Sermon Twenty-six: THE HOLY SPIRIT, LIKE A RAPID RIVER, DIVINIZES US

“There is a river whose streams refresh the city of God, and it sanctifies the dwelling of the Most High.” (Ps. 46:4) ^a

“The rapid or quick-flowing river has caused the city of God to rejoice” (Ps. 46:4). We should pay attention to three things in connection with these words. First, the “rapid river” of God; next, the city to which it flows; third, the advantage that comes from this.

Saint John says that from all of those who have a faith enlivened by divine love and who prove it by their good works “living waters will flow” (cf. Jn. 7:38). In this way, he wishes to point to the Holy Spirit. The prophet, however, does not know because of his astonishment what he should call the Holy Spirit because of the Spirit’s quick and wonderful deeds. Therefore he calls him an “intoxication” because of his quick emanation, for the Spirit flows just as completely into the soul as the soul empties itself in humility and expands itself to receive him. I am certain of this: if my soul were as ready and if God should find as much space in it as in the soul of our Lord Jesus Christ, he would just as completely fill it with this “river.” For the Holy Spirit cannot keep from flowing into every place where he finds space and he flows just as extensively as the space he finds there.

Next, we must pay attention to what this “city” is. In a spiritual meaning, it is the soul. A “city” means a civium unitas (“a unity of the citizens”). This means a city that is secure on the outside and united within as the “unity of its citizens.” So also should the soul be into which God is to flow. On the outside the soul is preserved from encumbrances and on the inside it is united in all its powers. If I look a person in the eye, I see my image in it. And yet my image is rather in the air than in the eye. It would never be able to come to the eye unless it were previously in the air. Yet we do not see it in the air. Because the air is thin or diaphanous and not solid, no image can appear in it as we can perceive from the rainbow. If the air is solid, then the sun’s image appears in manifold colors in the rainbow. If I look into a mirror, my countenance has its reflection there. This would not happen if a layer of lead had not been placed on the glass. So also must the soul be brought together and solidified to the noblest power found within it if the soul is to receive the divine “river” that fills it and causes it to rejoice. Saint John writes that the Apostles were gathered together and enclosed when they received the Holy Spirit.

On occasion I have already said that a beginner—one who is to begin a good life—should pay attention to the following comparison. Whoever wishes to draw a circle is like one who first sets down a foot Then he or she remains standing while completing the circle with the other foot or with a string. Thus is a circle well made. This has the following meaning: let human beings first learn that their hearts must be constant. Then they will be constant in all their deeds. Whatever great accomplishments they may attain are of no avail if their hearts are inconstant.

There are two kinds of teachers. Some were of the opinion that a good person could not be “stirred.” They based this idea on many a fine exposition. Others, however, did not agree. They were far more of the opinion that a good person might possibly be stirred, as the Holy Scriptures say. But that person will not be thrown off the track as a result Our Lord Jesus Christ was often stirred, as were many of his saints. They were not thrown off the track into sin, however. This is what people who are accustomed to traveling by sea have learned. If they wish to sleep, they throw an anchor into the water so that the ship will come to a halt Of course, they rock up and down on the water, but they do not move off. I have said that a perfect human being cannot easily be hindered. If, however, a person is annoyed about all kinds of things, then he or she is not perfect.

