Sermon Twenty-one: THREE BIRTHS: OURS, GOD’S, AND OURSELVES AS GOD’S CHILDREN

“When peaceful silence lay over all, and night had run the half of her swift course . . .” (Ws. 18:14)^a

We celebrate here in temporality with a view to the eternal birth, which God the Father has accomplished and accomplishes unceasingly in eternity, so that this same birth has now been accomplished in time within human nature. What does it avail me if this birth takes place unceasingly and yet does not take place within myself? It is quite fitting, however, that it should take place within me.

Now we wish to talk about this birth, and how it takes place within us and is accomplished in the good soul whenever God the Father declares his eternal Word in the perfect soul. For what I here say should be understood with respect to the perfect person who has traveled God’s ways and still travels them. It should not be understood with respect to a person who is quite far from and unaware of this birth.

The wise man says: “When all things were in the midst of silence, there came down to me from the royal throne on high a secret Word” (Ws. 18:14). This sermon will discuss this Word. We should note three things in this connection. First, wherever God the Father declares his Word within the soul, wherever the place of this birth may be, and wherever the soul may be receptive to this event, this must be in the purest and most noble and most tender place that the soul can offer. Truly, if God the Father in all his omnipotence had been able to give anything of a more noble nature to the soul, and if the soul had been able to receive anything more noble from him, God the Father would have had to delay the birth for that noble gift. For this reason, the soul in which the birth is to take place must remain very pure and must live in a way that is very noble and very collected and very spiritual. This soul must not flow out through the five senses into the multiplicity of creatures. It must rather remain quite inward and collected and in its purest state. This is its proper situation, and all less than it is in opposition.

The second part of this sermon takes up how people should behave with regard to this event or promise and generation. On the one hand, is it more useful for them to cooperate in the process so that they bring about and deserve to have this birth take place and be completed within them? This cooperation might mean that these people in themselves and in their reasoning and thinking form a concept and accustom themselves to it. The concept on which they reflect is that God is wise, all-powerful, and eternal. On the other hand, is it more helpful and advantageous for this generation through the Father that all thoughts, words, and deeds as well as all preconceived images be dismissed and removed from people’s minds, and that the people simply undergo God, remain inactive, and allow God to take effect within them? By which of these two forms of behavior would people be of greater service in bringing this birth about?

The third point is the extent of the advantage inherent in this birth.

Understand first of all that I shall confirm this explanation with natural reasons so that you can see for yourselves that it is correct, even though I believe the Scripture more than I do myself. But my explanation will reach you more fully and better as a result of a thorough explanation.

Let us take up first the following passage: “In the midst of silence a secret Word was declared to me.” Oh, Lord, where is the silence, and where is the place where this Word was spoken? We say, as I have already said, that it is in the purest place that the soul has to offer—in its most noble place, in the soul’s foundation; yes, in the soul’s being, that is, in its most hidden part. There the “means” is silent, for neither a creature nor an image can enter there. The soul knows in that place neither action nor knowledge. It is not aware in that place of any kind of image, either from itself or from any other creature.

All deeds accomplished by the soul are accomplished by means of powers. Whatever the soul knows is known through reason; whatever it remembers is recalled by memory; if the soul loves, it does so with the will, and thus it accomplishes deeds through powers and not through being. All its activity in the external world depends on some kind of mediation. The power to see takes effect through the eyes; without them the soul can neither use nor impart vision. And this is the way it is with all the other senses. The soul accomplishes all its external activities through a kind of mediation. In being, however, there is no activity, for the powers with which it acts flow indeed out of the foundation of being. In this very foundation, however, the “means” is silent. Here only peace and celebration for this birth and this activity are in command, while God the Father declares his Word there. For the Word is by its nature only receptive to the divine being, without any mediation at all. In this place, God enters the soul completely, not partially. God enters the foundation of the soul. No one touches the foundation of the soul except God. A creature cannot enter the soul’s foundation, but must remain outside in the powers. There in the foundation the soul looks indeed at the image of the creature by means of which the creature has entered and received shelter. For when the powers of a soul come into contact with a creature, they remove and create an image and likeness of that creature, and bring them into themselves. This is the way in which they know the creature. The creature cannot come closer into the soul, and yet, the soul never approaches a creature unless it has previously received its image. And by means of this present image the soul approaches creatures. For the image is something the soul creates from objects with its powers. If it wishes to recognize a stone, a horse, a person, or something else, it draws out the image that it had previously incorporated, and in this way it can unite itself with that object by recognition.

