Sermon Twenty-four: WE ARE OTHER CHRISTS

“Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you.” (Lk. 11:27)^a

We read in today’s Gospel that a “woman,” a “lady,” said to our Lord: “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that nursed you.” “What you say is correct: Blessed is the womb that bore me and the breasts that nursed me. But: ‘Rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it’” (Lk. 11:27–28).

Consider this phrase carefully. Christ said: “Rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it.” If I had said that a person is more blessed who hears the word of God and keeps it, more blessed than Mary inasmuch as she is the Mother of God—I repeat, if I had said it—people would be perplexed. But Christ himself said it, and we have to accept it as being true, because Christ is the truth.

Consider what is being heard by the one who listens, the one who “hears the word of God.” Such a person hears Christ as begotten of the Father, equal to the Father in spite of the hypo-static union. True God and true man, one Christ: that is the word which is heard by him who listens perfectly to the word of God and keeps it in its entirety.

Saint Gregory writes about four qualities which should distinguish a person who “hears the word of God and keeps it.” The first is control over all fleshly desires, rejection of all worldly things, and death to all that is transitory in one’s person. The second quality is this: that one gives oneself completely to the knowledge and love of God and aspires with intimacy to God. The third quality is that the person does not do to anyone what he himself would not want others to do to him. The fourth is that one gives freely of one’s material and spiritual gifts. Some persons seem to give freely but in reality they give nothing. Such persons are those who give in order to receive something in return, for example, favors or honors. Such a gift does not deserve to be called a gift—it should be called a demand, because nothing is really given. Our Lord remained poor and free while he gave generously to others. In all that he gave he did not have his own advantage in mind but only the praise and honor of his Father and our blessedness. In true love he gave himself up to death. If, therefore, a person intends to give for the love of God, he must give without concern for his own gaining of some service or honor or praise; he must give out of concern for his brother. The same holds true in regard to spiritual gifts. They must be given because someone wants to receive them, because someone desires to improve the quality of his or her life for the sake of God. Such a giver should neither desire praise from the receiver nor any advantage from God. God’s praise should be his sole desire. Their gift should leave them as free as Christ, who remained free and detached in everything that he has bestowed on us. A person who gives in such a manner truly gives. And anyone who gives in a manner that corresponds to the above-mentioned four principles of giving, such a person may be sure that he or she hears the word of God and keeps it.

All Christians honor and praise our Lady for having given birth to Christ, and that is fitting. Christians intercede to our Lady for special graces; she grants them, and that is fitting too. Though it is appropriate that Christians bestow high honors on Mary, they should bestow even greater honors on the one who hears the word of God and keeps it, for such a person is more blessed than our Lady, in view of her single privilege of being the Mother of God, as our Lord himself told us. Such great honor, and immeasurably more, is destined for the person who hears the word of God and keeps it. I intended this introduction for you so that you might become attentive.

I selected three passages from today’s Gospel. The first is this: “Rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it” (Lk. 11:28). The second: “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless the grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it brings forth much fruit” (Jn. 12:24). The third is that which was spoken by Christ: “Amen, I say to you, among those born of women there had not risen a greater than John the Baptist” (Mt. 11:11).