The third factor is the value that comes from the rapid river of the Holy Spirit. As the prophet says, “Our Lord dwells in the midst of the soul, and therefore it is not altered.” The soul wants only what is purest. In order that God’s purity may have effect within the soul, it can endure no mixture that is crossed with creatures. God our Lord accomplishes many deeds by himself and without outside help, but he does many deeds also with outside help. May the grace that is bound up in my words reach the soul of my listener without outside intervention in such a way as if God himself were speaking or working. Then the soul would be converted at once, and would become holy and unable to withdraw from my words. If I speak God’s word, then I am a co-worker with God, and grace is mixed up with a creature, that is, with myself. And therefore grace will not be completely taken up into the soul. The grace, however, that the Holy Spirit brings to the soul is received in a complete fashion insofar as the soul is gathered into the simple power that recognizes God, that is, “the highest reason” and the “spark of the soul.” Grace arises from the Father’s heart and flows into the Son. In the union of them both it flows from the wisdom of the Son into the goodness of the Holy Spirit, and in this way it is sent with the Holy Spirit into the soul. And grace is in this way a face of God, that is, of the Holy Trinity, and it is infused in unmixed form into the soul with the Holy Spirit and “shapes” the soul according to God. God accomplishes this deed by himself without outside mediation. No angel is so noble that he could be of service in this action, nor could any human dignity be of help. Even if out of the nobility of his nature an angel might want to help, God could not permit any kind of creature to assist him in this action. For at this moment he has raised the soul so high above its natural home that no creature could reach it. And even if an angel might indeed accomplish this deed and if God might let him be his servant, the soul itself would not allow it, for everything mixed up with a creature is repugnant to the soul at this moment. Yes, even the light of grace in which the soul is united to God would be repugnant to the soul if the soul were not certain and did not know that it receives God in this light. For God leads his bride, that is, the soul, away from the dignity and nobility of all creatures to a solitary desert and into himself, and he himself speaks into the soul’s heart. This means that he makes the soul equal in grace to himself. For this noble deed the soul has to gather and close itself up, just as we can recognize through this comparison: The soul gives life to the body in a proper sense without the mediation of the heart and all other members of the body, for, if the soul had to accept the help of the heart in this action, there would have to exist a second heart from which the soul would receive its life. In the same way God accomplishes directly the pure life of grace and goodness in the soul. Just as all the members of the body rejoice in the life of the soul, all the powers of the soul are fulfilled and rejoice as a result of the pure influence of our Lord’s grace. For grace has the same relationship to God as light has to the sun and is one with him and brings the soul into the divine light and makes it God-like and causes the soul to “experience” the divine nobility.

Now the soul, which has received the flood of divine grace and has “experienced” the divine nobility, finds bitter and unbearable everything that is not God. On the other hand, the soul strives for the highest of all things so that it cannot endure anything above itself. Indeed, I say at least that it cannot endure even God above itself. If the soul has moved so far above all other things to the height of its freedom that it has touched God in his purely divine nature, the soul would never come to rest unless God brought himself into the soul and the soul into God. Even though God is far above the soul in his nobility and his nature, the soul can find no rest until it understands God, insofar as it is possible for a creature to understand God. And therefore the lord Solomon says that stolen water tastes far sweeter than other water. This means that the perfect soul would like to be bound to nothing. It needs to shake itself loose from all things and above all things to attain the divine freedom. For this procures for the soul great happiness.

The third factor that brings the flood of divine grace into the soul is that the soul longs for the greatest of all blessings that the divine nature can accomplish. This is that the divine nature should bring itself forward to the height of the soul and thus accomplish a comparison of the soul with itself, that is, with the divine nature. The greatest blessing in heaven and on earth is based on “equality.” What the divine nature accomplishes at the height of the soul, that is, as the “spark of the soul,” is “equality.” No human beings can follow God completely without having an “equality” with God within themselves. Therefore we should take care whether all the graces human beings have received are divine, whether they “taste of” the divine nobility, and whether they are communicative and emanative, just as God is emanative with his goodness upon everything that in any way can accept him. Thus human beings should be communicative and emanative with all the gifts they have received from God. Saint Paul says, “What is there that we have not received from him?” (cf. 1 Co. 4:7). If human beings have something that they do not bestow on others, they are not good. People who do not bestow on others spiritual things and whatever bliss is in them have never been spiritual. People are not to receive and keep them for themselves alone, but they should share themselves and pour forth everything they possess in their bodies and souls as far as possible, and whatever others desire of them.