When a person in this way receives an image, however, the image must of necessity come from outside through the senses. For this reason, the soul knows nothing so little as itself. Thus a master of the spiritual life says that the soul cannot create or draw an image of itself. Of nothing does it know so little as of itself because of the necessary intermediary.

For you must understand that the soul is inwardly free and unencumbered of all mediations and of all images. This is, then, the reason that God can unite himself with the soul freely without an image or a likeness. Whatever capacity you acknowledge in any one of the masters of the spiritual life, you cannot help attributing the same capacity beyond all measure to God. Now the wiser and more powerful a master is, all the more directly does his accomplishment follow, and all the simpler will it be. People need many means in their external deeds. Before they can achieve the things they have in mind, there must be much preparatory work on the materials they will use. The sun, however, accomplishes its task of illumination very quickly as a result of its excellence. As soon as the sun sends out its rays, the whole world, far and wide, is filled with light at the same moment. Even higher is an angel, who needs even fewer means in his activity, and has also fewer images than the sun. The very highest, the seraphim, has only one image. Whatever is grasped in multiplicity by all who are beneath him is grasped by him as a single unit. God, however, does not need any kind of an image, and he has none. God is effective in the soul with no “means,” image, or likeness. He is effective truly in the soul’s foundation into which no image has reached except God himself with his own being. No creature can do this!

How does the Father generate his Son in the soul? The way creatures do in images and in likenesses? Surely not! Rather entirely in the same way he generates in eternity, neither less nor more. Now then, how does he generate the Son there? Pay attention! Behold, God the Father has a complete insight into himself and a distinct, complete perception of himself through himself, not through just any image. Thus the Father generates his Son in the true unity of the divine nature. Behold, in the same and no other way God the Father generates his Son in the foundation of the soul and in its being, and he thus unites himself with the soul. For if any image were there, it would not be a true union. Yet the whole happiness of the soul is situated in this true union.

Now you might say that there are nothing but images in the soul by reason of its nature. No, in no way is this true! For if it were, the soul would never be happy. In this case, God could create no creature from which you might receive perfect happiness. Otherwise God would not be the highest happiness and the last goal, although this is in accord with his nature and although he wishes himself to be a beginning and an end to all things. No creature can be your happiness. For this reason, it also cannot be your perfection here below because the perfection of that life (that is, the future life) follows the perfection of this (earthly) life, which consists of all the virtues combined. And for this reason you must of a necessity be and remain in being and in the foundation. There is where God has to touch you with his onefold being without the mediation of any image. No image aims at or points to itself. It rather aims at and points to the object of which it is the image. And since we only have an image of what is beyond ourselves and of what has been absorbed through the senses of creatures, and since an image always points to the object of which it is an image, it would not be possible for you ever to become happy through an image. For this reason, silence and quietness must reign there, and the Father must speak and generate his Son and accomplish his deeds there without any images.

What contribution can people properly make through their own actions so that they can achieve and merit the benefit of having this birth take place and be completed within them? Isn’t it better for people to do something on their own, such as imagine what God is like or direct their thoughts toward him, rather than wait silently and peacefully for God to speak to them and have effect within them? I repeat what I’ve already said in the past: these statements and this conduct are concerned only with good and perfect people who have taken the essence of all the virtues to and within themselves in such a way that the virtues really flow from them and that the precious life and noble teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ are especially alive in them. Such people may understand that it is the best and most noble situation you can attain in life when you are silent and let God speak and be effective. Where all powers are deprived of all their deeds and images, this Word is spoken. Therefore he said: “In the midst of silence, the secret Word was spoken to me.” On this account, the more you are able to bring all your powers to a unity and a forget-fulness of all the objects and images you have absorbed, and the more you depart from creatures and their images, the nearer and more receptive are you to the secret Word. If you were able to become completely unaware of all things, you could lose awareness of your own body, as Saint Paul added: “Whether I was in the body or not, I do not know!” (2 Co. 12:2). The spirit had so completely removed all powers into itself that Saint Paul had forgotten his body. Memory and reason had no longer any effect, nor could the senses and powers any longer exert their influences to lead and embellish the body. The fire of life and the warmth of the body were undone. For this reason his body did not lose weight in the three days that he neither ate nor drank. The same thing happened to Moses, who fasted for forty days on the mountain (cf. Ex. 24:18; 34:28) and still became no weaker. On the last day he was just as strong as on the first day. People should also escape from their senses and turn all their powers inwardly and attain a forgetfulness of all things and themselves. On this account a master of the spiritual life said to the soul: “Avoid the restlessness of external deeds! Flee and hide yourself before the storm of inner thoughts, for they create a lack of peace!” If God therefore is to speak his Word within the soul, the soul must be in peace and at rest. Then he declares his Word and himself within the soul—there is no image but God himself.