Now I shall consider the first scriptural quotation. Christ said: “Rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it” Consider carefully! Our heavenly Father himself hears nothing but the Word, knows nothing but the same Word, speaks nothing but the Word, and he begets nothing but the Word. In this Word the heavenly Father hears himself, begets himself, knows himself in his essence and all that he is, and knows the Word as of the same nature in a distinct person. Reflect carefully on the manner of his speaking. The Father expresses knowingly the fruit-fulness of his own nature in the eternal Word. This is not an act of his will, for it does not proceed from the will as do power and appetite which one can follow or ignore. The relationship between Father and eternal Word is not this kind of relationship. The Father must generate the Son as Word—he cannot but express himself in the Word—and generate it unceasingly, because the Word is with the Father by nature as a root He is in the nature of the Father as the Father himself is in that root That is why the Father speaks the Word without special intent. He speaks it naturally, but not as if proceeding from his nature. In this Word the Father speaks my spirit, your spirit, and the spirit of every person who resembles the Word. And in this utterance you and I are true sons of God, as the Word himself is Son of the Father. I have already mentioned the reason for this: The Father knows nothing but this same Word and himself and the entire nature of God and all things in the same Word. Everything that he recognizes in that Word is like the Word and is in truth and nature that same Word. When God the Father reveals himself to you and makes himself known to you he bestows upon you his own life and being and his Godhead in truth and entirety. A physical father transmits his nature but not his own existence or being because the child has his own existence—he is a being apart from the father. This can be explained as follows: The death of the father does not cause death in the child, nor does the child’s death cause his father to die. If, however, they shared one life, one existence, it could not be otherwise: Both would have either to live or to die, because their being could not be divided. That is why we can say that they are “strangers,” that they are separated as to their life and existence. If I were to take some fire from a flame, I would divide the flame, and though both parts would have the qualities of fire, one part would no longer influence the other. One could become extinct, the other could continue to burn. Thus fire is not eternal, nor does it have the quality of oneness in its nature. But, as I have mentioned before, our heavenly Father bestows on us his eternal Word, and in this Word he gives to us his own life, his own existence, his own divinity. Although Father and Son are two persons, they have but one life, one being. They are undivided. When God the Father assimilates you into that same light, so that you may recognize the light in his light, which is of one kind, he wants you to recognize him as he recognizes himself in the Word, in that light, in knowledge and truth. As I have said before, the Father knows of no separation between you and him and no preference as to Father and Word, because the Father and you and everything that is and the Word are one in the same light.

Now let us consider the second theme, the words of our Lord: “Amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit, fruit a hundredfold.” A “hundredfold” means immeasurably much fruit. But what is meant by the grain of wheat that falls into the ground? And what is meant by the soil into which it is supposed to fall? As I prefer to interpret it, the grain of wheat is the spirit, which is often called the human soul. And the soil into which it is to fall is the human nature of Jesus Christ, because there is no nobler soil which has ever been created or prepared for any type of fruitfulness. This soil was prepared by the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit themselves. But what was the fruit of this precious soil of the human nature of Jesus Christ? That was Christ’s soul from that moment on, when through the will of God and the power of the Holy Spirit the noble nature and body became flesh in the womb of Mary and Christ’s soul was created and united in a single moment to the eternal Word. This union came about so instantaneously and so truly that at the point of time when body and soul merged, Christ was its result. And in that same moment, he understood himself as true God and true man, as one Christ who is God.

Please consider the manner of his fruitfulness. His noble soul I shall call the grain of wheat which, like him, had to suffer, bear sorrow and death while buried in his human nature. For Christ himself was ordained to suffer and that prompted him to exclaim: “My soul is sorrowful unto death” (Mt. 26:38; Mk. 14:34). Christ, however, remained always united to the Highest Good, as a person of the Trinity. He never lost sight of his power; he enjoyed the same nearness and union with the Father and the Holy Spirit even during the height of his sufferings. No sorrow or pain or death could affect this union. Indeed, even when Christ’s physical body died a painful death on the cross, his noble spirit lived in the contemplation of the Highest Good. In view of this sphere, however, in which his noble spirit was related to the senses and united with his holy body, inasmuch as our Lord called his created spirit a soul, insofar as it was the life principle of the body, and inasmuch as it was united to the senses and the mind, according to this manner and to that degree his soul was “sad unto death” for his body to die.

I claim that the grain of wheat, his noble soul, can be said to have died in two ways. As I distinguished above, his noble soul always contemplated the Highest Good inasmuch as it was united to the eternal Word. From that moment on, when the hypostatic union took place, Christ’s soul, though the life principle of the body, had nothing to do with the death that had to be endured by his body. His soul’s life was with the body, yet above it, united to God with an immediacy that knew no obstacle. In such manner, the soul of Christ died in the soil, to his body, and freed itself from it while remaining attached to it.

The other kind of death in the soil, in the body, as I have mentioned before, was when the soul gave life to the body and became united to the senses. At that moment, it shared with the body all toil, pain, and sorrow and “sadness unto death,” and in this manner of speaking, while united to the body, the soul experienced no rest, peace, satisfaction, or immortality, as long as its body was mortal. And this is the other manner of dying: that the grain of wheat, the noble soul, Christ, dies in view of peace and quietness.

