Passion for Creation

We read in the Bible: “When our Lord Jesus Christ was twelve years old, he went with Mary and Joseph to Jerusalem to the temple, and when they returned, Jesus remained in the temple, but they did not know this. And as they returned home and found him missing, they sought him among their acquaintances and relatives and in the throng, but did not find him. They had lost him in the throng. And for this reason they had to turn back to the place they had come from. And when they returned to their departure point at the temple, they found him” (Lk. 2:42–46).

In the same way, if you wish to discover this noble birth, you must truly leave the throng and return to your origin, to the foundation from which you have emerged. All powers of the soul and all its deeds—all these things are the “throng.” Memory, reason, and will—they all diversify you. For this reason you must leave them—the activities of the senses and imagination and especially all that you have in mind or in view. Only then will you be able to discover this birth—otherwise, not at all. He will never be found among friends or “among relatives or at the home of acquaintances.” Instead, we shall lose him there completely.

On this account the following question is raised for us. Can people really find this birth by means of certain things that, although divine, are still conveyed to us through the senses? An example of this is the concept that God is good, wise, merciful, or whatever other concept the reason is able to create within itself that is truly divine. Can we really find this birth by means of all this? Of course not! For even though all this may be good and divine, it is still conveyed from outside us through the senses. Instead, it should rise up out of God from within us, unique and alone, if this birth is to send out its light in a characteristically pure way. At the same time, your whole action has to reach submission, and all your powers have to serve his interest and not your interest. If this action is to be completed, God alone has to accomplish it, and you have only to endure it. Wherever you truly emerge from your will and your knowledge, God truly and willingly goes in and emits his radiant light. Whenever God is to know himself in this way, your knowledge can neither stand up nor be of service. You are not allowed to imagine that your reason can grow to the point that you could know God. In addition, if God is to shine divinely within you, your natural light will not help you in any way, but it must become a pure nothing and divest itself completely of itself. For God can then enter with his light, and he will bring inside with him whatever you have given up a thousand times over—and in addition he will bring a new form that contains everything within itself.

We have a comparable situation in the Gospel when our Lord spoke in a friendly way with the pagan woman at the well (Jn. 4:5ff.). She left her pitcher and ran into the city and told the people that the true Messiah had come. The people did not believe her words but went out with her and saw him themselves. Then they said to her: We do not believe your words; rather, we believe only because we have seen him ourselves (Jn. 4:42). In a similar way, neither knowledge of all creatures nor your own wisdom nor all your knowledge can bring you so far as to know God in a divine way. If you wish to know God in a divine way, your knowledge has to become pure ignorance and forgetfulness of yourself and all creatures.

You might say next: “Now, sir, what is my reason to do if it is to remain wholly unencumbered and without all its activity? Is this the best way for me—to raise my mind up to a knowledge that is unknowing—something that cannot exist? For if I know something, that would still not be ignorance, and it would not mean being unencumbered and bare. Am I to stay completely in the darkness? “Certainly, this is sol You can never be better off than when you are completely in the darkness and ignorance.” “Alas, sir, does it all have to go? Can there be no turning back?” “No, indeed, there can be no real turning back.” “But what is this darkness? What is it called? What is its name?” “Its name means nothing other than an aptitude for sensitivity that is not at all lacking in or devoid of being. It is rather a rich sensitivity in which you will be made whole. For this reason, there is positively no turning back. If you were still to turn back, you would do so not out of any kind of truth but rather on account of something else, say, the senses, the world, or the devil. If you give yourself up to this turning back, you would of necessity fall into sin, and you might go so far astray that you would bring about your eternal downfall. Therefore, no turning back is possible but only a constant pushing forward, an attainment, and a fulfillment of the aptitude. There is no rest short of being filled with total being. This is fitting; matter also is never at rest, and reason never rests until it is filled with everything that is within its potential.”

In this connection a pagan master says: “Nature has nothing swifter than heaven, which overtakes all things in its course.” All the same, the mind of a person outflies heaven in its course, provided the mind remains active in its powers and keeps itself free from degradation and mutilation by lowly and coarse things. In this case, it will overtake the highest heaven and will never rest until it comes to the highest of all places, where it will be fed and nourished by the best of all good.