Saint Paul says, “It is the highest good that human beings should fortify their hearts through grace” (cf. Heb. 13:9). In these words we should pay attention to three things. First, where should we begin? With the heart. Second, with what should we begin? With grace. And third, why? So that we may remain good. Therefore we should begin with the heart, which is the noblest part of the body. It lies in the center of the body from which point it bestows life on the whole body. For the spring of life arises in the heart and has an effect like heaven. Heaven runs constantly in a circle; therefore it has to be round so that it can run more swiftly in a circle. For it bestows on all creatures their beings and their lives. And if it were to be still for only a second, people might take up fire in their hands and it would not burn them. If heaven were to be still, the waters would not flow, and all creatures would have no strength. Truly, without the soul and without heaven, all creatures would be lost completely, as if they had never been. Heaven does not have this power of itself but rather from an angel who causes it to revolve. As I have also often said, all the “images” and preliminary images or “ideas” of all the creatures were already created in the angels before they were created corporeally in creatures. Therefore an angel pours out his life and his power onto heaven and causes it to revolve constantly and thus accomplishes with heaven all the forms of life and all the strength in creatures. Consider how I pour out into a letter the intention I have in my heart through the work of my hand as I write the letter with my pen. Then I send the letter to another person and let her read it so that in this way the other person knows my intention. In a similar way, by causing heaven to revolve, the angel pours out all the first images of creation which he has received from God into creatures through the power of his will. Heaven is also in the middle of things. It is equally close to all the extremities. So also is the heart within a person quite close, and is active constantly in a circular manner. It beats and stirs itself without interruption. If the heart were to break up or be still for only a second, however, the person would be dead at once. Therefore it happens that if a person is in trouble, he or she grows pale. This comes about because the power of nature and the blood flow from all the members of the body and converge at the heart and wish to remain at the heart. For the spring of life is placed in the heart. On this account the heart is placed in the middle of the body so that if a difficulty should befall the body, it might not reach the heart right away. And if people are afraid that someone may cut or stab them, they place their hands in front of the heart and fear especially for it. It is the same way with grace, which God impresses directly upon the most secret part of the soul. Whatever happens to the body or the soul for the encumbrance of a person, grace is preserved so that we should not lose it. Therefore people should place themselves and everything that is not God in front of grace before they lose the grace on which the life of their eternal bliss depends. So long as people have the determination that nothing should ever be so dear or agreeable to them that they would not gladly do without it before they would be hindered with respect to grace, so long as this situation exists, these people are in perfection. For a good détermination makes a good person, and a perfect determination makes a perfect person, and we love everything according to our own goodness. Let whoever wishes to be the best loved of all people be the best of all people. And the better he or she is, all the more will he or she be loved by God.

May God help us to this truth! Amen.

COMMENTARY:  Who Is This Holy Spirit Who Divinizes Us?—Eckhart’s Theology of the Holy Spirit/How Grace Shapes the Soul in God’s Image/The Soul Should Stir and Be Stirred

In the previous sermon Eckhart established that we are divinized and that is why Christ came to earth. In this sermon he explores more deeply the meaning of our divinization and the manner in which it comes about. For the divine nature . . . accomplishes a comparison of the soul with itself. And this is the greatest of all blessings that the divine nature can accomplish. Our divinization is the fullest of God’s actions of creation. What is necessarily implied in our divinization is an equality between us and God.

The greatest blessing in heaven and on earth is based on “equality.” What the divine nature accomplishes at the height of the soul, that is, as the “spark of the soul,” is “equality.” No human beings can follow God completely without having an “equality” with God within themselves.

But we do have this equality with God—God does it—God makes the soul equal in grace to himself. We become in a certain way equal to God, though not identical with God, as Eckhart explains elsewhere. “The soul is changed into God so that the soul becomes divine, but not that God becomes the soul . . . Then the soul remains in God as God remains in himself.”¹

How does God bring about such a divine transformation in the human person? By the Holy Spirit, who is the “Transformer.”² For “all holiness is from the Holy Spirit.”³ The Holy Spirit is a river which cannot keep from flowing into every place where he finds space—in other words this river fills space like water fills an empty hole. The emptier the hole, the more water is needed to fill it. So too with us, the more in touch with our spacefulness we are, the fuller the Spirit can fill us. The soul, like a balloon, can become “blown up beyond its limit.”⁴ Our divinity knows no limits. Only the limits we put on it.

The imagery that Eckhart develops about the Spirit as a river is taken from the scriptural texts he is preaching from. In Psalm 46 we read:

There is a river whose streams refresh the city of God,

and it sanctifies the dwelling of the Most High.

God is inside the city, she can never fall,

at crack of dawn God helps her;

to the roaring of nations and tottering of kingdoms,

when he shouts, the world disintegrates.