Now consider the fruit of the grain of wheat that is hundredfold, immeasurable. The first fruit is this: the giving of honor and praise to the Father and God’s nature. Christ never divorced his highest power for even a moment of time or point in space from the contemplation of the Highest Good, no matter what occupied his mind or exhausted his body. He was always intent on giving praise to the Father. This is the one manner of fruitfulness of the grain of wheat from the soil of his noble human nature. The other manner is this: praise through the terrible suffering in his nature as human being. All that he suffered in this life through hunger, thirst, cold, heat, storm, rain, hail, snow, and all kinds of evil and his bitter death, which he offered to the heavenly Father to do him honor, this by itself gives praise to Christ himself and raises the human nature to blessedness.

You have heard now how the soul of our Lord Jesus Christ became fruitful in his own sacred humanity. Now let us consider a moment how we human beings can become fruitful. The person who immerses the grain of wheat, his soul, into the soil of Jesus Christ and lets itself be consumed by it becomes fruitful. This kind of dying is also twofold: one is corporal, the other spiritual. The physical death can be understood as follows: Whatever a person suffers, be it hunger, thirst, cold, heat, rejection, undeserved pain—in whatever form God ordains it—he should accept it freely and joyfully without hope for reward in this or the next world. Such persons should consider their sufferings small, as a drop of water in the ocean, when compared to the sufferings of Christ. Thus the grain of wheat, your soul, becomes fruitful in the noble soil of Jesus Christ and in total surrender it will die completely to itself. This is the first aspect of fruitfulness of the grain of wheat that has fallen into the soil of Jesus Christ.

Now consider the second kind of fruitfulness of the spirit of the grain of wheat It consists in the following: All spiritual hunger and bitterness which God permits must be borne patiently. And even if a person does all in his or her power inwardly and outwardly, they must not seek any reward. Even if God should ordain one’s condemnation so that one’s existence would not be violated, even then the person should let God take over as if it did not matter, as if one did not exist God must be allowed to have such power over all that you are, as if it were his own uncreated nature. And another aspect is important. It consists in the following: If God removes all poverty from your life, if he bestows upon you all his grace and the gift of himself to the degree that your soul is capable of embracing it, you must not cling to it and must take no credit for it. Possess the gifts freely, give God the honor, and be conscious that you were created out of nothing. This is the second type of fruitfulness which the grain of wheat, your soul, has received from the soil that is Jesus Christ: a soul that remains totally free in the enjoyment of the Highest Good. The soul must be able to identify with Christ’s admonition to the Pharisees: “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me . . . who sent me” (Jn. 8:54).

The third part of my sermon deals with the Scripture passage: “Amen, I say to you, among those born of women there has not risen a greater than John the Baptist, yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he” (Mt 11:11). Think how wonderful and strange Christ’s words are! He praises the greatness of John the Baptist, calls him the greatest born of women, but adds: “If a person were humbler than John, he would be the greatest in heaven.” How are we to understand this? That I wish to show you.

Our Lord does not contradict himself when he claims that John the Baptist is the greatest. What he truly meant is that he was lowly and that he possessed true humility, and that that is his greatness. Christ says of himself: “Leam of me, for I am meek and humble of heart” (Mt. 11:29). All that we possess as virtues exist in God as pure essence. That is why Christ said: “Learn of me, for I am meek and humble of heart.” However humble John the Baptist might have been, his virtue had limits and he, too, could not go beyond those limits. Our Lord said: “If someone would be lower than John the Baptist, such a one would be the greater in the kingdom of heaven.” In other words, Christ was saying, if there is someone who transcends the humility of John the Baptist, even by an iota, the smallest measure, his humility would surpass that of John the Baptist and such a one would be the greater in the kingdom of heaven for all eternity.

