Sermon Twenty-three: WE ARE CHILDREN OF GOD AND MOTHERS OF GOD

“See what love the Father has lavished on us: we are called God’s children and we are.” (1 Jn. 3:1)^a

We must understand that knowing God and being known by him as well as seeing God and being seen by him are essentially the same thing. Inasmuch as we know and see God, we know and see that it is he who causes us to see and know. Air that is illuminated consists of only one thing, the fact that it gives off light. This is because air that gives off light is itself illuminated. In the same way, we know because we are known and because God causes us to know him. For this reason Christ said, “Again you will see me.” This means that because I cause you to see, you will know me, and as a result, “your hearts will be full of joy” in seeing and knowing me, and “that joy no one shall take from you” (Jn. 16:22).

Saint John says, “See what love God has given to us, so that we shall be called and we are God’s children” (1 Jn. 3:1). He says not only that “we will be called” but also that “we are.” In the same way, I say that just as a person cannot be wise without having knowledge, to the same extent he or she cannot be a child without having the filial essence of God’s child and without having the same essence as God’s child. In the same way, one cannot be wise without having knowledge. Therefore, if you are to be a child of God, you cannot be one unless you have God’s very being, which a child of God has. This, however, is now hidden from us, and as a result it is written, “My dear people, we are already the children of God” (1 Jn. 3:2). And what do we know about this? We know what John adds: “. . . we shall be like him” (1 Jn. 3:2). This means that we shall be the same as he is: the same being and perception and understanding and everything that he is when “we see him as he really is” (1 Jn. 3:2). Therefore, I say that God could no more cause me to be a child of God if I did not have the essence of a child of God than God could cause me to be wise if I did not have the essence of what is wise. But how then are we children of God? As yet we do not know. “What we are to be in the future has not yet been revealed” (1 Jn. 3:2). We know only what he himself says about it: “we shall be like him.” Certain things exist that hide all this in our souls and conceal this knowledge from us.

The soul has something within it, a tiny spark of the ability to know, that is never extinguished. And onto this tiny spark, as onto the most sublime part of our mind, is located the “image” of the soul. Now there exists, however, in our souls also a form of knowledge that is directed toward external things, namely, the knowledge of the senses and of understanding. This is knowledge in the form of images of ideas and concepts; it conceals from us the other kind of knowledge.

How then are we “children of God”? We are so in this way, that we have one essence with him; that we know somehow that we are God’s children. For this purpose we must know how to distinguish between external and inner knowledge. Inner knowledge is knowledge that is found as something resembling reason in the essence of our souls. Meanwhile, this is not the soul’s essence but it is rather rooted in this essence, and it is something of the soul’s life. When we say that this knowledge is something from the soul’s life, this means the rational life. It is in this life that a person is born as a child of God and to eternal life. And this knowledge is without time and space and without here and now. In this life all things are one, and all things are united with one another, all in all and all in all.

I shall give a comparison. Within the body all parts of the body are so united that the eye belongs to the foot, and the foot to the eye. If the foot could speak, it would say that the eye in the head is more the foot’s than if it were in the foot; and the eye would make the same comment. In the same way, I believe that all the grace in Mary belongs more, and in a more characteristic way, to an angel and is more in this angel—I am speaking now of the grace in Mary—than if that grace were in the angel or in the saints. For everything that Mary has, a saint has also, and it is more the saint’s, and the grace within Mary pleases the saint more than if it were within himself or herself.

This interpretation is still too clumsy and materialistic because it depends on a comparison based on the senses. Therefore I shall give you another explanation that is even more transparent and spiritual. I say that in the kingdom of heaven everything is in everything else, and that everything is one, and that everything is ours. Whatever grace our Lady has is completely in me—when I am there—and in no way is it arising and flowing from Mary. Rather, it is something within me as my own, not something coming from outside myself. And so I say that whatever one person has there, another person has too. And the first person has it not as something coming from the other or as something within the other but rather as something within himself or herself. This takes place in such a fashion that the grace within the first person is also completely within the other, exactly as if it were one’s own grace. This is also the way the spirit is within the Spirit. Therefore, I say that I cannot be a child of God unless I have the same essence as a child of God, even though by having the same essence, we become like him and we see how he is God. But it has not yet been revealed what we then become. Therefore, I say that in this misunderstood sense there is here nothing that is ‘like” and nothing that is different Rather, without distinction we shall be the same essence and the same substance and nature that he himself is. But “that is not yet revealed”; for it will be revealed only when “we see how he is God.”

