Meister Eckhart says, Lofty aim is lofty nature. The vision of God is a high endeavour. I say, God is omnipotent, but he is powerless to thwart the man of meek and mighty aspiration, and any failure on my side to get my way with God is due to lack either of will or meekness.
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Meister Eckhart says, As a man gets to be like God and God gets dear enough for him to disregard himself and not seek what is his in time or in eternity, he is released from all his sins and purgatorial pains, yea though he have committed every sin on earth. And this life is attainable while yet he eats and drinks. Further he declares, To be the heavenly Father’s Son we must be strangers to the world, remote from self, pure-hearted, inward minded. ,
On one occasion Brother Eckhart said, Five things there be which in whomsoever has them are sure sign that he will never lapse from God. First, though most grievous things befall this man from God or creature, never a murmur does he make: no word but praise and thanks is ever heard. Again, at the most trying times he never says one word in his excuse. Thirdly, this man desires of God what God will freely give and nothing else : he leaves it all to him. Fourthly, nothing in heaven or earth can Tuffle him : so settled is his calm that heaven and earth in topsy- turveydom would leave him quite content in God. Fifth, nothing in heaven or earth can cheer him; for having reached the point where naught in heaven or earth can sadden him so neither can it gladden him, except as. trifles can.
A man remote and far from his own self as the chief angel of the Seraphim from him, would have that angel for his own as he is God’s and God is his. And that is the bare truth, as God is God.
St Paul says: ‘ The whole world is the cross to me and I the cross to you.’
Said Meister Eckhart the preacher, There is no greater valour nor no sterner fight than that for self-effacement, self-oblivion.
Brother Eckhart said, Not all suffering is rewarded ; only what is cheerfully consented to. A man hanged on the gallows, suffering unwillingly, were better pleased that it had been another. There is no reward for that. Other sufferings the same. It is not the suffering that counts, it is the virtue.—I say, to him who suffers not for love to suffer is suffering and is hard to bear. But one who suffers for love suffers not and his suffering is fruitful in God’s sight.
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According to Meister Eckhart, Every sign, every holiness, every perfection possible to creature our Lady had par excellence. To take her holiness, it was so prodigious that our Lady never sinned. Of signs, again, she had the chief one, that of being God’s mother ; albeit our theologians do contend that our Lady was far happier uniting God to Godhead than she was in giving carnal birth to God. As to the overfullness our Lady got from deity, she was worthy of it, bearing as she did God in the flesh. Soul over- brimming like this overflows into the body and makes the body like it, thus she was God’s carnal mother. Accordingly some doctors do affirm that mental concepts tell upon the body more than physicians do with all their drugs. God is never born except in souls which have put creatures under their feet. Our philo- sophers say, Perfect rest is freedom from all motion.
On St Peter’s words, ‘ We have abandoned all things,’ Meister Eckhart comments thus: Thou hast well said, for laden thou couldst not follow him. It is no profitless exchange, giving up all for God: by him all things are given and having gotten him he stands in lieu of all.
Meister Eckhart said, What our Lord did was done with this intent, and this alone, that he might be with us and we with him.
Brother Eckhart preached saying, St Peter said, ‘We have left all things.” St James said, ‘We have given up all things.’ St John said, ‘We have nothing left.’ Whereupon Brother Eckhart asks, When do we leave all things ? When we leave everything conceivable, everything expressible, everything audible, everything visible, then and then only we give up all things. When in this sense we give up all we grow aflood with light, passing bright with God.
He that would be what he ought must stop being what he is. When God made the angels the first sight they saw was that of the Father with the Son sprouting out of his Father’s heart like a green shoot out of a tree. This blissful vision they have had more than six thousand years and how it comes they wot as well
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to-day as when they were first made. This owing to their keen perception : the more we know the less we understand.
In the Book of Wisdom it is writ, ‘ All men are fools in whom is no knowledge of God for men are mortal without God.’ Without divine wisdom we are without God and to be without God is to be without truth for God it is who inculcates the truth. Not being in God means being in lies and without wisdom. One may be worldly-wise without being Godly-wise but this is folly in God’s sight : wisdom wisdomless, more foolishness than wisdom. The question is, who has this heavenly wisdom ? Meister Eckhart says, He who in deep and real humility so yields himself to God that his will is wholly God’s will and God’s will is his, as saith Isaiah the prophet, God teaches true wisdom to none but the humble.’ And in the Book of Wisdom too we read, ‘ Where there . is meekness there is true wisdom.’ Also the heathen doctor Ptolemeus says, ‘ Among wise.men the humblest are the wisest.’ According to Meister Eckhart, with humility goes love : lowliness without love is dead indeed for the virtues are virtue in virtue of love.