Yahweh Sabaoth is on our side,

our citadel, the God of Jacobl (Ps. 46:4–7)

First Eckhart discusses the “river” referred to in this passage and later the “city.” The river, and water in general, is a symbol for the Spirit. Eckhart finds this same symbol utilized in Saint John’s Gospel:

On the last day and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood there and cried out:

“If any man is thirsty, let him come to me!

Let the man come and drink who believes in me!”

As scripture says: From his breast shall flow fountains of living water.

He was speaking of the Spirit which those who believed in him were to receive; for there was no Spirit as yet because Jesus had not yet been glorified. (Jn. 7:37–39)

This connection between the flowing of water and the coming of the Spirit is common among the Israelites, who are a desert people. Thus the prophet Isaiah would announce:

Oh, come to the water all you who are thirsty;

though you have no money, come!

Buy corn without money, and eat,

and, at no cost, wine and milk . . .

Pay attention, come to me;

listen, and your soul will live. (Is. 55:1, 3)

The waters of the Spirit that quench the thirsty and especially the poor who are without money will characterize the fullness of time, the Messianic era. Wisdom literature also sings of the fountains of living water:

Deep waters, such are the words of man:

a swelling torrent, a fountain of life. (Pr. 18:4)

Living waters will flow, Eckhart comments, repeating the scriptural text, from all who have faith. And Eckhart goes on to point out that the waters stand for the Holy Spirit: In this way he wishes to point to the Holy Spirit. Just as Christ stood and shouted: “Come to me if you are thirsty,” so too all of us who are reborn children of God in our breakthrough are to shout the same and to be fountains also of the Spirit that is a rapid or quick-flowing river.

For Eckhart, the Holy Spirit is the first gift that Christ sends us both by his earthly life and death and by the birth that we undergo as other Christs and Sons of God. “Just as the Son is called a Word, so the Holy Spirit is called a Gift—that’s what the Bible calls the Holy Spirit.”⁵ In commenting on the Samaritan woman who drew water from the well and then was promised by Christ that she would never thirst again (Jn. 4:1–41), Eckhart says-. “We read about a woman who received a gift from Christ. The first gift which God gives is the Holy Spirit; in that gift, God gives all of his gifts: That is ‘the living water, whomever I give this to will never thirst again.’ This water is grace and light and springs up in the soul and rises within and presses upward and leaps up into eternity.”⁶ Eckhart elaborates on how fountain-like this living water is that “springs,” “rises,” “presses,” and “leaps.”

The Holy Spirit is sent to us by the Son. That is why the Son had to leave earth before the Spirit would come and that is why we encounter the Spirit when we truly give birth to the Son. “The origin of the Holy Spirit is the Son. If there was no Son there would be no Holy Spirit.” Without the Son’s birth, there is no Spirit. “The Holy Spirit cannot have his outpouring and his blossoming anywhere else but in the Son. When the Father begets the Son, he gives him everything that he has essentially and by nature. In the act of giving, the Holy Spirit springs forth.”⁷ When we experience breakthrough and rebirth—our own and God’s Son’s—the Holy Spirit follows immediately.

God begets his only begotten Son and in him all those who are God’s children and born as sons. In him is the outflow and source of the Holy Spirit, from whom alone, since he is God’s Spirit, and God himself is spirit, the Son comes into being in us.⁸

We too are fountains for this same Spirit as Christ was, for we too share his divine Sonship.

According as we are nearer to the One [Godhead], we are all more truly sons of God and the Son and also there flows from us God and the Holy Spirit. This is the meaning of the words spoken by our Lord, God’s Son in the Deity: “Whosoever drinks of the water that I shall give, in him a well of water will arise, which springs up to eternal life” (Jn. 4:14) and Saint John (7:39) tells us that he said this of the Holy Spirit.⁹

God is the river behind the river that is the Holy Spirit, the fountain behind the fountain. Our breakthrough and rebirth constitute our being reborn into this fountain of fountains, this source of all sources of water and spirit. “The Son in the Deity gives nothing else than sonship, or being born as God, the fountain, origin, and source of the Holy Spirit.” It is because we are God’s sons that we can know the Holy Spirit who is love, “for undoubtedly no one loves God sufficiently and purely unless he is God’s son. For love, the Holy Spirit, originates in and flows from the Son . . .”¹⁰ The Spirit who is iove is an intoxication because it can fill the soul that has expanded itself to the full. Like a river, this Spirit works quick and wonderful deeds as it flows just as completely into the soul as the soul empties itself in humility and expands itself to receive him. We could be as full of the Spirit as Christ was if we were emptied and expanded enough and therefore ready.