God causes us to know him, and his essence is his knowledge. It is the same thing whether he causes me to know or whether I know. For this reason, his knowledge is mine, just as it is one and the same thing. It is the same in the teacher who is teaching, and in the disciple who is taught. Since his knowledge is mine, and since his substance, knowledge, nature, and essence are mine, it follows that his essence, substance, and nature are mine. And if his substance, essence, and nature are mine, I am a child of God. “See, brothers, what love God has given us so that we are called God’s children, and we are!”

Pay attention now to how we are God’s children. It is because we have the same essence as a child. How, however, are we God’s children, or how do we know that we are, since God is still not like anyone? This last statement is, of course, true. Isaiah says, “To whom could you liken God? What kind of image could you contrive of him?” (Is. 40:10). Since it is God’s nature that he is unlike anyone, we must of necessity reach the point that we are nothing, in that we can be removed into the same essence he himself is. When I come to the point when I no longer project myself into any image and fancy no images in myself, and toss away everything within me, then I can be transported into God’s naked being, and this is the pure essence of the Spirit^b There every comparison must be driven out, so that I can be transported into God and can become one with him and one substance and one essence and one nature and in this way a child of God. And after this has happened, nothing more in God is hidden that will not be revealed or will not be mine. Then I shall be wise and powerful and all things, just as he is, and one and the same with him. Then Sion will be a true seer, a “true Israel,” which means a “God-seeing man.” For nothing in the Godhead is hidden from him. There a person will be guided to God. In order that nothing may remain hidden from me in God that has not been revealed, no likeness and no image may remain open in me, for an image does not open up to us either the Godhead or the essence of God. If any kind of image or likeness were to remain within you, you would never become one with God. Therefore, in order that you may become one with God, no image should be represented in you, either inwardly or outwardly. This means that nothing should be concealed in you that does not become unconcealed and tossed away.

Pay attention as to where our inadequacy lies! It comes from nothingness. Whatever of nothing remains in a person must be extinguished. For so long as anything inadequate is within you, you are not a child of God. The fact that a person complains and is full of sorrow always comes only from what is inadequate. Therefore, in order for a person to become a child of God, all this must be extinguished and driven out, so that there may be neither complaint nor suffering. A person is neither a stone nor a piece of wood, for all these things are what is inadequate and a nothing. We cannot become like “him” unless this nothing is driven out, so that we become everything in everything, just as God is “all in all” (1 Co. 15:28).

There are two kinds of births for a person. One is into the world, and the other is out of the world. This means out of the world and spiritually into God. Do you wish to know whether your child will be born and whether it will be destitute? In other words, whether you will become a child of God? So long as you have sorrow in your heart for anything, even for sin, your child will not be born. Do you have sorrow in your heart? Then you are not yet a “mother”; you are rather still in the act of bearing a child and close to the time of birth. On this account, however, do not rush into doubt if you are sorrowful about yourself or a friend of yours. If the child is still not yet born, it is close to the time of birth. But it is completely born when a person feels no sorrow in his or her heart. For that person has the essence and nature and substance and wisdom and joy and everything that God has. At that time, the same essence of a child of God will be ours and within us, and we shall come into the same essence of God.

Christ says, “Whoever wishes to follow me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me!” (Mk. 8:34; Mt. 16:24). This means that you should drive all anxiety from your heart so that there will be only constant joy in your heart. Thus the child is born. If a child were born in me, and if I were to see my father and all my friends killed before my eyes, my heart would not be moved as a result If my heart were to be moved, the child would not be born in me, even though it might perhaps be near the time of birth. I say that God and the angels have such great joy as a result of every kind of deed of a good person that no joy can match it. Therefore, I say that if it happens that the child is born in you, you will have such great joy as a result of each of those good deeds that take place in this world that your joy will attain the greatest constancy, so that it will never change. Therefore, he says, “. . . and that joy no one shall take from you” (Jn. 16:22). And if I am quite removed into the divine essence, God and all that he has will be mine. Therefore, he says, “I am Yahweh your God” (Ex. 21:2). Then I have true joy, and neither sorrow nor torment can take it from me. For then I am removed into the divine essence in which there is no place for sorrow. Let us see that there is in God neither anger nor affliction but only love and joy. If it seems that he grows angry now and then because of sinners, this is not anger. It is love, for it comes from the great, divine love. He punishes those he loves, of course, for “he is the love” (1 Jn. 4:16) that is the Holy Spirit Thus God’s anger comes from love, for he gives away without bitterness. When you reach the point where you cannot feel sorrow or anxiety over anything, and where sorrow is not sorrow for you, and where all things are a pure kind of peace for you, then a child is really bom. Have concern so that a “child” will not only be in the process of being bom but that it be already bom, just as the Son is constantly bom and will constantly be bom in God.