Do you ask how useful it is to realize this potential, to keep yourself unencumbered and bare, to give yourself up solely to this darkness and ignorance, and to search them out and not turn back from them? In this aptitude lies the possibility of gaining the One who is all things! The more self-abandoning and ignorant of all things you are, the nearer do you come to him. Of this desert it is written: “I shall lead my beloved into the desert and I shall speak into her heart” (Ho. 2:16). The true Word of eternity will be spoken only in solitude, where people are made desolate and estranged from themselves and all multiplicity. The prophet longed for this desolate self-alienation when he said: “Oh, who would give me the wings of a dove so that I could fly away and find rest?” (Ps. 55:6). Where can we find rest and repose? Truly only in abject desolation, and estrangement from all creatures. In this connection David says: “I prefer to be abject and despised in the house of my God to dwelling with great honor and riches in a den of sinners” (cf. Ps. 84:10).

You might say: “Oh, Lord, if it is necessary for us to be so deprived and desolate of all things, both without and within, of our powers as well as of their deeds—if all this must be put aside, it is a difficult situation if God leaves people without his support. As the prophet says: ‘Woe is me! My misery has been extended’ (cf. Ps. 119). It is difficult if God extends my abandonment without illuminating me, speaking to me or being effective in me, just as you here teach and give us to understand.”

If people find themselves in this way in pure nothingness, is it not better for them to do something to drive away the darkness and the abandonment? Should such people not somehow pray, read, listen to a sermon, or carry out other works that are virtuous so as to help themselves? No! Understand this truly that remaining quite still and for as long at a time as possible is the best thing you can do! It is certain that you cannot turn your attention to things of any kind without harm. You would gladly be prepared partly through yourself and partly through him, but this cannot be. You can never think so quickly or so long of preparing yourself that God has not already been there to prepare you. Now let us assume that this may be shared: preparation is your task, and influencing or infusing is his task. All the same you should know that God must be effective and infuse himself as soon as he finds you ready. You are not permitted to believe that God is like an earthly carpenter who works or does not work according to his own wish, and who has it within his willpower to do something or not according to his own pleasure. This is not the way it is with God. Wherever and whenever God finds you ready, he must act and infuse himself into you. In the same way, whenever the air is clear and pure, the sun must infuse itself into the air and cannot keep from doing so! Of course, it would be a great deficiency in God if he did not accomplish great deeds in you and infuse a great blessing into you, provided he finds you unencumbered and bare.

Thus the masters of the spiritual life inform us in writing that at the same moment as the substance of a child is ready within the womb, God infuses a living spirit into the child’s body, namely, the soul, which is the body’s form. It is a single moment: readiness and the infusion. If nature attains its highest point, God will give grace. At the same moment that a spirit is ready, God enters into it without delay and hesitation. In the Book of Revelation it is written that our Lord announced to the people: “I stand in front of the door, knocking and waiting for someone to let me in. I shall share an evening meal with that person” (Rv. 3:20). You don’t need to seek him here or there. He is not farther off than the door of your heart; there he stands and tarries and waits to find someone ready to open up to him and let him in. You don’t need to call him from afar; he can scarcely wait for you to open to him. He is a thousand times more eager for you than you for him. Opening up and entering in are but a single moment.

You might ask how can this be? I cannot notice him at all. Pay attention now! It is not within your power to notice him but in his. If it suits him, he will show himself. Still, he can also conceal himself if he wishes. This is what Christ meant when he said to Nicodemus: “The wind blows where it will; you hear its voice but do not know from where it is coming or where it is blowing” (Jn. 3:8). He spoke and at the same time contradicted himself: “You hear and yet do not know” After all, we become knowledgeable by listening! Christ meant that by Ustening we absorb him or bring him into ourselves as if he had wished to say: “You receive the spirit and yet do not know about it.” Understand now that God cannot leave anything empty and unfilled. God and nature cannot permit anything to be unfilled or empty. Therefore, if it seems to you that you are not aware of him and that you are completely empty of him, this is not the case with him. For if something empty existed under heaven, no matter what you wish and no matter whether it be large or small, he would either have to carry it up to himself in heaven or have to come down and fill it with himself. In no way does God, the ruler of nature, allow anything to be empty. Therefore, be still and do not flinch from this emptiness. For you can indeed turn away from this moment, but you will never again return to it.