I am certain of this: if my soul were as ready and if God should find as much space in it as in the soul of our Lord Jesus Christ, he would just as completely fill it with this “river.”

For the Holy Spirit fills and flows into every place where he finds space and just as extensively as the space he finds there. The Spirit, like water, displaces emptiness and looks not for place (institutions are places and people who have not let go of objects have only place or objects in them) but for space. Space is that experience that those who have let go and let be know so well. It is their own infinity and their own divinity, for God is in space and not in place. And we too, called to divinity, are to prefer space to place.

Eckhart develops his theology of the Holy Spirit as love. “The love by which the Father and the Son love one another is the Holy Spirit itself. They love with the Holy Spirit, as a tree flowers by flourishing and flowers with blossoms.”¹¹

We will be loved in the Son by the Father with that love which is the Holy Spirit. For the Holy Spirit is the love which has sprung up from eternity and blossomed in an eternal birth; this is the Trinity’s third Person, blossoming from the Son to the Father as their mutual love.¹²

His simile for the Holy Spirit as love is that of fire. “If it were not for this love, in which God loves the soul, the Holy Spirit would not exist. It is in the fire and the blossoming forth of the Holy Spirit that the soul loves God.”

As the wind blows, the fire increases in intensity. In this analogy the Holy Spirit is the wind as well as the fire.

We should understand love from the simile of the fire and we should understand the Holy Spirit from the simile of the wind with respect to the activity of the Holy Spirit in the soul. The greater love there is in the soul and the more strongly the Holy Spirit blows, all the more perfect is the fire.

But the Holy Spirit does not consume us with its loving fire? it works delicately and gradually on us.

This [fire of the Holy Spirit] occurs not just once but little by little for the purpose of the soul’s growth. For if people were consumed by it, it would not be good. Therefore the Holy Spirit blows little by little so that people, even if they should live a thousand years, could still grow in love.¹³

The Spirit, then, is ever urging us to expansion and to the fuller heat that fuller love brings. Once again, as in Sermon Seven, we see how Eckhart’s psychology of spirituality is a psychology of growth and not of instantaneous conversion. William James indicates that such a spirituality is one for adults, whereas a spirituality that overemphasizes instantaneous conversions is typically adolescent.¹⁴

This fire that is the Holy Spirit is the flame behind the “spark of the soul” which, as we have seen in Sermon Six, constitutes the innermost part of the person. In the “spark of the soul”

is hidden something like the original outbreak of all goodness, something like a brilliant light which incessantly gleams, and something like a burning fire which burns incessantly. This fire is nothing other than the Holy Spirit.¹⁵

In the present sermon Eckhart tells us that the spark of the soul is the simple power that recognizes God. Love recognizes love as fire recognizes fire and as spirit recognizes spirit. It is our likeness and equality with God that makes this fire which is the Holy Spirit burn.

It is God’s will that he should give himself completely to us. In the same way, when fire seeks to draw the wood into itself, and to draw itself into the wood again, it finds the wood unlike itself. But all this takes time. First of all, the fire heats the wood, then it smokes and crackles, being unlike the wood, and the hotter the wood becomes the more still and quiet it grows. The more the wood is like the fire, the more peaceful it is until it turns completely into the fire. If the fire is to press the wood into itself, all unlikeness must be at an end.¹⁶

Schurmann is correct in insisting that Eckharf s “spark of the soul” is in a human faculty and is not the faculty itself.¹⁷ The Spirit is in us firing us up, intoxicating us, and pressing us more and more into the divine image that we are.

The Holy Spirit does still another thing for us. It takes us by the hand—”the hand of God is the Holy Spirit”¹⁸—and takes us on a journey. It is a journey into purity—the soul wants only what is purest. However, as we saw in Sermon Nineteen, purity means a return to our origins. And so the Holy Spirit takes us on the journey back to our primal roots and our most divine origins. There we meet the Father and the Son.