May God help us so that this will happen to us! Amen.

COMMENTARY:  Four Signs of Our Testing the Authenticity of Our Breakthrough and Rebirth/What Does It Mean to Be a Child of God?/Being in God and Being in the Son/Eckhart’s Mariology and Our Becoming Mothers of God

Eckhart summarizes his teaching on birth in this sermon. Our first experience of birth is our creation. The second is our breakthrough into God. There are two kinds of births for a person: one is into the world, and the other. . . is spiritually into God. The first corresponds to Path One and the second to Path Three in our spiritual journey. In this sermon he examines in greater depth still the implications of this rebirth or second birth into God, which is also, as we have seen, our being born as the Son or Daughter of God. One point he makes about this birth, a point alluded to in the previous commentary, is that this birth is a continuous process. In God the Son is constantly born and will constantly be born. The divine work of birthing is never completed but is eternally young, eternally in process. The same can be said of our breakthrough and birth: it takes place all the time, continually. “This birth does not take place once a year or once a month or once a day but all the time . . .”¹ Every time we undergo such births and rebirths, so does the Son of God. “As often as this birth takes place, the only begotten Son is born.”² This is how Eckhart understands John’s statement that the Word was in the beginning. “It is always ‘in the beginning,’” and so, “if it is always ‘in the beginning/it is always in the process of being born, of being begotten . . . And so it comes about that the Son in the Godhead, the Word ‘in the beginning,’ is always being born, is always already born.”³ God calls forth the Son from us like an echo, and in this act we give birth to the Son.

Out of the purity he eternally begat me as his only begotten Son in the same image of his eternal Fatherhood, that I might become a father and beget him by whom I was begotten. In the same way, if one were to stand at the foot of a high mountain and call out, “Are you there?” the echo would answer, “Are you there?” If one said, “Come out,” the echo would also say, “Come out” . . . 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

Eckhart is addressing two scriptural texts in the present sermon. The first is from John’s First Epistle and reads as follows:

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.

Because the world refused to acknowledge him,

therefore it does not acknowledge us.

My dear people, we are already the children of God

but what we are to be in the future has not yet been revealed;

all we know is, that when it is revealed

we shall be like him

because we shall see him as he really is. (1 Jn. 3:1–2)

This text urges Eckhart to put the questions he does on several occasions in this sermon, namely, When are we children of God? and What does it mean to be a child of God? He repeats John’s words, the fact that we are dealing with a mystery, that as yet we do not know the full implications of this truth. Following the subsequent outline of chapters 3 and 4 of John’s Epistle, he probes, as John does, what signs or signals or conditions might be present to indicate that we are indeed children of God. In this regard, he is following Jesus’ advice, “by their fruits you will know them” (Mt. 7:16). It is important to Eckhart that he offer such criteria for testing the authenticity of our birthing and fruitfulness since, as he points out elsewhere, there are degrees to our being children of God.⁵ In the previous sermon, one sign was given. In this sermon Eckhart offers four more.

The first of these signs is inness. We are in Christ as a wise person is in wisdom, Eckhart declares in a statement of Christological panentheism. We bathe in Christ as the light bathes in the air and the illuminated light becomes illumination itself. We are a child of God by having that same essence that the Son has. “To be in God is to be God,” we saw in his sermon on panentheism; so to be in the Son is to be the Son or Daughter. This means that we shall be the same as he is: the same being and perception and understanding and everything that he is when “we see him as he really is” (1 Jn. 3–2). We are the child inside the Son because one cannot be the child outside of the Son of God’s being and without having the identical being that the Son of God himself possesses. The Son of God permeates our existence as light does the air and as God does to panentheistic creation. There is no escaping such envelopment for the person who is reborn the child of God. We are in Christ, as Paul puts it.⁶ Eckhart elaborates on why it is that when we are in Christ we are one with Christ.

