he does in this act of begetting himself ghostly in the soul.
When asked what God’s birth is, he said, God’s being born within the soul is nothing else than God’s self-revelation to the soul in some new knowledge and in some new mode.
Anon they asked him, Does the soul’s chief happiness consist in this act whereby God gets himself in her in ghostly fashion ? Quoth he, Though it is true that God takes greater pleasure in this act than in any other deed he ever did concerning creature, natheless the soul is happier being re-born into God. God being born in her makes her not wholly blessed: she is beatified when, in love and praise, she follows this wisdom whereinto she is born, back to the source from whence it came and in their common origin, holding to what is his lets go her own, she being happy not in hers but his.
Meister Eckhart said, A man of godly love and godly fear and perfect faith may, an he will, receive God’s body every day at the
priest’s hands.
The question is, what does God do in heaven? The answer
given by the saint is this, He crowns his own work: the works
God crowns his saints for he wrought in them himself.
418 : Meister Eckhart
Meister Eckhart says, I have been asked what God is doing in heaven ? I answer, He has been giving his Son birth eternally, is giving him birth now and will go on giving him birth for ever, the Father being in childbed in every virtuous soul. Blessed, thrice blessed is the man within whose soul the heavenly Father is thus brought to bed. All she surrenders to him here she shall enjoy from him in life eternal. God made the soul on purpose for her to bear his one-begotten Son. His birth in Mary ghostly was to God better pleasing than his nativity of her in flesh. When this birth happens nowadays in the good loving soul it gives God greater pleasure than his creation of the heavens and earth.
& Meister Eckhart says, He who is everywhere at home is God- worthy ; to him who is ever the same is God present and in him in whom creatures are stilled God bears his one-begotten Son.
Meister Eckhart says, Holy scripture cries aloud for freedom from self. Self-free is self-controlled and self-controlled is self-possessed and self-possession is God-possession and possession of everything God ever made. I tell thee, as true as God is God and I a man, wert thou quite free from self, free from the highest angel, then were the highest angel thine as well as thine own self. This method gives self-mastery. :
According to Meister Eckhart, Grace comes not otherwise than with the Holy Ghost. It bears the Holy Ghost upon its back. Grace is no stationary thing, it is ever-becoming. It is flowing straight out of God’s heart. Grace does nothing but re-form and convey into God. Grace makes the soul deiform. God, the ground of the soul and grace go together. ;
Query, does God pour his grace into a power of the soul or into her essence, for no creature is allowed in the essence of the soul ? The answer is that grace is a matter of the soul and naught beside and grace without soul is not grace at all. It is immaterial for it is not true creature, it is creaturely. Grace to be grace must have the soul for substance for if God poured his grace into a power of the soul that power alone would benefit. Not so: he
instils it into her essence and essence works by grace in all her. powers.
Sayings 419
Meister Eckhart says, Practice is better than precept ; but the practice and precept of eternal God is a counsel of perfection. If I wanted a teacher of theology I should go for one to Paris, to its learned university. But if I came to ask about the perfeet life, why then he could not tell me. Where then am I to turn ? To pure and abstract nature, nowhere else: that can solve thy anxious queries. Why, good people, search among dead bones ? Why not seek the living sacrum that gives eternal life? The dead give not nor do they take. An angel seeking God as God would look not anywhere for him except in a quiet, solitary creature. The essence of perfection lies in bearing poverty, misery, despisery, adversity and every hardship that befalls, willingly, gladly, freely, eagerly, calm and unmoved and persisting unto death without a why.
Meister Eckhart said, Whate’er it be that lights devotion in man’s heart and knits him closest unto God, that is the best thing for him here in time.
Again. he says, To be the heavenly Father’s Son one has to be a stranger to the world, remote from self, heartwhole and having the mind purified.
O man, renounce thyself and so with toil-free virtue win the prize or, cleaving to thyself, with toilful virtues lose it.
