PATH FOUR: THE NEW CREATION: COMPASSION AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

For Eckhart, the spiritual journey does not culminate in contemplation but in compassion, and this preference for compassion reveals the biblical roots of Eckhart’s spirituality. Contemplation is not a biblical category, but Compassion is the very name for YHWH and the presence of God among us.¹ In Path Four all the theological themes and experiences that Eckhart has developed in Paths One to Three come together and are put to work. For example, the theme of creation as a blessing. Indeed, compassion is the first of all blessings, for creation itself is bathed in compassion (see Sermons Thirty and Thirty-one), and compassion is the last blessing, the blessing that we, the new creators, are to give to others. Compassion thus constitutes the ultimate blessing we receive and give. Compassionate ones are “blessed” and compassion itself bestows “heavenly blessings” (Sermon Thirty). Compassion marks our return to the world to re-create society. This is possible because we have learned freedom from letting go (Path Two) and ecstasy from our breakthrough and birthing (Path Three) : “People who have let go of themselves are so pure that the world cannot harm them . . . People who love justice will be admitted to justice. They will be seized by justice, and will be one with justice.”² When we encounter God we encounter justice and compassion, as Moses learned on the mountaintop. “When the Lord descends, the soul is blessed by compassion, as happened in Exodus 3:8.”³ Compassion is the culmination of our rebirth and breakthrough and also of our birthing, for the ultimate act of grace and beauty is compassion. Compassion, then, is the fruit of our spiritual journey of faith. It is our response to the panentheistic and cosmic consciousness that reveals to us that all beings exist in the unity of a divine sea (see Sermon Thirty-one). In compassion the creative Word that launched creation continues to renew all things through our creative work (see Sermon Thirty-three). In compassion the truth about Jesus Christ is learned and the celebration at the arrival of the king/queendom of God is rejoiced in (see Sermons Thirty, Thirty-seven). The fullest artistic contributions to society are contributions of compassion, especially toward the poor and the outcast.⁴ Since compassion means justice as well as cosmic awareness, in compassion, social justice and mysticism come together, and because compassion is a divine attribute, our meaning as sons and daughters of God, that is to say our divinity, is discovered (see Sermons Thirty, Thirty-two, Thirty-three). Compassion reveals our divinity to ourselves and to others, for, as Meister Eckhart puts it, the “land flowing with milk and honey” that is promised to Moses means a life flowing “with humanity and divinity.”⁵ In compassion we and our works become divine and God becomes a human once again. We return home to our divine—and compassionate-origin. All the beauty in heaven and on earth is united in compassion, for “compassion eventually leads to glory.”