Meister Eckhart's Sermons (Field translation) · 11 of 23 · tr. Claud Field
IV-a
TRUE HEARING Ecclesiasticus xxiv.
30 .—“Whoso heareth Me shall not be confounded.” The everlasting and paternal wisdom saith, “Whoso heareth Me is not ashamed.” If he is ashamed of anything he is ashamed of being ashamed.
Whoso worketh in Me sinneth not.
Whoso confesseth Me and feareth Me, shall have eternal life.
Whoso will hear the wisdom of the Father must dwell deep, and abide at home, and be at unity with himself.
Three things hinder us from hearing the everlasting Word.
The first is fleshliness, the second is distraction, the third is the illusion of time.
If a man could get free of these, he would dwell in eternity, and in the spirit, and in solitude, and in the desert, and there would hear the everlasting Word.
Our Lord saith, “No man can hear My word nor my teaching without renouncing himself.” All that the Eternal Father teaches and reveals is His being, His nature, and His Godhead, which He manifests to us in His Son, and teaches us that we are also His Son.
All that God worketh and teacheth, He worketh in His Son.
All His work is directed to this end that we also may be His Son.
When God sees that we are indeed His son, He yearns after us, and in the depth of His Divine Being waves of longing break forth, to reveal to us the abyss of His Godhead, and the fullness of His essence; He hastens to identify Himself with us.
Herein He hath joy and gladness in full measure.
God loveth men not less than He loveth Himself.
If thou really lovest thyself, thou lovest all men as thyself; as long as thou lovest any one less than thyself, thou dost not really love thyself.
That man is right who loves all men as himself.
Some folk say: “I love my friends, who do me kindness, more than other people.” Such love is imperfect and incomplete; it is like having your sails only half-filled with wind.
When I love anyone as much as myself, I would just as soon that joy or sorrow, death or life were mine, as well as his.
That would be the dictate of right reason.
St Paul felt such love when he said, “I would that I were cut off from God for my friends’ sake.” Now to be cut off from God is equivalent to suffering the pains of hell.
Some ask whether St Paul was on the way to perfection or was perfect.
I answer, he was perfect, or he would have spoken otherwise.
I wish further to elucidate this saying of St Paul that he was willing to be cut off from God.
The highest act of renunciation for man is for God’s sake to give up God, and that is what St Paul was willing to do; to give up all the blessings that he might receive from God.
When for God’s sake he gave up God, God still remained with him, since God’s essence is Himself, not any impression or reception of Himself.
He who does so is a true man to whom no grief may happen, any more than it happens to the Divine Being.
There is a somewhat in the soul that is, as it were, a blood-relative of God.
It is one, it has nothing in common with nothing, nor is it like nothingness, nothing.
All that is created is nothing, all far from and foreign to the soul.
Could I but find myself one instant in that sphere of pure existence, I should regard myself as little as a worm.
A question arises regarding the angels who dwell with us, serve us and protect us, whether their joys are equal to those of the angels in heaven, or whether they are diminished by the fact that they protect and serve us.
Eckhart's signature doctrine that the Father eternally begets the Son in the ground of the soul; the human interior as the actual site of the divine generative act, distinct from inner_light's static indwelling.
[auto] Eckhart states that God works in His Son and teaches us that we also are His Son, indicating the divine generative act within the human interior.
Eckhart's Abgeschiedenheit/Gelassenheit — radical letting-go of will, image, and grasping that opens the soul to God; distinct from inner_silence (quietness) and from material renunciation, and adjacent to Sufi tark and Buddhist non-grasping as a practice rather than a metaphysical claim.
[auto] The passage explicitly describes renouncing oneself and even giving up God for God's sake as the highest act of renunciation.
Augustinian and Plotinian doctrine that evil has no positive being of its own but is a lack, distortion, or absence of the good — denying ontological dualism while preserving moral seriousness.
Sin is defined negatively as not working in God, implying it lacks positive being.
Sufi self-effacement in God — the via by which the lover is unmade as a separate ego and recovered as God's act; specifies the practice/event rather than mystical_union's resulting state.
The highest act is described as renouncing oneself and giving up God for God's sake, echoing self-effacement.
Disciplined inward attention — sitting, focused, or open-awareness practice — as a stand-alone term that umbrellas active_contemplation, inner_silence, and dhyana-style sitting.
The practice of dwelling deep and abiding at home to hear wisdom constitutes a meditative discipline.
Eckhart's radical reading of Matthew 5:3 — the saint as one who wants nothing, knows nothing, and has nothing, having emptied even the will and the self with which to receive God; distinct from renunciation_of_wealth (material poverty).
Renouncing oneself and giving up all blessings from God reflects the radical poverty of spirit.
The doctrine — central to Eastern Orthodox and Maximian theology — that the human person is progressively transformed into a partaker of the divine nature by grace, not merely justified or united in passing ecstasy.
[auto] The text declares that all God's work is directed to the end that we may become His Son and identifies Himself with us.