You might say: “Yes, Lord, you constantly mean that it must come to this, that this birth should take place within me, namely, that your Son should be born within me. Fine then! Could I have a sign whereby I might become aware that it had really taken place?” Yes, indeed, there will be three reliable signs! I shall now give only one of them. I am often asked if people can reach the point where time no longer hinders them and where neither diversity nor material goods hinder them any longer. Indeed this is so! If this birth has really taken place, all creatures can no longer hinder you. Rather, they all point you toward God and toward this birth for which we find a similarity in lightning. It turns into itself whatever it strikes—be it a tree or an animal or a person. If a person has turned his or her back to the lightning, it turns the person’s face around in a second. If a tree has a thousand leaves, all of them turn their right side to the lightning bolt. Behold, this is what happens to all who are affected by this birth. They are quickly turned toward this birth in whatever is actual to them, no matter how coarse it might be. Yes, what formerly was a hindrance for you now is a benefit to you. Your countenance will be completely turned toward this birth. Truly, in whatever you see or hear, no matter what it is, you can absorb in all things nothing but this birth. Indeed, all things become for you nothing but God, for in all things you have your eye only on God. It is like a person who looks at the sun for a long time; afterward, no matter what he or she might look at, the image of the sun appears there. If you fail to seek God and have your eye on him in each and every thing, you will miss this birth.

Now you might ask this question: “Are people who have gotten on so well still to accomplish works of penance, or are they neglecting something if they do not practice them?” Listen to this! Every form of penance—be it fasting, keeping vigils, praying, kneeling, mortification, wearing hair shirts, lying on a hard bed, or whatever similar kind of thing there is that’s ever been discovered—was thought up because our body and flesh are constantly in opposition to the spirit. The body is often too strong for the spirit, and thus a battle constantly goes on between them, an eternal quarrel. The body is bold and strong here below because it is here in its own country. The world helps it; this earth is its fatherland, and all its relatives, such as food, drink, and good living, are helpful. All these things are against the spirit. The spirit is in a foreign land here. All its relatives and its whole family are in heaven. There it is well befriended if it turns in that direction and makes itself at home there. We place the restraint of penitential practices on the flesh in order to come to the spirit’s aid in a foreign land, and in order to weaken the flesh somewhat in this battle. This is so that the flesh will not conquer the spirit and that the spirit can defend itself. If you do this to the body in order to imprison it, and if you wish to burden the flesh and make it a thousand times more subject, then place on it the bridle of love. Through love you will overcome it most quickly, and through love you will burden it most heavily. That is why God lies in wait for us with nothing so much as love. For love is very like a fishhook. A fisher cannot catch a fish unless the fish picks up the hook. If the fish has swallowed the hook, the fisher is certain of the fish. No matter how much the fish twists this way or that way, the fisher is quite certain of it. I speak in the same way about love. Whoever is captured by love bears the strongest bonds and yet a sweet burden. Whoever has accepted this sweet burden will attain more and thereby come further than through all the penitential practices and mortification that all the people together could carry out They will even be able to bear and endure happily whatever befalls them and whatever God inflicts upon them. They will be able to forgive in a kindly way all the evil that is done to them. Nothing brings you nearer to God and unites you so to him as this sweet bond of love. Let whoever has found this way seek no other. Whoever takes up this hook is caught in such a way that foot and hand, mouth, eyes, heart, and all that is in that person must always belong to God. Therefore you can never overcome this enemy in a better way so that the enemy cannot hurt you than through love. For this reason it is written: “Love is as strong as death, as harsh as hell” (Sg. 8:6). Death separates the soul from the body, but love separates all things from the soul. It will not endure at all whatever is not God or divine. Those who are caught in this noose or who wander along this way will find whatever deeds they accomplish or fail to accomplish of no importance. Whatever such people do or do not do matters not at all. Yet the slightest deed or practice of such people is more useful and fruitful for themselves and all others and God is better disposed toward it than toward the practices of others who, while without mortal sin, have less love. The leisure of such people is more useful than the deeds of others. Therefore, look only for this fishhook, and you will be happily caught. The more you are caught, the more you will be liberated.

May he who himself is love help us to be caught and liberated in this way! Amen.

COMMENTARY: The Via Negativa Explored/The Darkness and Ignorance That Is Knowledge/Solitude: a Way of Pure Nothingness and Emptiness/The Return to Creatures/How Love Is to Be Preferred to Mortifications

In this sermon Eckhart continues his exploration of the process of return to our origins, the process known as the via negativa. As in the previous sermon, he elaborated on what a radical letting go of the will entails, so here he develops the implications to a radical letting go of the intellect. It is a letting go that God alone will accomplish but we must prepare for it by keeping ourselves unencumbered and bare and by not fuming back and by remaining quite still. We are advised to leave behind the “throng” of memory, reason, and will plus the senses and imagination. We are to leave them because they distract us by diversifying us and separating us from a deeper unity that is within and among us. Eckhart underscores the need for the via negafiva by arguing that the fact that God is good, wise, merciful and the concepts used to describe God’s activity are not adequate for all we need to know about ourselves and about God. Even though all this may be good and divine, it is still conveyed from outside us through the senses. Eckhart seeks an inner journey in this sermon. He wants to explore solitude, which is what is left in the person who has learned to let go and let be. What is going on there?