Listen attentively! Neither John the Baptist nor anyone else has been placed before us as a limited goal which we are to follow. Christ, our Lord, he is the goal to which we must aspire. He is the model according to which we are to be fashioned, with whom we are to be united, equal in nature, as is fitting to such a union. No saint in heaven is so perfect, so holy, so that one could say his life on earth was without limit. No, a saint’s virtues are measurable and he is ranked in the next life according to their degree. His perfection in heaven is determined by that measure. Indeed, if there were a man who would surpass the perfection of the greatest saint in heaven, whose virtues were greater, if such a person existed, he or she would be holier and more blessed still than any saint in heaven. I claim this and it is true, as true as the fact that God exists. No saint in heaven is so holy, so perfect that he or she could not be holier or more perfect than she is or you are. Therefore, I say: If someone were humbler and lower than John the Baptist, such a person would be eternally greater in heaven. That is true humility—when a person embraces complete abandonment while remaining in grace. Such a person faces serenely all that he or she is able or unable to do, and this is true humility. A second kind of humility is that of the spirit, when God is credited with every good and the self with nothing, as if the person did not exist.

May God assist us to become so humble. Amen.

COMMENTARY:  What It Means to Hear the Word of God and Keep It/Who Is Jesus Christ?—Eckhart’s Christology/Christ as the Word of God/Christ as the Model for Our Being Human and Divine/How Christ Was Fruitful and We Are Fruitful

Eckhart takes the occasion of the words In Luke’s Gospel, “Rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it” (Lk. 1157–28), to instruct persons not to exaggerate their devotion to Mary. This was an especially apropos criticism in his day, since the medieval Marian piety was known to get out of hand among devout but uncritical believers. He begins this sermon with a bit of humor—but humor with a message. Don’t listen to me say this; listen to Jesus’ words, he warns.

If / had said that a person is more blessed who hears the word of God and keeps it, more blessed than Mary inasmuch as she is the Mother of God—I repeat, if / had said it—people would be perplexed. But Christ himself said it, and we have to accept it as being true, because Christ is the truth.

No doubt Eckhart is alluding to a rather well-known phenomenon among his hearers—namely, that he had the capacity to perplex his audience from time to time. But he is suggesting that Jesus’ power for paradox and perplexing others far exceeds his own—and his is the truth. Eckhart simply takes the Gospel passage at face value when he declares that honor and praise for Mary is fitting and bestowing honors on her is appropriate.

But what is the word that we are to listen to and to keep? It is Christ. One hears Christ . . . true God and true man, one Christ: that is the word which is heard by him who listens perfectly to the word of God and keeps it in its entirety. The Christ we hear is the historical Christ of the Gospels, born of Mary, but also the Christ begotten in us. It is also ourselves who have been reborn as the sons of God. In other words, ourselves as other Christs. We too are the Word of God that must be listened to. In this Word the Father speaks my spirit, your spirit, and the spirit of every person who resembles the Word. And in this utterance you and I are true sons of God as the Word himself is Son of the Father. So thoroughly are we, by our breakthrough which is a new birth, made sons of God and divinized ourselves that it can be said that God the Father actually bestows upon us his own life and being and his Godhead in truth and entirety. We need to listen to our deepest selves to listen to the Word of God. We need to sink into this union that exists between us as sons of God and God as Father. In this listening process we learn the wonderful and good news that God has truly given us his own life, his own existence, his own divinity. We encounter divinity—our own—and how it is that God has shared it with us. So thorough is this filial relationship, this “Abba” or “Papa” relationship with God, that on God’s side it cannot be lost. The Father knows of no separation between us and him. Only we can re-create a dualism, a distinction or a separation between us and God, us and our divinity. From God’s point of view the union is total and lasts forever. For just as Christ has prayed in John 17 that people who follow him be “one as the Father and I and one,” so, concludes Eckhart, this must be the case. We, the newly born sons of God, are one as Christ and God are one. The Father and we and everything that is and the Word are one in the same light. The panentheistic truth of our existence is illuminated.

But how do we develop this oneness? How do we nurture it? One way is by learning from the “firstborn of all creation” who was the first to undergo the profound breakthrough between God and humanity, namely, Jesus Christ. “He is the firstborn of all creation: ‘the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature’” (Col. 1:15).¹ Since he is the firstborn, he has led the way for us as model of what it means to be a son of God. And so one important dimension to Eckhart’s Christology is Jesus as model for our divinity. Since we, like Mary, are to give birth to this Son of God, it behooves us to examine more closely what it is and who it is we are birthing. It is Christ who is our goal to which we must aspire. He is our model according to which we are to be fashioned, with whom we are to be united, equal in nature as fitting to such a union. For Christ is not only the image of God but also the image of humanity. “The nature assumed by God is common to all people without distinction of more or less. Therefore, it is given to every person to become the son of God, substantially indeed in Christ, but in himself or herselt by adoption through grace.”² Jesus has perfectly overcome the dualism between humanity and God. “Humanity and divinity are one personal being in the person of Christ,” Eckhart says.³

