Sermons

part 2

THE SOUL

               St Paul says, 'Put off self, put on Christ.'  In abandoning ourself we initiate Christ and holiness and happiness and are ennobled.  The prophet marvelled at two things.  First, at God's doings with the sun and moon and stars.  And secondly he marvelled at the soul, at the prodigious things God does and has done with her and for her sake, yet do what prodigies he may she still preserves the absolute dispassion which befits one of her noble lineage.  Mark the nobility of her descent.  I make a letter of the alphabet like the image of that letter in my mind, not like my mind itself.  And so with God.  God makes things in general like the universal image of them in himself, not like himself.  Certain things he has specially made like emanations of his own, such as goodness, wisdom and other so-called attributes of God.  But the soul he has made not merely like the image in himself nor like anything proceeding from himself that is predicated of him, but he made her like himself, nay, like he is, all told:  like his nature, his essence, his emanating-immanent activity, his ground wherein he is subsisting in himself, wherein he is begetting his alone-begotten Son and where the Holy Ghost comes into flower; in the likeness of his in-dwelling out-going work did God make the soul.
               It is a law of nature that fluids run downhill into anything adapted to receive them: the higher not receiving from the lower but the lower from the higher.  Now God is higher than the soul, and hence there is a constant flow of God into the soul, which cannot miss her.  The soul may will miss it, but as long as a man keeps right under God he immediately catches this divine influence straight out of God.  Nor is he subject to aught else, not fear not pleasure nor anything that is not God.  Put thyself therefore right under God and thou shalt receive from God as from a stranger, as the air does the light of the sun, which it takes as a foreign intrusion.  The soul receives her God not as a stranger nor as inferior to God, but inferior is both different and distant.
               Philosophers say the soul receives as a light from the light, wherein is nothing foreign or remote.  There is something in the soul wherein God simply is, and according to philosophers this is a nameless thing and has no proper name.  It neither has nor is a definite entity, for it is not this or that nor here nor there; what it is it is from another wherewith it is the same; the one streams into it and it into the one.  Hence the exhortation 'Enter into God in holiness,' for here is the source of the soul's whole life and being.  This (light) is wholly in God and her other without him, so in this one the soul is ever in God, provided she smother it not and extinguish it in her.
               Philosophers say this (light) is present in God and never goes out in him and God is ever in it.  I say, God has ever been in it and of it eternally.  The union of man and God is not a matter of grace (for grace is creature and creature has nothing to do with it), except in the ground of divinity, where the three Persons are one in nature and it (grace) is that nature itself.  Wherefore an thou wilt, God and the universe are thine.  That is, thou wilt put off self and things: doff the habit of thy personality and take thyself in thy divinity.
               The philosophers say that human nature has nothing to do with time; that it is deeper-seated and more firmly rooted in a man than he is in himself.  God took on human nature and united it with his own Person.  Thus human nature was God who donned man's nature only, not any individual man.  Would'st thou be very Christ and God? Put off, then, whatever the eternal Word did not put on.  The eternal Word never put on a person.  So do thou strip thyself of everything personal and selfish and keep just thy bare humanity; thou shalt be to the eternal Word exactly what his human nature is to him.  Thy human nature is no different from him: they are identical: what it is in him it is in thee. And hence I said at Paris that every prophecy of holy scripture is fulfilled in the just man; for being perfect, the whole promise of the old and new testaments is accomplished in thee.
               How to be perfect? There are two aspects of the question.  The prophet says, 'In the fullness of time the Son was sent.'  Now fullness of time is of two kinds.  In the first place a thing is fulfilled when it is done, as day is done at eventide.  So when time drops from thee thy time is fulfilled.  Again, time is fulfilled when it is finished, that is, in eternity.  Time ends when there is no before and after; when all that is is here and now and thou seest at a glance all that has ever happened and shall ever happen.  Here there is no before nor after; everything is present, and in this immediate vision I possess all things.  This is the perfection of time, and I am perfect and I am truly the only Son and Christ.  May we attain to this fullness of time.  So help us God.  Amen.