The Holy Spirit receives the soul, the consecrated place, in its clearest and highest form, and carries it up to its origin, that is the Father, into the ground, the beginning, where the Son has his being.¹⁹

The Holy Spirit is eager to take us to the source of its own fountainhead.

The Holy Spirit draws the soul up and lifts it up with itself and if the soul were ready, the Holy Spirit would take it to the source from which it has flowed . . . The Holy Spirit brings the soul to that eternal image from which it has flowed out, that model in accord with which the Father has made everything, that picture in which all things are one, the breadth and the depth in which all things attain their end.²⁰

Thus the Holy Spirit leads us into the Godhead and into the depths of the panentheistic origins of all creation. The Holy Spirit is our guide, one might say, from Path Three—our birth—back to Path One—our origins. This journey is itself a gift of the Spirit—”it is truly a great gift that the soul is so led by the Holy Spirit.”

When the soul is secure in God, then it will be led by the Holy Spirit into that image and united with it. And with the image and with the Holy Spirit it will be led through and into the source. There where the Son is imaged the soul will be imaged too. The soul which is so led in and hidden and enclosed is in God and all creatures are subject to it.²¹

Thus, while Christ is the great reminder of our divinity and the imago Dei deep within us, the Holy Spirit is the guide who takes us into that image and accompanies us on our journey to our source. Once there, we see all creatures in their oneness with the Godhead, where they swim in a panentheistic sea of divine grace.

The Holy Spirit is accomplished by grace. Grace “carries the Holy Spirit on its back.”

Grace comes with the Holy Spirit. It carries the Holy Spirit on its back. Grace is not a stationary thing; it is always found in a becoming. It can flow out of God and then only immediately. The function of grace is to transform and reconvey the soul to God. Grace makes the soul God-like.²²

The Holy Spirit is uncreated grace, it is essentially “the uncreated act” of God. Grace, like the Holy Spirit, flows like a river. Grace arises from the Father’s heart and flows into the Son. In the union of them both it flows from the wisdom of the Son into the goodness of the Holy Spirit, and in this way it is sent with the Holy Spirit into the soul. Grace is what God impresses directly upon the most secret part of the sou/. It is to our soul what the heart is to the body and ought to be protected as our life source just as we cover the heart when attacked. It is this grace that shapes the soul according to the image of God. Grace makes the soul equal to God and therefore God is pleased to lead the soul to a solitary desert and into himself where he speaks into the soul’s heart. Grace is the source of our joy—all the powers of the soul are fulfilled and rejoice as a result of the pure influence of our Lord’s grace. What grace is to God, light is to the sun. An equation might look like this:

The soul is rendered God-like or divine by grace and thus experiences the divine nobility. Grace is not dispensed minimally or parsimoniously—the river that is the Holy Spirit is a bountiful and deep river—one that creates a flood of divine grace. This flood culminates in a freedom that is a divine freedom and an experience of great happiness and divine joy. For, having entered our divine origins and seen the inness from within, nothing can disturb such joy, indeed, grace is this very dwelling in God. “Grace is the indwelling of the soul in God” Eckhart remarks.²³ Notice that he has not said that grace is God in us but that it is us in God. He resists the overly introspective theology of grace that has often held hegemony in Western Christian theology. His doctrine on grace is as consistently panentheistic as his doctrine on God. Our graced existence is a graced inness.

The text for Eckhart’s sermon says that the river refreshes the city of God. How does Eckhart understand the word “city” in this text? In a spiritual meaning it is the soul, he says. Such a city or soul ought to be secure on the outside and united within if God is to flow there. To receive the Holy Spirit an individual must imitate the Apostles, who were gathered together and enclosed when the Spirit came to them at Pentecost. How is this personal gathering together and enclosure accomplished? By developing a constant and steady attitude toward things. Let human beings first learn that their hearts must be constant. Then they will be constant in all their deeds. In other words, we must be capable of letting go and letting be, whether it be pleasure or pain that we are interacting with.