Meister Eckhart says, He who is ever alone is Godworthy and to him who is ever at home is God present and in him who stands ever in the present now does God the Father bear his Son unceasingly.
Meister Eckhart says, He to whom (God) is different in one thing from another and to whom God is dearer in one thing than another, that man is a barbarian, still in the wilds, a child. He to whom God is the same in everything has come to man’s estate. But he to whom creatures all mean want and exile has come into his own.
He was also asked: Does the man who goes out of himself need to trouble at all about his nature? He answered, God’s yoke is easy and his burden is light : No, only about his will; what the tyro fears is the expert’s delight. The kingdom of God is for none but the thoroughly dead.
420 Meister Eckhart
God’s every infliction is a lure. I give no thanks to God for | loving me because he cannot help it, it is his nature to; what I do thank him for is that he cannot of his goodness leave off loving
me..
The highest the soul can get to in this life is a settled habitation without all in all. Being without all means being detached, perfectly free from self and things. Being in all means a state of perpetual rest: poise in her eternal idea, in the omniform image shining impartible.
Eckhart said, There are people upon earth that bear our Lord in spirit as his mother did in flesh.
They asked him who these were? He answered, They being free from things do see in the mirror of truth whereto they are gotten all unknowing ; on earth, their dwelling is in heaven and they are at peace: they go as little children.
Meister Eckhart said, Better to my mind is the man who in the cause of charity will lend himself to taking dole of bread than he who gives an hundred marks for charity. How do I make that out? I argue thus. Doctors agree that honour is of far more worth than temporal goods. Now he who gives an hundred marks for charity gets back in praise and honour more than his hundred marks’ worth. The hand he stretches forth with gifts collects both more and better than it gave. But the beggar reaching out his hand for bread is bartering his honour; the giver buys honour but the taker sells it.
Another thing advantages the beggar who receives over the donor of the hundred marks to God: the giver glories in and gratifies his nature, the beggar is subduing his and flouting it ; the giver is made much of for his gifts, the beggar scorned and shunned for taking them.
Meister Eckhart said, I never ask God to give himself to me: I beg of him to purify, to empty, me. If I am empty, God of his very nature is obliged to give himself to me to fill me.
How to be pure? By steadfast longing for the one good, God to wit. How to acquire this longing? By self-denial and dislike to creatures ; self-knowledge is the way for creatures are all naught, they come to naught with lamentation and bitterness.
Sayings 421
God being in himself pure good can nowhere dwell except in the pure soul: he overflows into her, whole he flows into her. What does emptiness mean ? It means a turning from creatures : the heart uplifted to the perfeet good so that creatures are no comfort nor is there any want of them save inasmuch as the perfect good, God namely, is to be grasped therein. The clear eye tolerates the mote no more than does the pure soul aught that clouds, that comes between. Creatures as she enjoys them are all pure for she enjoys creatures in God and God in creatures. She is so limpid she sees through herself; nor is God far to seek : she finds him in herself when in her natural purity she flows into the supernatural pure Godhead where she is in God and God in her and what she does she does in God and God does it in her.
Meister Eckhart said, To die the death in love and knowledge, that is more noble and more worth than all the good works put together that holy Christendom has done in love and knowledge from its beginning until now and ever shall do till the judgment day. These do but serve to bring this death about, this death wherein springs life eternal.
Meister Eckhart says, We fail to get our way with God because we lack two things: profound humility and a telling will. Upon my life I swear that God in his divinity is capable of all things but this he cannot do, he cannot leave unsatisfied the soul with these two things. Wherefore vex not yourselves with trivialities ; ye were not made for trivial things and the glory of the world is but a travesty of truth, only a heresy of happiness.
Meister Eckhart being questioned as to God’s greatest gift to him answered, There are three. First, cessation of carnal desires and pleasures. Secondly, divine light enlightens me in everything Ido. Thirdly, daily I grow and am renewed in virtue, grace and happiness.