If you want to be blessed, you must be in the Son, not many sons but in one Son. Though you will be different in view of your physical birth, in view of eternal birth you must be one. For in God there is but oneness and that is why there can be only one natural emanation of the Son—not two, but one. Therefore, if you will be one Son in Christ, there may exist only one emanation with the eternal Word.⁷

Through our breakthrough we learn not only that we are in God the Creator and in God the Son but also that we are in God the Spirit. In the same way the spirit is in the Spirit. This inness is shared among others who are in Christ. When one is in, all are in. Thus Eckhart discusses the Mystical Body and the Communion of Saints as examples of shared inness by humans reborn as children of God. Just as the foot is related to the eye, so are all who are in Christ interrelated. In the kingdom of heaven everything is in everything else, all is one and all is ours. The beauty that others have received is not lost on the rest of us; in fact, the grace within the first person is also completely within the other, exactly as if it were one’s own grace.

Still another example of inness is that of the spirit in the Spirit, This inness occurs to the extent that emptiness occurs. What Eckhart calls that other way of knowing—that way of unknowing and of divine ignorance that the via negativa brings with it—that is the emptying process that will transport us into God’s naked essence and this is the pure essence of the Spirit, Having made contact with our nothingness, we are free to let go and let be and thus we are free to quit projecting any images at all. When that freedom is touched, God enters and we enter God and become one with him.

When I come to the point when I no longer project myself into any image and fancy no images in myself, and toss away everything within me, then I can be transported into God’s naked being.

Then we truly become God’s children and like the panentheistic God. We can say with Meister Eckhart, we are all in all, as God is all in all. The in-Christ becomes an in-God and an in-Spirit, which in turn is an in-others, as in the Communion of Saints and the Mystical Body. We are all in all, as God is all in all.

The second text Eckhart is exegeting in this sermon is that from the Gospel of John. It reads as follows:

“In a short time you will no longer see me,

and then a short time later you will see me again . . .

I tell you most solemnly,

you will be weeping and wailing while the world will rejoice;

you will be sorrowful,

but your sorrow will turn to joy.

A woman in childbirth suffers,

because her time has come;

but when she has given birth to the child she forgets the suffering

in her joy that a person has been born into the world.

So it is with you: you are sad now,

but I shall see you again, and your hearts will be full of joy,

and that joy no one shall take from you.” (Jn. 16:16, 20–22)

Using this text, Eckhart presents two more signs of our giving birth. The first of these is joy, constant joy. When one is in God there is a joy that no one can take from you. Realized eschatology is experienced and not only theorized about. Eternal life begins and with it a divine joy. It is in this life that a person is born as a child of God and to eternal life. Eckhart is so taken with this promise of eternal life before death that he dismisses speculation about life after death. What we shall be hereafter is not yet revealed, he rightly points out. So why waste one’s energy getting to heaven when heaven has already arrived? It will be revealed only when “we see how he is God.” The theme of joy as a fruit and sign of the spirit is a favorite one with Eckhart. The ecstasy of joy is near to death itself. “Just as one can die of anxiety before the blow, that is, before a murder is carried out, in the same way one can die of joy or of Its anticipation. And so the soul dies within itself in joyful expectation of eternal bliss before it passes over to God.”⁸ When we are in God we share divine joy. “Now notice what a wonderful and happy life this person has on earth, as in heaven, in God himself! Discomfort serves as comfort to him, grief is the same as joy . . .”⁹ In the joy that the breakthrough brings, a joy of realized eschatology, “the birth of the fire and the joy are beyond time and beyond distance. Pleasure and joy do not seem long or faraway to anyone.”¹⁰ For, “to rejoice always,” as Saint Paul admonishes us, is to find joy “beyond time and outside of time.”¹¹ It is to find our joy in the experience of realized eschatology, for in this experience there arrives a new sense of time. “This is the fullness of time, when the Son of God is begotten in you,” Eckhart teaches.¹² “When the time was fulfilled, grace was born.”¹³ The end time, the Messianic time and the full time of realized eschatology, is as near as our rebirth in God or our breakthrough. At such a time, we undergo a new sense of time. “There it is God’s day, in which the soul dwells in the day of eternity in an essential now, and there the Father begets his only begotten Son in a present now, and the soul is born again in God.”¹⁴ We have “immediate knowledge of the eternal life” in this life, Eckhart insists.¹⁵ In this life a person “recovers the eternal being that he was, now is, and will eternally remain.”¹⁶ Schürmann comments on Eckhart’s sense of realized eschatology:

