Meister Eckhart's Sermons (Field translation) · 16 of 23 · tr. Claud Field
VI-a
SANCTIFICATION 1 1 That is separation from all outward things.
St Luke x.
42 .—“One thing is needful.” I have read many writings both of heathen philosophers and inspired prophets, ancient and modern, and have sought earnestly to discover what is the best and highest quality whereby man may approach most nearly to union with God, and whereby he may most resemble the ideal of himself which existed in God, before God created men.
And after having thoroughly searched these writings as far as my reason may penetrate, I find no higher quality than sanctification or separation from all creatures.
Therefore said our Lord to Martha, “One thing is necessary,” as if to say, “whoso wishes to be untroubled and content, must have one thing, that is sanctification.” Various teachers have praised love greatly, as St Paul does, when he saith, “to whatever height I may attain, if I have not love, I am nothing.” But I set sanctification even above love; in the first place because the best thing in love is that it compels me to love God.
Now it is a greater thing that I compel God to come to me, than that I compel myself to go to God.
Sanctification compels God to come to me, and I prove this as follows:— Everything settles in its own appropriate place; now God’s proper place is that of oneness and holiness; these come from sanctification; therefore God must of necessity give Himself to a sanctified heart.
In the second place I set sanctification above love, because love compels me to suffer all things for the sake of God; sanctification compels me to be the recipient of nothing but God; now, it is a higher state to be the recipient of nothing but God than to suffer all things for God, because in suffering one must have some regard to the person who inflicts the suffering, but sanctification is independent of all creatures.
Many teachers also praise humility as a virtue.
But I set sanctification above humility for the following reason.
Although humility may exist without sanctification, perfect sanctification cannot exist without perfect humility.
Perfect humility tends to the annihilation of self; sanctification also is so close to self-annihilation that nothing can come between them.
Therefore perfect sanctification cannot exist without humility, and to have both of these virtues is better than to have only one of them.
The second reason why I set sanctification above humility is that humility stoops to be under all creatures, and in doing so goes out of itself.
But sanctification remains self-contained.
But to remain contained within oneself is nobler than to go out of oneself for any purpose whatever; therefore saith the Psalmist, “The King’s daughter is all glorious within ,” that is, all her glory is from her inwardness.
Perfect sanctification has no inclination nor going-out towards any creature; it wishes neither to be above or below, neither to be like nor unlike any creature, but only to be one .
Whosoever wishes to be this or that wishes to be somewhat; but sanctification wishes to be nothing.
But some one may say: “All virtues must have existed in fullness in Our Lady, therefore perfect sanctification must have been in her.
If sanctification is higher than humility, why did Our Lady speak of her humility, and not of her sanctification, when she said, “For He hath regarded the lowliness of His handmaiden?” To this I answer that God possesses both sanctification and humility, so far as we may attribute virtues to God.
Now thou shouldest know that His humility brought God to stoop down to human nature, and our Lady knew that He wished for the same quality in her, and in that matter had regard to her humility alone.
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 defines sanctification as separation from all outward things and independence from creatures, aligning perfectly with Eckhart's concept of Gelassenheit.
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 text explicitly links perfect sanctification to the annihilation of self and states they are so close nothing can come between them.
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).
[auto] The text explicitly states that sanctification wishes to be nothing and requires having only one thing, reflecting Eckhart's doctrine of spiritual poverty.
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.
The goal is to resemble the ideal of oneself which existed in God and achieve union with Him.