Looking at Christ as model means that we forsake temptations to Christological narcissism or emoting or swooning over Christ and that we get down to the serious task of “doing his works”⁴ and “behaving exactly like Jesus.”⁵ Eckhart resists absolutely all sentimentalizing of Jesus. His following of Christ is a following in the actions of Christ. “We must also be the same Christ, imitating him in his actions.” For our “humanity and Christ’s humanity are in one substance of the eternal being.”⁶ Some people, Eckhart observes, follow Christ “as a falcon follows a woman carrying tripe or sausages, as wolves follow a carcass or a fly a pot. It is against these that Christ says here, ‘Follow me’ . . . ‘Follow’ is a command to act.”⁷ Our following of Christ is a following of Christ’s works so that divinity may become transparent through us.

A person ought to have transformed himself or herself inwardly into our Lord Jesus Christ in all things, so that in that person one may find a reflection of all his works and divine appearance. And one should bear in himself or herself a perfect imitation, so far as one can, of all his works. You should work and he should receive it. Do your works with complete devotion and good intentions and may you mold yourself in all your works on his pattern.⁸

Christ is our model for our life and our work. “You often ask how you should live. Listen carefully to what I am going to say, and learn from it. What has been said of the image’s way of being—exactly that should be your way of life.”⁹ Earlier in this particular sermon he identified the work of an image as “not of itself and not for itself.” That is how Jesus lived and we are to live—as transparent images of the divine Godhead.

What are some of the works that Christ did and that we are to follow and to imitate? One fact of Jesus’ life is that he gave generously to others—he knew what true gift-giving was about. In all that he gave, he did not have his own advantage in mind. And so Eckhart draws this conclusion from the model of Jesus as gift-giver: If, therefore, a person intends to give for the love of God, he must give without concern for his own gaining of some service or honor or praise; he must give out of concern for his brother. It is love for others, concern for one’s brother, that makes all gift-giving fruitful and that truly improves the quality of one’s life.

Another dimension to Jesus’ example and his being a model for us is that he, of all people, knew how to let go and let be. He knew, for example, how to let go of life and to face death. It was not easy for him, there was much anguish involved, but he knew how to let the seed die. The soul of Christ died in the soil, to his body, and freed itself from it while remaining attached to it. In emphasizing this parable of the grain of wheat dying, Eckhart had the following scriptural passage in front of him.-

“Now the hour has come

for the Son of Man to be glorified.

I tell you, most solemnly,

unless a wheat grain falls on the ground and dies,

it remains only a single grain;

but if it dies,

it yields a rich harvest.

Anyone who loves his life loses it;

anyone who hates his life in this world

will keep it for the eternal life.

If a person serves me, he must follow me,

wherever I am, my servant will be there too.

If anyone serves me, my Father will honor him.

Now my soul is troubled.

What shall I say:

Father, save me from this hour?

But it was for this very reason that I have come to this hour.

Father, glorify your name!” (Jn. 12:53–28)

Eckhart parallels this sadness at the letting go of life that Jesus underwent with the Garden of Gethsemane scene as described by Matthew;

Sadness came over him, and great distress. Then he said to them, “My soul is sorrowful to the point of death. Wait here and keep awake with me.” And going on a little farther he fell on his face and prayed. “My Father,” he said, “if it is possible, let this cup pass me by. Nevertheless, let it be as you, not I, would have it.” (Mt. 26:37–39)

Because Jesus was adept at letting go, he knew what true freedom was. He “is free and unencumbered.”¹⁰ He knew external poverty, for “he himself was poor on earth”¹¹ and this poverty became a poverty of consciousness, a way of seeing the world, a process of letting go. This is why he remained poor and free while he gave generously to others. Jesus, then, is the model of what true letting go is all about. For Jesus is the “virginal” one (see Sermon Nineteen) who knows how to let go and to let be. As Schürmann puts it:

Jesus, “free and void and virginal in himself,” who without any attachment has accomplished his work of salvation, is the ideal and the reality of a being who has retrieved his original liberty, who is eminently detached [that is, capable of letting go].