To name what is going on in the person who has learned to let go and let be, Eckhart rains down graphic phrase after graphic phrase. He speaks of becoming a pure nothing, of experiencing pure ignorance, of an unknowing knowledge that is unencumbered and bare. This way into pure nothingness is a way into darkness. There is emptiness and solitude and a desert where we are to remain still for what God has prepared for us. We do not prepare so much as God does. Provided we are found unencumbered and bare, God will infuse a great blessing into us. God is driven to do this, much as God infuses a soul into the fetus of a new child. The union is mutually effected: We do the opening up and God does the entering in. The action is a single action, opening up and entering in are but a single moment.

Eckhart draws many of his images for this process of the via negativa from the Scriptures. The image of the desert and of solitude, for example, are images found in Hosea and in the psalm which Eckhart cites:

. . . I am going to lure her

and lead her out into the wilderness

and speak to her heart. (Ho. 2:16)

And I say,

“Oh for the wings of a dove

to fly away and find rest.”

How far I would take my flight,

and make a new home in the desertl

There I should soon find shelter

from the raging wind,

and from the tempest, Lord, that destroys

and from their malicious tongues. (Ps. 55:6–9)

The preparation for these wilderness and desert experiences we have discussed in the previous three sermons. It is letting go. Once we have been so emptied, God is driven to fill the vacuum, for nature and God both abhor a vacuum. Both reason and will are radically deficient and must be let go of for this filling to happen.

Wherever you truly emerge from your will and your knowledge, God truly and willingly goes in and emits his radiant light. Whenever God is to know himself in this way, your knowledge can neither stand up nor be of service.

Our natural reason is to become a pure nothing and then divine light will take over. We are to let go of creatures in this via negativa not because they are evil but because a different kind of knowledge is called for. If you wish to know God in a divine way, your knowledge has to become pure ignorance and iorgetfulness of yourself and all creatures.

Eckhart sets up an imaginary dialogue with a listener which allows him to develop more fully what this divine way of pure ignorance is about and why it is so valuable a pathway to travel. We cannot turn back from this darkness, we must not run from it or allow ourselves to be distracted from it. Pushed to identify it more fully, Eckhart comes up with a name: It is our aptitude, or potential, for sensitivity. It is a rich sensitivity that has the power to perfect us and heal us and make us whole. It truly exists—we are all capable of it—but it needs to develop by a constant pushing forward, an attainment, and a fulfillment This potential is a potential for being filled with total being—one might even call it a potential for potential, it is so rich. The total being of which we are capable does not stop short of that Being that encircles all being—there is included in the depths of our potential for sensitivity a sensitivity for God. In this aptitude lies the possibility of gaining the One who is all thingsl By putting aside our reasoning and imagining powers for a time, as well as our accomplishments, we enter on the way of pure nothingness. We will be tempted to keep busy and need to resist compulsions that would invite us even to pray, read, listen to a sermon. But Eckhart counsels us to leave such activities, for the period when we are experiencing the via negativa. Let them go too. If we can let them go, then God, who stands at the door knocking and waiting, can come in. He is so close and so eager to enter.

You don’t need to seek him here or there. He is not further off than the door of your heart; there he stands and tarries and waits to find someone ready to open up to him and let him in. You don’t need to call him from afar; he can scarcely wait for you to open to him. He is a thousand times more eager for you than you for him.

Letting go and letting be allow letting in to occur. Elsewhere, Eckhart elaborates on this theme of emptying:

No cask can have two kinds of wine in it. If it is to contain wine, one must necessarily pour out the water; the cask must be bare and empty. Therefore, if you would receive divine joy and God, it is necessary for you to pour out the creatures.¹

We pour out the creatures not because creatures are bad but because we are not empty enough to enjoy both God and creatures. The limits are inside of us. He goes on: “Everything that is to receive and to be receptive must and should be empty.” The eye can rejoice at all colors, Eckhart says, because it is empty of them all. So too with us and creatures. The letting go is necessary for our fuller enjoyment of them. And of God in them and them in God.