Dionysius says: “God has no image or likeness of himself, for he is essentially all goodness, truth, and being.” God accomplishes all his deeds within and outside himself in a moment. Do not believe that when God made heaven and earth and all things, he made one thing one day and another thing the next day. Moses writes as if this were so, but he did it for the sake of people who could not have understood or grasped it otherwise. God did only this: he willed, he spoke—and all tilings were made! God is effective without means and without an image. The more you are without an image, the more receptive will you be to his influences; the more inwardly you are turned and the more forgetful you are of yourself, the nearer will you be to him.

At this point Dionysius admonished his disciple Timotheus in these words: “My dear son Timotheus, you are to swing with untroubled senses beyond yourself and all your powers, beyond your ability to perceive and beyond reason, beyond deed and mode and being into the hidden, silent darkness where you will come to a recognition of the unknown, transbegotten God. One must remove oneself from all things. God is opposed to working in images.”

Now you might ask: “What is it that God works without images in the foundation and in being?” I cannot know that because the powers can grasp only in images, for they must grasp and perceive all objects in their characteristic images. They cannot perceive a horse in the image of a person. For this reason, since all images come from outside, the deed that God accomplishes in the foundation without an image remains hidden from them. But this is most useful for the soul. This ignorance impels the soul to something remarkable and causes the soul to pursue it. For the soul truly perceives the fact that something exists, but it does not know how and what it is. On the other hand, if people are aware of the circumstances surrounding things, they become quickly bored with these things and seek to learn something else and live henceforth in a troubled longing to know these new things, and still take no time to linger over these things to get to know them. For this reason, only an unknowing knowledge detains the soul long enough to linger over things and then impels it to further pursuit.

Therefore a wise man said: “In the middle of the night, when all things were in silence, a secret Word was spoken to me. It came as if it had been spoken in the manner of a thief” (Ws. 18:14, 15). How could he call it a “Word” since it was hidden? It is, after all, the nature of the Word to reveal what is hidden. It opened up and sparkled before me in order to reveal something to me, and it informed me about God. For this reason, it is called a Word. It was, however, not known to me what was hidden—such was its concealed arrival in whisperings and silence, in order to reveal itself. See how, since it is hidden, we must and should pursue it. It sparkled and yet was hidden; the purpose is for us to yearn and sigh after it. Saint Paul admonishes us to run after it until we perceive it, and never to cease until we seize it When he was snatched up into the third heaven into God’s gift of knowledge and looked at all things, he forgot nothing on his return. It lay, however, so deeply in his foundation that his reason could not reach it; it was concealed from him. Therefore, he had to run after it and reach it within himself, not outside himself. It is entirely within, not outside—totally within. And since he knew this well, he said: “I am certain of this: neither death nor any other affliction can part me from what I feel within me” (Rm. 8:38–39).

In this matter, a pagan master made this beautiful statement to another master: “I am becoming aware of something within myself that sparkles in my reason. I feel well that it is something, but cannot grasp what it may be. Only I fancy one thing, that if I could grasp it, I would know all truth.” The other master replied: “Fine! Go after it! For if you could grasp it, you would have the essence of all goodness as well as eternal life.” Saint Augustine had the same thing in mind when he said: “I am becoming aware of something within me that radiates and sparkles before my soul. If it could be brought to completion and permanence within me, it would have to be eternal life. It conceals itself and still makes itself known. It comes, however, in the manner of a thief, and endeavors to remove and steal all things from the soul. Because it still makes itself known and reveals itself, it would like to attract the soul, cause it to follow it, and rob and divest the soul of itself.” The prophet said of this: “Lord, take away their breath, and give them in return your breath” (Ps. 104:29–30). This was also the intent of the bride’s statement when she said: “My soul dissolved and melted away when my beloved spoke” (Sg. 5:6). When the Word came in, I had to decrease. Christ also had this in mind when he said: “Whoever gives up something for my sake shall receive it back a hundredfold, and whoever wishes to possess me, must divest himself and herself of all things, and whoever wishes to serve me must follow me; he or she may not follow his or her own interest” (cf. Mk. 10:29; Mt. 16:24; 19:29; Jn. 12:26).