Jesus, both the model and the goal of this union, defines the condition for us to become one with the Word: freed from all possession of images and works, following him on the way of detachment, we shall be “virgin” in order to receive the virginal Jesus. Exempt from all bonds of property to his own work, Christ has redeemed us.¹²

So full of letting go is Jesus that he was able to let go of life. So free of letting go was the divine Word that it could become human. We, in turn, are to be so full of letting go that we might let go of our humanness to become divine. We even have to let go of Jesus—he had to die and ascend—in order for the Spirit to be sent. Eckhart warns that “the physical presence of Christ” can be an “obstacle to us in the reception of the Holy Spirit.”¹³ Jesus had warned his friends that if he did not leave them the Spirit would not come (Jn. 16:7). So too, our letting go must even touch our letting go of Christ in order to let the new Son of God be born in us. From this ever more radical meaning of letting go, it is clear that Eckhart’s psychology of spirituality is a psychology that pits itself against all—absolutely all—compulsions, including—indeed especially—religious ones.

Of all Jesus’ actions that we are to emulate and which flow most directly from his and our divinity, compassion is the fullest. And compassion, as we shall see in Path Four, means justice for Eckhart. Indeed, Jesus is the “Son of justice”¹⁴ and he is the incarnation of the divine Compassion who actually became human because he “needed a back” on which burdens could be laid and suffering endured. Divinity, in a sense, needed to learn compassion from human suffering (see Sermon Thirty). Indeed, Christ is “unbegotten justice itself,” the “offspring and Son of Justice,” who is related to the Father as a just person is related to justice itself.¹⁵ We are to emulate this Son of justice who is Compassion incarnate.

Another dimension to Christ as model is that he has given us an example of how to be both human and divine. “Humanity and divinity are one personal being in the person of Christ.”¹⁶ He is “Blessedness” itself with a “mouth of wisdom” who instructs us and goes before us in walking the way of wisdom.¹⁷ He is also a “martyr” who knows the price that prophets pay. And he is a prophet, for he is the “Great Reminder” who calls us back to the law of Yahweh, a law of justice and compassion, and who calls us back to our divine origins and to the living out of the image of God that we truly are.¹⁸ We are to go and do likewise—to become the reminders that all prophets must necessarily be. Christ is an “all-powerful Word” who has leaped from a “royal throne” (Ws. 18:18). The implications of Jesus’ being a royal Word will be developed in Sermon Thirty-six. In a special way, Christ is a noble soul who has taken on our noble human nature and thereby praises and blesses our nature that we share with him, raising it to blessedness.

The culmination of Christ’s freedom is his glory, and that is also the culmination of our own letting go and letting be. We are to possess the gifts freely—even the fullest of them, even God himself.

If God removed all poverty from your life, if he bestowed upon you all his grace and the gift of himself to the degree that your soul is able to embrace, you must not cling to it, take no credit for it, possess the gifts freely, give God the honor and be conscious that you were created out of nothing.

Possession is not bad, but our attitude toward what we possess is, even if what we possess is God himself. All authentic possession must be free—possess the gifts freely. Only then are we imitating Christ. From this freedom born of letting go we learn what true humility is. It is facing serenely all that one is able or unable to do. Humility is not saying we cannot do or “I can’t”—that, in fact, is psychologist Karen Horney’s very definition of masochism. And there has been a lot of “I can’t-ism” in the name of Christian humility since Eckhart’s time. For Eckhart, humility is knowing what you can do as much as what you cannot do, and being equally serene before the truth of both aspects of self-knowledge. There is no masochism in Eckhart’s spiritual psychology. He is too birth-oriented and action-oriented for that. Indeed, Eckhart discusses humility in this sermon in the context of the greatness that all people are capable of. He has a sense of the unlimits of human greatness so that no saint in heaven is so perfect, so holy, so that one could say his life on earth was without limit Eckhart resists pedestal pieties and the corruption of hagiography that would project our vocations to greatness onto the saints. If there were a person who would surpass the perfection of the greatest saint in heaven, . . . he or she would be holier and more blessed still than any saint in heaven. This theme he develops in response to the biblical text in Matthew’s Gospel that says that as great as John the Baptist is, “yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he” (Mt. 11:11). Eckhart senses that this passage, like that which refers to Mary and is the starting text for this sermon, suggests the unlimited greatness of those who can both listen to the word of God and keep it. Mary’s calling as Mother of God and John the Baptist’s as precursor of Christ both pale in comparison to the ultimate task of hearing the word of God and keeping it. (Taken from this perspective, both Mary and John are great themselves for having done exactly that, namely, hearing and keeping God’s word.) What is at stake in the passage on John the Baptist is Eckhart’s recognition that a new and magnanimous era has begun, with the kingdom of heaven being born so intimately in our midst, thanks to the birth of the Son of God in history and in us. Realized eschatology is now everywhere, and so is the fullness of human greatness and grace, for those who know.