Eternal life means that man may live again, here and now, out of his ground, and that releasement may accomplish itself, so that God, man, and the world play their identity. In the beatitude promised for today, this interplay swallows up every difference or otherness. This blessed identity is already in me, not in germ, but in totality, exactly in the same way as God is in me: not according to his effigy, but in totality.¹⁷

Schürmann points out that this emphasis on eternal life now is what distinguishes Eckhart from so many other spiritual theologians before him and in his day. “In the present, and not only in eternal life, you possess the totality of the forms in the ground of your mind—not virtually but actually.”¹⁸ Lossky points out that it is this issue of realized eschatology more than any other that “puny” theological minds miss when trying to understand Eckhart.¹⁹ Within the experience of realized eschatology and its new sense of time and of full joy, it is possible, Eckhart is saying, to drive all anxiety from your heart, so that in your heart there will be only constant joy. The joy that results fulfills Christ’s promise that no one will take it from you, for it is an even joy that remains steadily in tribulation or in triumph. You will have such greaf joy as a result of each of those good deeds that take place in this world that your joy will attain the greatest constancy so that it will never change. This kind of joy, neither sorrow nor torment can ravish. For it is a joy in God, and therefore a divine joy. In God only joy reigns, there is neither anger nor affliction but only love and joy. In such a situation, all things are a pure kind of peace for you. Eckhart’s thoughts on this kind of joy and on the sorrow of everyday living are triggered by the Gospel image of the woman who suffers in giving birth but who forgets the pain at the ecstasy of the newborn child. Citing this same passage elsewhere, he comments that this is the way in which “God says and exhorts us in the Gospel that we should ask our heavenly Father that our joy may be perfect.”²⁰

A third test of our being the children of God is our bearing the child of God. We must become mothers—mothers of God. We must be wifely and fruitful if we are true children of God. This same Gospel passage cited above on the mother who bears a child has no doubt triggered the theme of our motherhood in Eckhart’s mind. This in turn suggests to him Mary, the mother of Jesus. Eckhart’s Mariology is significant for how it avoids all sentimentalisms, all pedestal pieties, and all temptations to Mariolatry. He discusses her in the present sermon in the context of the Mystical Body and the Communion of Saints and of the joy that is ours and hers. Whatever grace our Lady has is completely in me. For Eckhart, Mary is the human being who has shown all of US how to be mothers of God. She knew how to let go and let be.

When the angel appeared to our Lady, all that she and he said to each other would never have made her the Mother of God. But as soon as she gave up her will, she became at once the true Mother of the Eternal Word and conceived God immediately. He became her Son by nature.²¹

We are to follow Mary’s example. “As divinity completely gave itself reason in our Lady, she received—because she was pure and simple—God in himself. Then God broke the dam of his divinity and flowed over into the womb of our Lady. Now if she had not borne God in her reason, she would never have received Christ in her womb.”²² Mary gave birth in the fullness of time and we are told to do the same.

Our Lady said: “How can it be that I should become the Mother of God?” Then the angel said: “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee from above.” David said: “This day have I begotten thee.” What is today? Eternity . . .²³

Today is eternity. Now is the hour and this is the place for birthing the Son as Mary once did. For Eckhart asks:

What help is it to me that Mary is full of grace, if I am not also full of grace? And what help is it to me that the Father gives birth to his Son unless I too give birth to him? It is for this reason that God gives birth to his Son in a perfect soul and lies in the maternity bed so that he can give birth to him again in all his works.²⁴

Eckhart even suggests that what drove God to becoming a child in Mary’s womb was the “overflow” of the spiritual birth that she underwent. In other words, her breakthrough brought about God’s breakthrough into human history.

The teachers say that God was born spiritually in our Lady before he was born bodily in her. And from the overflow of the spiritual birth when the heavenly Father produced his only born Son in her soul, the eternal Word received human nature in her, and she became pregnant in a bodily way.²⁵

By our imitation of Mary, we ourselves become mothers of God, birthers of the child God in human history. When we are so fruitful, it is a sign of our being children of God ourselves. If you have sorrow in your heart, you are not yet a “mother”; you are rather still in the act of bearing a child and close to the time of birth. The child is born when divine joy is born in you. And this takes determination on our part. Have concern so that a “child” will not only be in the process of being born but that it be already born. For as “the Scriptures say, ‘the greatest of gifts is that we should be God’s children and that he should beget his Son in us.’”²⁶