Now you might say: “Alas, Lord, you wish the soul to turn away from its natural course and to behave contrary to its nature! Its nature is still to perceive through the senses and in images. Do you wish to reverse this order of things?”

No, what do you know about the nobility God has placed in nature that has not been fully described but remains still hidden? For those who have written about the nobility of the soul have not come further than their natural reason carried them. They never reached its foundation. Therefore it must remain hidden and unknown to them. On this account the prophet said: “I shall be seated and be silent, and I shall hear what God declares within me” (Ps. 84:9). Because it is so hidden, this Word came in the darkness of the night. Saint John says: “The light shone in the darkness. He came to his own, and all who received him became sons of God by reason of power: power was given to them to become sons of God” (Jn. 1:5, 11, 12).

Now note here, finally, the value and fruit of this secret Word and of this darkness. Not only is the Son of the heavenly Father born in this darkness, but you also are born there as a child of the same heavenly Father and none other; and he also gives that power to you. Understand now how valuable this is! By all the truth that all the masters of the spiritual life have learned through their own reason and awareness, or will ever learn up to Judgment Day, they have never understood the least thing about this knowledge and this foundation. Even though it might be called ignorance and lack of awareness, it still contains more than all the knowledge and awareness outside this foundation. For this ignorance entices and draws you away from all knowledge about things, and beyond this it draws you away from yourself. This was what Christ meant when he said: “Anyone who does not deny himself or herself and leave his or her father and mother and everything that is external, is not worthy of me” (Mt. 10:37–38). It is as if he said: “Whoever does not leave all external aspects of creatures can neither be received into this divine birth nor be born.” The fact that you rob yourself of yourself and of all that is external—this now is what truly gives this birth to you. And I truly believe and am certain that those people who are properly situated in this respect can never be separated from God in any way at all. I say that they can never fall into the slightest mortal sin, as even the saints did. I go so far as to say that they cannot even commit a venial sin of their own will nor can they allow others to do so if they can prevent it. They will be so strongly enticed to him and so drawn to and accustomed to him that they can never turn another way, for all their senses and powers are inclined in this direction.

May the God who was reborn today as a human being help us in this birth! May he eternally help us weak human beings so that we may be born in him in a divine way. Amen.

COMMENTARY:  The Meaning of Breakthrough/Three Kinds of Birth or Breakthrough/First, Our Birth into the Godhead/ Second, God’s Birth in us/Third, Our Birth as Sons and Daughters of God

Eckhart takes the occasion of the Christmas midnight liturgy to speak about three births—that of ourselves in the Godhead, that of God in us, and that of ourselves as Sons of God. As he puts it, God was reborn today os a human being and we human beings are to be born in him in a divine way. Eckhart asks about the first two of these births when he puts these questions: “What is our name and what is our Father’s name? Our name is that we must be born and our Father’s name is to bear . . .”¹ “We must be born”—there lies the need for breakthrough and the first birth treated in this sermon. But that “our Father’s name is to bear”—there lies the need for birth number two in this sermon. And birth three will be the fruit of births one and two, for it will mean a birth of us in relation to the Father, that is, our birth as Sons and Daughters of God. Eckhart invented a word for our rebirth. He called it breakthrough (Durchbruch). We have seen him invoke this term in Sermon Fifteen, where he said:

A great master says that his breakthrough is nobler than his flowing out, and this is true. When I flowed out from God, all things spoke: God is. But this cannot make me happy, for it makes me understand that I am a creature. In the breakthrough, on the other hand, where I stand free of my own will and of the will of God and of all his works and of God himself, there I am above all creatures and am neither God nor creature. Rather, I am what I was and what I shall remain now and forever. Then I receive an impulse which shall bring me above all the angels. In this impulse I receive wealth so vast that God cannot be enough for me in all that makes him God, and with all his divine works. For in this breakthrough I discover that I and God are one . . . Here God is one with the spirit, and that is the strictest poverty one can find.