Eckhart equates the entering in of God with the birth of a divine Son that should be born within me. He does this in the context of the story of Nicodemus in John’s Gospel (3:1–21). This story of birth is the story of being reborn “through water and the Spirit” and there are traces of a baptismal motif in this elaborate story. In addition, another story that Eckhart invokes in the present sermon, that of the woman at the well, develops the theme of “living water” that signified the coming of the spirit (Jn. 4:1–42). Since Eckhart himself draws an analogy between God’s infusing a fetus with a soul and God’s infusing us with himself, it can be said that Eckhart is at the least associating his theme of the birth of the Son in us and the Spirit of that Son with the rebirth motifs of baptism and of the sending of the Spirit. Like the author of John’s Gospel, Eckhart is subtle in his analogies and does not talk a lot about sacrament, not even the sacrament of baptism. However, he is suggesting by the very texts he uses that such is the context in which he speaks. You receive the Spirit and yet do not know about it, he cites Christ as admonishing his listeners, as, no doubt, Eckhart is admonishing his.

Another influence in this sermon is Pseudo-Dionysius, who so described knowing as an unknowing. Indeed, this could be called the most Dionysian of any of Eckhart’s sermons, but still there are differences. Pseudo-Dionysius does not stress the return to creation that Eckhart insists on at such length toward the end of this sermon. Nor does he stress the panentheism of all beings in God to the extent that Eckhart does.²

Eckhart is never satisfied in talking exclusively of the via negativa. As we saw in Path One, Eckhart’s whole spirituality is creation-centered and not ascetic. Thus he returns to creation in this sermon, first when he provides the very test of whether the journey of the via negativa is authentic or not. What is that test? If this birth has realty taken place, all creatures can no longer hinder you. Rather they all point you toward God and toward this birth. All creatures are returned to and seen in a new light, as focusing on God and the potential between God and us. Mortification of the senses is not what follows from this experience; rather, a sensitizing of the senses results from having made contact with our rich potential for sensitivity. We come away from the via negativa more sensitized and more ecstatic vis-à-vis creation than ever before.

Yes, what formerly was a hindrance for you now is a benefit to you. Your countenance will be completely turned toward this birth. Truly, in whatever you see or hear, no matter what it is, you can absorb in all things nothing but this birth. Indeed, all things become for you nothing but God, for in all things you have your eye only on God.

All things become nothing but God—there is the first principle of Eckhart’s spirituality of blessing, that being is God. Truly we have returned to our origins and can now go out from there. For we have seen the truth of the divinity of all being in ever greater depth and insight in our journey into the purity of nothingness. Clearly, the via negativa is dialectically related to the via affirmativa for Eckhart. Path Two leads from and back to Path One.

Another creation issue that Eckhart addresses in this sermon is that of ascetic practices. How important are fastings, vigils, kneelings, prayers, wearing hair shirts? How useful are they for entering into this unknowing knowledge? They are far less useful than the restraint called love.

If you wish to burden the fîesh and make it a thousand times more subject, then place on it the bridle of love. Through love you will overcome it most quickly, and through love you will burden it most heavily.

Eckhart resists the dualism that is inherent in mortification practices and we are reminded of his statement in another sermon, “the soul loves the body.” Like his brother Thomas Aquinas, Eckhart insists that any tension in the relationship between flesh and spirit is to be resolved amicably and not by coercion or force. Why? Ultimately, because that is God’s way. God lies in wait for us with nothing so much as love. Love is like a fishhook and we are to be hooked on love, not on ascetic practices. Whoever has accepted this sweet burden will attain more and thereby come further than through all the penitential practices and mortification that all the people together could carry out. This is a more gentle way of God experience. From it one learns to endure happily whatever befalls one and to forgive in a kindly way all the evil that is done to one. Compassion is learned by this route and not by the route of mortifications. It suffices. Let whoever has found this way seek no other. With love, our whole body and all our senses belong to God and there is no need to mortify them. Whoever takes up this hook is caught in such a way that foot and hand, mouth, eyes, heart, and all that is in that person must always belong to Cod. This is the way of liberation and joyful spiritual journeying. Look only for this fishhook and you will be happily caught. The more you are caught, the more you will be liberated. Love unites the dialectic of being caught and being liberated. Such a love is the love that God is and that God employs to catch us by.