THE ANGEL GABRIEL WAS SENT

       Missus est Gabriel angelus (Luc. 1₂₆).  'In time the angel Gabriel was sent from God.'  In what time? In the sixth month, John being then quick within his mother's womb.  When anyone asks me, Why do we pray or why do we fast or why do we do our work withal, I say, So that God may be born in our souls.  What were the scriptures written for and why did God create the world and the angelic nature?  Simply that God might be born in the sol.  All cereal nature means wheat, all treasure nature means gold, all generation means man. As the philosopher says, No animal exists but has somewhat in common with mankind in time.  First of all when a word is conceived in my mind it is a subtle, intangible thing; it is a true word when it takes shape in my thought.  Later, as spoken aloud by my mouth, it is but an outward expression of the interior word.  Even so the eternal Word is spoken in the inner-most and purest recesses of the soul, in the summit of her rational nature, and there befalls this birth.  Whoso has nothing more than a firm belief in and lively conviction of this will be glad to know how this birth comes to pass and what confuses to it.
        St Paul says: 'In the fullness of time God sent his his Son.'  St Augustine was asked what it mean, this fullness of time.  It is the fullness (or end) of the day when the day is done: then the day is over.  Certain it is that there is no time where this birth befalls, for nothing hinders this birth so much as time and creature.  It is an obvious fact that time affects neither God nor the soul.  Did time touch the soul she would not be the soul.  If God were affected by time he would not be God.  Further, if time could touch the soul, then God could not be born in her.  The soul wherein God is born must have escaped from time, and time must have dropped away from her; she must be absolutely one in will and desire. 
        Another fullness of time.  If someone had the knowledge and the power to gather up the time and all the happenings of these six thousand years and all that is to come ere the world ends to boot, all this, summed up into one present now, would be the fullness of time. This is the now of eternity, when the soul knows all things in God, as new and fresh and lovely as I find them now at present.  The narrowest of the powers of my soul is more than heaven wide.  To say nothing of the intellect wherein there is measureless space, wherein I am as near a place a thousand miles away as the spot I am standing on this moment.  Theologians teach that the angel hosts are countless, the number of them cannot be conceived.  But to one who sees the distinctions apart from multiplicity and number, to him, I say, a hundred is as one. Were there a hundred Persons in the Godhead he would still perceive them as one God.
        As regards the angels. The angels, of whatever rank, abet and assist at God's birth in the soul; that is to say, they have satisfaction, they delight and rejoice in this birth. Nothing is wrought by the angels: the birth is due to God alone and anything that ministers thereto is work of service. May God be born in us, So help us God.  Amen.

THIS IS A SERMON ABOUT THE LORD'S BODY

        This is a sermon about the Lord's body by Brother Eckhart.  He says that the bread of our Lord's body has many names, but three special ones are given it in holy writ.  In the first place it is called the heavenly bread, the second it is called the bread of angels, and thirdly the bread of lamentation.  And whoso would worthily receive this bread of our Lord's body must have these three things.  First, none can enjoy the heavenly bread who is not a heavenly man. This means that as the heavens with the sun and moon and the entire system are above all earthly, temporal things, so man in his desires, his senses and his thoughts must be lifted up to celestial things.  Secondly, no man can enjoy the bread of heaven except he be an angelic man, for no creature was ever so perfect as an angel.  This man must be at all times perfectly pure in heart and body.  Thirdly, it is called the bread of lamentation: this no man enjoys except he be a man of sorrow, one, that is to say, who pondering our Lord's martyrdom shall rue the treatment melted out to our Lord on earth.  Whoso has not this rue shall not enjoy the bread of sorrow. So, then, a man must have three things before he can approach this bread.  First, having gotten to the excellent condition of knowing good and ill, he must choose the good and worthy and reject the foul and evil.  Next, with his heart divorced from worldly loves, this man must go in godly love and all godly things.  Thirdly, he must order all his activities.