But does constancy of heart mean stoicism? Does it mean never feeling deeply, never being powerfully moved, never yielding to ecstasy? Some, says Eckhart, teach exactly that. But he, looking at the biblical examples, teaches just the opposite. A good person might possibly be stirred, for this is what the Holy Scripture holds. He gives Jesus and the saints as examples. Our Lord Jesus Christ was often stirred, as were many of the saints. They were not thrown off the track into sin, however. What is his advice on reconciling the dialectical tension between constancy and ecstasy, constancy and being stirred? Anchor yourself, he says. That is how one prevents being annoyed about all kinds of things.

This is what people who are accustomed to traveling by sea have learned. If they wish to sleep, they throw an anchor into the water so that the ship will come to a halt. Of course, they rock up and down on the water, but they do not move off.

We may rock about a bit, but our steadfastness will not move far off. In this advice, Eckhart—and he sees this himself—is being Jewish and biblical rather than either Stoic or Neoplatonic. He is not advocating a flight from passion and being stirred but rather an anchoring. In a similar opinion Rabbi Heschel has written that the biblical person is a fiery person, one who is profoundly stirred, and one whose ideal is not in ascetic detachment or emotional coolness (cf. Sermon Nineteen).

Of all the blessings that the soul longs for, the greatest is our being divinized and thus made equal to God. What the divine nature accomplishes at the height of the soul, that is, at the “spark of the soul,” is “equality.” Since this grace is accomplished by God and the Holy Spirit, who is a rapid river, we should take the advice from the Letter to the Hebrews and not multiply our tactical ecstasies or ascetic practices.

Remember your leaders, who preached the word of God to you, and as you reflect on the outcome of their lives, imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same today as he was yesterday and as he will be forever. Do not let yourselves be led astray by all sorts of strange doctrines: it is better to rely on grace for inner strength than on dietary laws which have done no good to those who kept them. (Heb. 13:7–9)

Our inner strength, Eckhart is counseling, itself comes from grace and not from a multiplication of religious practices. Begin with the heart, he advises, for that is where grace most touches us. It bestows life on the whole body. For the spring of life arises in the heart and has an effect like heaven.

One reason why Eckhart is in favor of our hearts and souls being stirred while they retain an inner constancy is that he believes that “all deeds are accomplished in passion” (see Sermon Nineteen). And Eckhart insists that all gifts and all graces are for others and that our deeds need to go out to others. Indeed, those graces that are not capable of flowing out to others are not truly divine graces. For to “fasfe of” the divine nobility, gifts need to be communicative and emanative, just as God is emanative with his goodness upon everything that in any way can accept him. Thus human beings should be communicative and emanative with all the gifts they have received from God. In this way we become co-workers with God. For Eckhart, such flowing out or such creativity and extrovert meditation is absolutely essential to the good person.

Saint Paul says, “What is there that we have not received from him?” (cf. 1 Co. 4:7). If human beings have something that they do not bestow on others, they are not good. People who do not bestow on others spiritual things and whatever bliss is in them have never been spiritual. People are not to receive and keep them for themselves alone, but they should share themselves and put everything they possess in their bodies and souls as far as possible, and whatever others desire of them.

This is strong language, aimed at any temptations to spiritual narcissism. For Eckhart, divinity that does not imitate the Divinity and therefore pour forth everything good that one has received is a lie and a deception. Such overly introvert attitudes actually expose people who have never been spiritual. Thus the sharing and pouring forth and communicating of goodness is a criterion Eckhart employs to test the spirits of persons. When one pours forth all and bestows on others, then heaven begins to happen. Heaven is not apart from things or cut off from things. In fact, heaven is in the middle of things. It is equally close to all the extremities. This is a perfectly dialectical existence—to be in the middle of things, anchored there, and equally close (not equally distant) to all the extremities. This is being alive and being heavenly. It is living realized es-chatology. It is living as if the last days did indeed already begin. It is loving everything that happens to us, since we are anchored in love, for we love everything according to our own goodness. Our very love of things and events becomes a mirror and a revelation of our own goodness. For there is only one Spirit and that Spirit, a rapidly running river, flows where it wills. And where it wills is everywhere. In our letting go and letting the river be the river, we then become the river that pours forth itself to others. We too, who wear grace which is the face of God, will carry on God’s works, all of which are a rapidly flowing river of goodness made refreshing at their primal source.