In this passage we see how breakthrough entails our experience of the Godhead and is thus even nobler than our experience of God in our original creation; we see that breakthrough entails our being “poor” and devoid of all will; and a happiness is experienced as we return to our origin in the Godhead, one in spirit with God: “In this breakthrough it is bestowed upon me that I and God are one.” The breakthrough, then, is not God’s breakthrough; God has been here all along and so too has the Godhead. The breakthrough is our breakthrough—a breakthrough in our consciousness, an awakening (Eckhart compares it to a lightning flash), an “eruption,” an insight into the fact of our oneness with God. In Paths One and Two we saw that the spiritual process is a constant one of “waking up” and “getting up.” Path Three or breakthrough is also one of awakening. The first awakening is a self-awakening, a birth of ourselves. As Schürmann puts it, “in the process of detachment, the fruit that man bears is man himself: he is delivered to himself, brought back from dispersion and constituted Son of God in the very being of his mind.”² In our first birth, into creation, we understood that we are creatures—but this, Eckhart claims, is not enough. It does not satisfy our deepest longings. Until we have given birth to self, we have not even properly understood the rest of creation, for “those who know themselves know all creation” (Sermon Thirty-six). In this second birth or breakthrough we realize our nearness to divinity and the Godhead—here “it is bestowed upon me that I and God are one.” For this reason, our second birth or second emanation is “even nobler” than our first.

Our breakthrough constitutes our being born again. It is a rebirth, as in the Nicodemus story in John’s Gospel which Eckhart links to the subject of our birth in Sermon Seventeen. Elsewhere Eckhart says:

In the soul that abides in a present now, God begets his only begotten Son, and in this birth the soul is born again in God. It is one birth: as often as the soul is born again in God, the Father begets his only begotten Son in the soul.³

The key statement here is that “it is one birth,” for Eckhart’s language is at times confusing when he is discussing our birth or breakthrough, God’s birth in us, and the Son’s birth in us. These are, from the point of view of analysis, split up into three different births. But from the point of view of the event itself, in one “present now,” there is only one birth. Ours, God’s, and God’s Son’s constitute one birth. Even though we undergo breakthrough often, it is still only one birth. “God does this: he begets his only begotten Son in the highest part of the soul. At the same time as he begets his only begotten Son in me, I beget him again in the Father.”⁴ Clearly, the three births are one birth.

The breakthrough is ours and not God’s, because God is already there wanting to enter. Eckhart links this reality to that of the resurrected Christ appearing to the disciples through a locked door.

I once spoke of how our Lord came to his disciples on Easter Day through a locked door. God does not first need to enter the person who is already free of all otherness and manmade things, because he is already there.⁵

Thus the breakthrough is the penetrating of the doors that oppose God’s entry. But the penetration is not from the outside because “God is already there.” It is more a penetration of consciousness, an awakening to how total the permeation of God’s presence already is. Eckhart calls the breakthrough the fullest joy possible. “No other pleasure and Joy can be compared with this union and this breakthrough and this joy.” The breakthrough is a reception of “nothing less than God himself in the breadth and fullness of being.”⁶ Eckhart talks of the need to break into things as well as into God. “One must learn to break through (durch-brechen) things and to grasp one’s God in them and to be able to picture him powerfully to oneself in an essential manner.”⁷ This suggests the image he uses on several occasions of breaking the kernel to get at the nut or core of things. “The shell must be cracked open if what is in it is to come out; for if you want the kernel, you must break (zerbrechen) the shell.”⁸

Breakthrough is born of our desire for union with the Godhead, the God without a name.

The intellect can never find rest. It aspires to God not as he is the Holy Spirit or as he is the Son: it flees from the Son. Nor does it want God inasmuch as he is God. Why? Because, as such, he still carries a name. And even if there were a thousand gods, it would still break beyond.- it wants him where he has no name. It wants something more noble, something better than God as having a name. What then does the intellect want? It does not know; it wants him as he is the Father. This is why Saint Philip says: “Lord, show us the Father and it is enough for us.” It wants him as he is the marrow out of which goodness springs; it wants him as he is the nucleus from which goodness flows: it wants him as he is the root, the vein, from which goodness exudes. Only there is he the Father.⁹