FROM HIM AND THROUGH HIM AND IN HIM

        Ex ipso et per ipsum et in ipso sunt omnia, ipsi gloria in saecula (Rom. 11₃₆).  St Paul says, 'From him and through him and in him are all things, to whom be glory and honour.'  These words are said of the three Persons and the unity of their nature.  From him applies to the Father, the origin of all things in eternity and in time.  Through him applies to the Son, through whom all things proceeded forth.  In him applies to the Holy Ghost, in whom all things are contained, made spirit and brought back to their end.  From another point of view these words, again, betoken the three Persons by their from and through and in. As these words are distinct even so do they show the distinctions of the Persons.  But from the word him (which is the same for all) we gather the oneness of their nature.  He says, 'To him be glory and honour.' Proclaiming the three Persons as one God, to whom alone be all honour.
        Now we proceed to speak of the things of God, of Persons and essence, which we hardly understand.  Those that cannot follow this discourse can take refuge in the dogma I have taught before, that the three Persons are in one essence and one essence in the three Persons.  Remember we are speaking of Father and paternity, and you must understand that these two are not apart in two hypostases, but they are one hypostasis, and moreover they are one and three rationally speaking.  Consider the meaning of paternity.  It means the power of father-kind. A father is known by the fact that he begets, but we recognize paternity in a potential father.  Take, for example, the maid who is a virgin.  By nature she is maternal though not actually mother.  The same thing with a father: in his power to beget he is paternal, but the fact that his begetting makes him father.  Mark this difference between father and paternity when the Word is gotten ghostly in the soul.  This we take to be the case when the soul, sublimed and in the proper state, grows pregnant with God's light and divine by nature: by the unique power of God grown big with Deity.  You see, in this immanent power, soul too is paternal.  But radiant with revelation, she with the Father begets and is then with the Father called father.  This father and fatherhood differ as applied to the soul.  Mark, too, that the Son differs from filiation, remembering that these two are not separate in two hypostases: they are the same hypostasis. We find filiation in potential father-nature, unborn.  If he were not unborn in his potential nature the Father could not beget him, for a thing that comes out must first have been in.  So much for filiation.  But the Son we explain as the Father's begetting of his own Word, whereby the Father is Father.  The Son, moreover, is God in himself, not God of himself but of the Father alone. Were he God of himself he would not be one with the Father so there would be two without any beginning. Which is impossible.  We postulate three distinct properties, the Father's property is that he comes from none but himself.  The Son's property is that he does not come from himself: he descends from the Father by way of nativity. The Holy Ghost's property is that he comes from the Father not as being born: he proceeds from them twain, both Father and Son, not as a birth but as love.  For two who are sundered in Person cannot together bear one but they can bear mutual love. The Holy Ghost is not born because he proceeds out of two and not merely out of the Father, albeit certain doctors do maintain that the Holy Ghost comes from the Father alone and not from the Son at all.  This is false; for when the Father gat the Son he gave him his whole nature as well as all perfection, which goes with being of that nature, the Father withholding nothing from his Son.  It follows that the Father cannot alone bring forth the Holy Ghost as he alone did get the Son.  Had these doctors envisaged it aright, they would no doubt have said the same.  They were speaking without understanding. So it is wrong to say the Son is God from himself and not from the Father. The Son may be said to bring forth the Spirit yet not from himself: from the Father whence he comes himself.  Thus the Holy Ghost comes from them twain and not from one: but not as being twain, as being one. So much for the Son and filiation.
        It may be asked concerning the Spirit and spiration, Can we use these term or not? Is there some objection, which makes it inadmissible?  Filiation is found latent in the nature of the Father, that is plain, seeing he is not merely brought forth out of him. Herein lies the objection to speaking of the Spirit and spiration.  Let us see if we can find precisely the right meaning of Spirit and spiration. We have here two and one. That is the difference between Spirit and spiration.  In the first, when we predicate two we mean Father and Son. But by saying in one we refer to spiration. This same in one is formless: the mark of spiration. Again, when we say in another that signifies Spirit, who is another than Father and Son in his Person.