Eckhart says that the word we hear is Christ. Christ is the word. What is behind Eckhart’s theology of the Word of God? We have seen in Path One that a word is something that flows out but stays within. Thus Christ flows out of the Godhead but also remains within. A word is also an un-veiler, a revealer. And Christ also reveals and reminds us of the nearness that humanity shares with God. In this sermon Eckhart emphasizes how the Word is the one preoccupation of God. The Word is God’s self-expression, a kind of spontaneous word that is not an act of his will but which he cannot but express and generate unceasingly. The Word is a roof and the Father is in the same root The Word is generated from the root of the Godhead.

This same word is a seed generated in us who give birth to the Word of God. In us “God has showed his image and his likeness, and . . . he sows the good seed, the root of all wisdom, all knowledge, all virtue, and all goodness, the seed of divine nature. The seed of divine nature is the Son of God, the Word of God.”¹⁹ It is because this seed has been sown in us that we are bearers of the Son of God. One reason that the Father is so preoccupied with this one Word who is Christ is that God, like the perfect poet, is capable of saying it all in one word. “The ‘Father’ spoke a ‘Word’ that was his ‘Son.’ In this single ‘Word’ he expressed everything. Why did he say only one Word? Because all things are present to him.”²⁰ Christ is the “innermost” Word of God.²¹ “God speaks once (Jb. 33). He speaks in engendering his Son, for the Son is the Word. He also speaks in creating the creatures.”²²

If Christ is so intimate and singular a Word of God, then we, who are other Christs and bearers ourselves of the Son of God, need to be transformed into this God-like image. He cites Paul: “But we all, with unveiled face reflecting as a creature the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory” (2 Co. 3:18).²³ In this way, we are able to listen to the Word of God and to hear how the Spirit is talking to us. In this Word the Father speaks my spirit, your spirit, and the spirit of every person who resembles the Word. And in this utterance you and I are true sons of God, as the Word himself is Son of the Father. When we are “transformed into the image of God . . . to that extent the Son is born in us and we in the Son and we become one with the Son. Then we take on divinity and God’s existence as the Son does: There exists but one Son, one existence, and that is God’s existence.”²⁴ This transformation is a kind of resurrection from the dead, for Jesus is “the living Word, in whom all things live, and who upholds all things” and he raised people from the dead, as the son of the widow of Nairn, simply by speaking to them. “Whenever the Word speaks into the soul and the soul answers in the living Word, the Son begins to live in the soul.”²⁵ Thus for Eckhart the resurrection is very much this-worldly. It involves our learning to listen and keep the Word of God now. For Jesus is “eternal life itself.”²⁶ The birth of God in us is an expression of the resurrection or the rebirth of Christ from the tomb. It is the vine that has grown from the seed that died.

Eckhart invents a word to describe how our being the Word of God is different from Christ’s being the Word of God. He says that we are God’s byword or adverb (Beiwort). We become an adverb for the Word itself.²⁷ The word spoken from God’s spirit to my spirit is truly a fruitful word and a word of awakening and resurrection. It is a word that is barely a whisper, but it can be heard by those who listen and keep it. The divine whisper says to us: You are divine. I know no separation between myself and you. Possess this gift freely. I give you my Word to remind you of this and to model yourself after. Spread the word.