—‘ And so shall a man order his life if he would be perfect.’ Anent this Meister Eckhart says, Works wrought from within are pleasant both to God and man ; they are benign and living works. They are Godworthy for he alone it is who does in man works wrought from within, as saith the prophet Isaiah, ‘ Lord all our works thou hast wrought in us,’ and Christ too said, ‘My Father who is in me he doeth that I do.’ Such works are both easy and pleasant to man for all deeds are agreeable and pleasant to man in which body and soul are harmonious. This is the case in all these works. Again, these works are living works: the dead beast differs from the living one in that the dead is moved from outside only ; it must be pulled or pushed, to wit, and its works are all dead works. The live beast moves itself where’er it will; its motive power is within and its works are living works. In the same way those works of men which have their source within where God moves by himself, essential products, these are our works, divine works, useful works. But works which come from some external cause and not from inner being, these works I say are dead, they are not godly works nor are they ours. Meister Eckhart also says, Works wrought from within are willing works. But that which is willing is sweet, therefore works from within are all pleasant whereas works due to any outward cause are
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unwilling and slavish for were there nothing moving from without no work were done at all, so that it is reluctant, menial, bitter.
Meister Eckhart said, No person can in this life reach the point at which he is excused from outward works. What though one lead the contemplative life, one cannot altogether keep from flowing out and mingling in the life of action. Even as a man without a groat may still be generous in the will to give, whereas a man of means in giving nothing cannot be called generous, so no one can have virtues without exercising virtue at the proper time and place. Hence those who lead the contemplative life and do no outward works, are most mistaken and all on the wrong tack. What I say is that he who lives the contemplative life may, nay he must, be absolutely free from outward works what time he is in act of contemplation but afterwards his duty lies in doing outward works ; for none can live the contemplative life without a break and active life bridges the gaps in the life of contemplation.
Meister Eckhart says and so do other masters, that there are two things in God : essence and regard, 1.e. relatio. According to these doctors, not in the Godhead does the Father bear his Son; the Father in his essence does but see into his naked essence where he discerns himself in all his power: himself by himself, without the Son and without the Holy Ghost ; naught sees he there but the unity of his own essence. But the Father being minded to regard himself, to reflect upon himself in another Person, by this act of retrospection is begetting his Son ; and being well contented with himself in this regard and finding his reflection most delightful he must, since all joy is his eternally, keep on looking back eternally. So the Son is as eternal as the Father, and from the mutual liking and the love betwixt the Father and the Son there comes the Holy Ghost and since this love between the Father and the Son has been for aye therefore the Holy Ghost is as eternal as the Father and the Son and these three Persons have one simple essence and are distinct as Persons only: the Father’s Person never was the Son’s nor the Holy Ghost’s Person ; all three have each their own Person albeit they are one in essence,
Meister Eckhart says and so do other masters, No man has any merit apart from his intention and the why of a man’s action
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gives the measure of his merit, naught beside. Hence anyone intending, anyone striving, for something less than God is not worthy of God unless as the lover of creature, whatever it be, in God. God-lovers have no guerdon but God; them God rewards with himself.
Meister Eckhart says, and so do other masters, that in the course of nature it is really the higher which is ever more ready to pour its power out into the lower than the lower is ready to receive it. The highest heaven, for instance, is turning far more rapidly than the rest which run against it. However fast the lower heavens race against the upper, in order to receive the influx from it, the highest heaven will go harder still both as to pace and influx. So God is vastly quicker to pour out his grace than man to take it in. There is no dearth of God with us ; what dearth there is is wholly ours who make not ready to receive his grace.
The question is, When do the passions perforce obey the mind ? The answer Meister Eckhart gives is this. What time the mind is fixed on God and there abides, the senses are obedient to the mind. As one should hang a needle to a magnet and then another needle on to that, until there are four needles, say, depending from the magnet. As long as the first needle stays clinging to the magnet all the other needles will keep clinging on to that but when the leader drops the rest will go as well. So, while the mind keeps fixed on God the senses are subservient to it but if the mind should wander off from God the passions will escape and be unruly.
Why is it, Meister Eckhart asks, that people are so slow to look for God in earnest ? His comment is: When one is looking for a thing and finds no trace of its existence one hunts half-heartedly and in distress. But lighting on some vestige of the quarry, the chase grows lively, blithe and keen. The man in quest of fire, cheered when he feels the heat looks for its source with eagerness and pleasure. And so it is with those in quest of God: feeling none of the sweetness of God they grow listless but sensing the sweetness of divinity they blithely pursue their search for God.
Meister Eckhart asks, Whose are the prayers God always hears ? And Meister Eckhart answers, Who worships God as God God hears.