MAN HAS TO SEEK GOD IN ERROR AND FORGETFULNESS

        Man has to seek God in error and forgetfulness and foolishness. For deity has in it the power of all things and no thing has the like.  The sovran light of the impartible essence illumines all things.  St Dionysius says that beauty is good order with pre-eminent lucidity.  Thus God is an arrangement of three Persons.  And the soul's lower powers should be ordered to her higher and her higher ones to God: for her outward senses to her inward and her inward ones to reason; thought to intuition and intuition to the will and all to unity, so that the soul may be alone with nothing flowing into her but sheer divinity, flowing here into itself.  As St Dionysius says, By purity she has discovered her capacity and only her superior powers are in operation.
        It has been said by one philosopher that as soon as the chief power takes command the others all run into it, leaving their own work. The soul is in order and in her pure nature, i.e., in her supernal light-nature wherein all things are potential.  A heathen doctors says, If the soul knew herself she would know all things. Deity flowed into the Father and into the Son and into the Holy Ghost: in eternity into itself and in time into creatures, to each as much as it can hold: to the stone its being, to the tree its growth, to beasts sensation, to the angels reason and to mankind all these four natures.  When God was made man he took upon himself by grace, in time, the nature of all things, which in eternity was his by nature.  As St Paul says, 'To me Christ is all things.' Here it was a matter of the light and reflection of his own nature. God's being is fontal: flowing and fixed, final as well as the first. From being power flows out into work. In this sense the three Persons are the storehouse of divinity and the three Persons are poured forth into the essence of the soul as grace. God's being in the essence of the soul is the imitation of the Persons and one being permeates the other.  Her chief power flows from the essence of the soul just as the three Persons issue from the Godhead.  And when God pours his grace into the soul is is into her essence that he pours it. For into the soul's essence no speck can ever fall, do her powers what they may.  The chief power of the soul and this highest power goes out into the lower ones, into their essence.  The crescent soul, the spirit receptive of God's nature, is the imitation of Christ's Person and man's nature.  The soul when she reaches divine nature is deprived of all deficiency and imperfection; she suffers death in divine nature, getting God's nature in herself as the Father does in him.  She takes it not from her own nature, she receives it from God's nature into her nature; she receives perfection and power according to the word of St Paul, 'I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me.'  The wisdom thence arising in her mind begins in understanding and is perfected in will and it has neither heart nor thought. St Dionysius says, As the soul takes the outgoing tide to journey into eternity and time and in her own intelligence, so on the ebb does she return; as God the soul flows back again, without exertion.  God returns to himself as little mindful of his own as though they were not.  And the soul shall do the same.  She shall grasp with her manhood the Person of the Son, and with the Person of the Son she shall apprehend the Father and the Holy Ghost in both, and them both in the Holy Ghost; and with the Person of the Father she shall apprehend his simple essence, and with the essence the abyss, and shall sink into the void without matter and without form.  Matter and form, being and knowledge, she loses in this unity, for she herself has come to naught.  God does all her work, he preserves her in his being and leads her in his power and into his very Godhead where she flows with deity itself into all God flows into.  She is all things' place and has herself no place.  This is the most eternal wisdom, which has neither heart nor thought.  She is nigh soul flows to God that many are deceived; but what she is she is by grace, and where she is she is by another's power.  Yet she approaches near enough to God to be, in the power of the Father, invested with divinity by grace the same as the Father is by nature.  St Paul says: 'In the same image we shall go from one glory to another,' meaning, we shall receive divinity in its perfection and all that is consequent thereon. Therein she shall conceive divinity as it conceives itself and her will and God's will shall be one: whatever God may be we shall be with God.  No one can attain it in this body, but when God gives the soul his final gift, the vision of his Godhead, the soul is raised up in the Trinity.  May we attain to this, So help us God.  Amen.

Meister Eckhart's Last Word to His Friends

       Meister Eckhart was besought by his good friends, 'Give us one last word before you go.' He said, I will give you a rule which is the sum of all my arguments, the key to the whole theory and practice of the truth.
        It very often happens that a thing seems small to us which is of greater moment in God's sight than what looms large in ours.  Wherefore it behoves us to take alike from God everything he send us without ever thinking or looking to see which is greatest or highest or best but following blindly God's lead, that is to say, our own feeling, our strongest dictates, what we are most prompted to do.  The God gives us the most in the least without fail.
        People often shirk the least and prevent themselves getting the most in the least.  They are wrong.  God is everywise, the same in every guise to him who can see him the same.  There is much searching of heart as to whether one's promptings come from God or no; but this we can soon tell for if we find ourselves aware of, privy to, God's will above all when we follow our own impulse, our clearest intimations, then we may take it that they come from God.
        Some people make believe to find God as a light or savour; they may find a light or a savour but that is not to find God. According to one scripture, God shines in the dark where every now and then we may catch a glimpse of him.  Where to us God shows least he is often most.  So it behoves us to take God the same in every mode and in every thing.
        Someone may say, But if I do take God alike in every mode and every thing my mind refuses to abide in that mode or in this one as in that.  -- Then I say, he is wrong.  For finding God in one way rather than another, I allow due credit, but that is not the best.  God is everywise, alike in every guise to one who can find him the same.  Knowing one guise, such and such, is not knowing God.  Finding this or that is not finding God.  God is everywise, the same in every guise to one who can see him the same.
        Someone may object, But to find God in every mode and in every thing do I not need some special way?  -- In whatever way you find God best and are most aware of him that way pursue. Should another way appear quite different from the first you will do right in quitting that to close with God in this one which appears as in the one forsworn.  It is a counsel of perfection in this manner to attain to such a final certainty and peace that we can see God and are able to enjoy him in any guise and in any thing without having to stop and look for him at all: a boon accorded me. For this and to this end all works are wrought and on the whole works help. The things that do not help let us eschew.
        We thank thee, heavenly Father, for giving us the only Son in whom thou givest thine own self and all things.  We pray thee heavenly Father, as thou has given us thy only Son our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom and in whom thou dost deny us naught, nor wouldst nor couldst not, hear us in him and make us pure and free from all our many faults, uniting us with him in thee.   Amen.