The breakthrough is the intellect’s breakthrough, thus a breakthrough in our consciousness, a breaking beyond boundaries of creating images. Eckhart substantiates this with scriptural arguments for our transformation of consciousness. Citing Saint Paul, Eckhart says: “The soul looks at God and God looks at it from face to face, as transformed into one image.” The Pauline text Eckhart refers to goes as follows: “And we, with our unveiled faces reflecting like mirrors the brightness of the Lord, all grow brighter and brighter as we are turned into the image that we reflect; this is the work of the Lord who is Spirit” (2 Co. 3:18). The breakthrough is the moment of our being transformed into another image, that of divinity. In it we break into the Godhead, having been invited from all eternity. In it we break into our most primal origins, having once been there from all eternity. In it we break into the silence that has preceded all birth from all eternity. In it we break beyond creation and even the Creator to the God without a name who is the Godhead. In it we break into the “marrow,” the “nucleus,” “the root,” “the vein” that is behind the goodness of creation and the goodness of the Creator. One might say that we touch the goodness behind goodness, the mystery behind mystery, the God behind God. The breakthrough becomes our own birth into the divinity, a discovery of our own divine origins. We are to be born in him in a divine way. It also becomes the ground for a new birth of God.

Time stops in the Godhead and in our breakthrough into the Godhead. So does all need for “means” and purposes, for there we learn what it is to seek and to live without a why. For ecstasy is its own reward, an end in itself.

Someone could ask a good person: “Why do you seek God?” “Because he is God.” “Why do you seek the truth?” “Because it is the truth.” “Why do you seek justice?” “Because it is justice.” Such people’s attitude is the right one. All things that are in time have a why. Thus when someone asks a man: “Why are you eating?” “In order to gain strength.” “Why are you sleeping?” “For the same reason.” And so with everything that is in time.¹⁰

In the breakthrough we realize that life does not have only means but also ends and that these ends need no justifications. We learn that because our transformed intellect has learned that there the “means” is silent. In this very foundation, the “means” is silent. In the breakthrough we have learned how God acts: that is, without means. God is effective in the soul with no “means,” image, or likeness.

What Eckhart calls the “breakthrough to the Godhead” constitutes our return to God just as our creation or flowing out (“emanation”) constituted our entrance into the panentheistic circle of being. In our creation we are in God but in our breakthrough we know we are in God and in the Godhead. The union is total in the breakthrough. There “God and I are one.” In such ecstasy all dualism dies, all separation ceases, union takes over. But this union is not enough for Eckhart, for as we saw in the previous sermon, fruitfulness is richer than union alone. Our union needs to bear fruit; it needs to give birth. And so a second kind of birth, that of God in us, needs to be considered.

The scriptural text that launches this sermon of Meister Eckhart’s is that of the liturgy for Christmas. No doubt this sermon was a Christmas sermon and for this reason Eckhart begins it with the Incarnational question: What does it avail me if this birth takes place? In other words, what does Christmas—what does the Incarnation—mean? The fuller text from which Eckhart derived his sermon is as follows:

When peaceful silence lay over all,

and night had run the half of her swift course,

down from the heavens, from the royal throne, leapt your all-powerful Word;

into the heart of a doomed land the stern warrior leapt. (Ws. 18:14–15)

Eckhart tells us that his entire sermon will discuss this Word. If this sermon, then, represents his exegesis of the Word who leaps into human history, how does Eckhart interpret this word? It is a word of revelation, of uncovering what is hidden, of uncovering the Godhead. What, after all, does a word do? It is the nature of the Word to reveal what is hid-den, declares Eckhart. The Word reveals what is hidden—namely the Godhead—but it does not reveal all hiddenness, says Eckhart. In other words, the leaping that the Word does is a leaping in the night—”when night had run the half of her swift course.” Because it is so hidden, this Word came in the darkness of the night, Eckhart comments, citing John’s Gospel, “the light shone in the darkness” (1:5). The darkness and the hiddenness remain, but the revelation has broken through it all, sparkling and yet hidden, says Eckhart. And this is how Paul describes this illumination also, an illumination within the darkness and coverup of daily turmoil. Eckhart cites from Paul’s Letter to the Romans:

For I am certain of this: neither death nor life, no angel, no prince, nothing that exists, nothing still to come, not any power, or height or depth, nor any created thing, can ever come between us and the love of God made visible in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rm. 8:38–39)

The “making visible” is the work of the Word, the work of revelation.

In developing his theology of the Word, Eckhart appropriately makes rich use of the role of the Word at creation. He insists that the Genesis account of creation in six days ought not to be taken literally. Do not believe that when God made heaven and earth and all things, he made one thing one day and another the next day. Rather, the heart of the story for Eckhart’s purposes in this sermon is that God did only this: he willed, he spoke—and all things were madel The divine Word is an all-powerful word; once spoken, things are. That is the kind of Word that is born anew on Christmas morning. And the Word that is creation is full of mystery, full of divinity and of untold depths. What do you know about the nobility God has placed in nature that has not been fully described but remains still hidden? Eckhart asks.

But Eckhart is not content to expound on a theological theory of the Word and its birth at Christmas. He is a preacher trying to get persons to practice and live their faith. Thus, as any spiritual theologian must, he is intent on relating this theology of the Word to practice. What good is it to us, he asks, if God was born at Bethlehem on Christmas morning? The issue becomes: How does this Word affect us today? His answer is: It is quite fitting that this birth should take place in me, and, indeed, in all persons. Now we wish to talk about this birth, and how it takes place within us and is accomplished in the good soul whenever God the Father declares his eternal Word in the perfect soul. What the Incarnation means, then, is that God is to be born in us. But where and how? The where is in our depths. This is the reason, Eckhart declares, that the Word had to come as revelation, in order to touch the very bottom of our deep, deep selves. As noble as the soul is, its true depth cannot be plummeted by reason alone.

Those who have written about the nobility of the soul have not come further than their natural reason carried them. They never reached its foundation . . . Because it is so hidden, this Word came in the darkness of the night.

And so, it is in the very foundation and core of the soul that the birth of God will happen.

But how? By our remaining in this very depth and foundation. You must of necessity be and remain in being and in the foundation. There is where God has to touch you. What will characterize our remaining in the depths of our being and foundation so that God may be reborn today as a human being? Above all, silence will characterize our attitude toward giving birth. Elsewhere, Eckhart expands on the need for silence: “All voices and sounds must be put away and a pure stillness must be there, a still silence . . . In stillness and peace . . . there God speaks in the soul and expresses himself fully in the soul.”¹¹ But Eckhart defines silence in a very special way. Silence means to be rid of all images and representations. To be silent is to have let go of all images. An image is a means, and the union with the Godhead is to be without means. Silence and quietness must reign there, and the Father must speak and generate his Son and accomplish his deeds there without any images. Eckhart’s exegesis of the passage from Wisdom, “When peaceful silence lay over all,” continues. Be at peace and at rest, he insists. Let go of all images, let yourself sink into that unknowing knowledge that was learned in Path Two. Even though our souls create images and these images of sound or color or conversation are good, still, there is a time for letting go of all images. For we create images for our own sakes, but God does not need them. The only image God wants in us at such a time is God with his own being. There is to be no image but God himself if our souls are to be the “birthplace” for God. God is effective in the soul with no “means,” image, or likeness—he Is effective truly in the soul’s foundation into which no image has reached except God himself with his own being. Invoking the father of the via negativa, Pseudo-Dionysius, by ngme, Eckhart insists that we will birth God where we let the silent dark-ness of the unknown God be. The unknown God or Godhead must be allowed to “let be”; we must not be afraid of the dark or of the silence or of being without images. Only then are we ready for the secref Word to enter. One reason why silence is so basic to the birth of God is that the birth takes place from the emptiness of our nothingness. It is such a pregnancy with nothingness that bears divine fruit. “A man had a dream, a daydream: it seemed to him that he was big with nothingness as a woman is with a child. In this nothingness God was born. He was the fruit of nothingness. God was born in nothingness.”¹² Thus the via nega-tiva is needed to give birth to God. Whoever does not leave all external aspects of creatures can neither be received into this divine birth nor be born. The fruit of letting go is birth.

The third event in breakthrough is our giving birth to God’s Son, for “though we are God’s sons, we do not realize it yet.”¹³ Breakthrough constitutes our realization of how the Word is a divine Word that leaps down from a royal throne.

The more you are able to bring all your powers to a unity and a forgetfulness of all the objects and images you have absorbed, and the more you depart from creatures and their images, the nearer and more receptive are you to the secret Word.

The receptivity that has been learned in Path Two by letting go and letting be now finds a fruitful expression. That expression is the one image that makes us happy: the Son of God generated in us.

The Father generates his Son in the foundation of the soul and in its being, and he thus unites himself with the soul. For if any image were there, it would not be a true union. Yet the whole happiness of the soul is situated in this true union.

The emptiness of the soul is filled by God. And in such a setting of emptiness the Word must be born. God is compelled to reveal him in such a person.

Look solely for God and you will find together with God all that he is capable of offering . . . If God possessed still more, he could not hide it from you, he would have to reveal it to you, and he gives it to you . . . and he does so by virtue of birth.

The Father bears his Son in eternity like to himself. “The Word was with God and the Word was God” . . . The Father bears his Son in the soul in the same way that he bears him in eternity, not in any other way. He must do it, whether he wishes to or not.¹⁴

But there is still another birth in this birth of self and of the Son of God and this is the fruit of the previous two births. The third birth, generated by the other two, is that not only do we give birth to the Son of God but that we, in fact, are reborn as sons of God. Our breakthrough has rendered us one with the Father—”God and I are one”—but to be one with the Godhead is to know the Godhead. However, “no one knows the Father except the Son.” Thus Eckhart, not unfamiliar with Scholasticism’s penchant for syllogisms, presents us with one:

No one knows the Godhead except the Son.

However, we know the Godhead (by the breakthrough experience).

Therefore, we are the Son.

Eckhart says: “This is what our Lord says: ‘No one knows the Father except the Son, and no one knows the Son except the Father.’ Perfectly to know the Father we must be the Son.”¹⁵ Thus our rebirth is not accomplished until we become the Son. Eckhart develops this theme within a scriptural context. In the sermon we are considering, he repeats the words of John’s Gospel, albeit a bit inaccurately. AH who received him became sons of God by reason of power: power was given to them to become sons of God. Then he draws the following conclusion: Not only is the Son of the heavenly Father bom in this darkness, but you a/so are born there as a child of the same heavenly Father and none other; and he also gives that power to you. And he insists that this revelation of our own divine sonship is not possible to philosophers alone. It required a birth of God in our midst to reveal it.

Understand how valuable this is! By all the truth that all the masters of the spiritual life have learned through their own reason and awareness, or will ever learn up to Judgment Day, they have never understood the least thing about this knowledge and this foundation.

The meaning of Christmas is our being born as the Son of God.

It would mean little to me that the “Word was made flesh” for man in Christ, granting that the latter is distinct from me, unless he also was made flesh in me personally, so that I too would become the Son of God.¹⁶

We are the Son of God by grace; Christ is the Son of God by nature.¹⁷ We are, as the Scriptures say, truly God’s children. “Think of the love that the Father has lavished on us, by letting us be called God’s children; and that is what we are” (1 Jn. 3:1). Eckhart takes this passage very seriously. Elsewhere, in commenting on John 1:12f., he explains that “I am the son of everything which forms me and gives birth to me in its image and likeness. A person so fashioned [is] God’s Son.”¹⁸ Significantly, in the scriptural text from Wisdom that forms the basis of our present sermon, there is a line that immediately precedes the text that Eckhart has read in the Christmas liturgy. It is:

They who, thanks to their sorceries, had been wholly incredulous,

at the destruction of their firstborn now acknowledged

this people to be son of God. (Ws. 18:13)

God’s people as God’s children—”this people the son of God”—there is the biblical theme that Eckhart expands in his present sermon.

Thus we can begin to appreciate what Eckhart had in mind in Sermon Eighteen when he declared that the “soul alone among creatures is generative”—it is generative of the Son of God. And how it is that the birth we undergo and that God undergoes in us is a blessing—with all the biblical connotations of that rich concept—and that our birth is the imago Dei that brings a new light. Indeed, a light that is like lightning from which no creature turns and which no creature can ignore.¹⁹ The birth is a lightning bolt, a breakthrough, a blessing that brings all blessings with it.

Tend only to the birth in you and you will find all goodness and all consolation, all delight, all being and all truth. Reject it and you reject all goodness and blessing. What comes to you in this birth brings with it pure being and blessing. But what you seek or love outside of this birth will come to nothing, no matter what you will or where you will it.²⁰

But there is still one more piece of good news regarding the birthday of Christ, the birthday of ourselves, and the birthday of God. And that is that such breakthroughs do not occur only once a year. Nor even once a day. They are continuous—if we are prepared and receptive for them. God is birthed in the “spark of the soul.”

There is where the birth takes place; there is where the Son is born. This birth does not take place once a year or once a month or once a day but all the time, that is, beyond time in that space where there is neither here and now nor nature and thought.²¹

No wonder Eckhart calls on his listeners to celebrate this birth, for the birth itself is taking place “all the time,” it is one constant celebration. We celebrate what is. We celebrate a celebration. Here only peace and celebration for this birth and this activity are in command, while God the Father declares his Word there.