“Sermon” Thirty: BE COMPASSIONATE AS YOUR CREATOR IN HEAVEN IS COMPASSIONATE
“Be compassionate as your Father in heaven . . .” (Lk. 6:36–42)a
Three things are necessary for those wanting to prepare themselves for divine grace: humility of mind, firmness of heart, and the ability to give further whatever is received. The first characteristic—humility of mind—is evident in Mary, of whom it was said: “full of grace, the Lord is with you.” In his Sermon on the Assumption, Augustine says: “Mary’s humility became a heavenly ladder down which not merely grace but the God of every grace descended to earth.” For it is proper to humility to be like the premise in a syllogism; a great part of its power lies in this. When the humility is true, then the conclusion of the syllogism is correct.
The second characteristic, firmness of heart, is manifest in the fact that sin and lack of firmness go together. As it is written in the first chapter of Lamentations: “Jerusalem sinned grievously and therefore she has become without firmness.” And in Aristotle we read that “the opposites of those things follow as consequences.” Therefore, we read in Hebrews 13:9, “it is best that the heart be made firm by grace.” For it is good by means of grace to avoid sin; it is better by that same grace to make progress in the service of God; but it is best of all to make one’s heart firm in God himself. The greatest help to this end is the love of eternal realities and the avoidance of what is merely terrestrial and transient. For in a teaching attributed to Anselm, we are told that the heart which is not fixed in eternity is more changeable than change itself.
The third characteristic, the ability to give further whatever is received, is made clear toward the end of the fiftieth chapter of Augustine’s work On True Religion, where he says: “The law of divine providence is such that people are not helped by those higher than themselves to the knowledge and experience of God’s grace unless with a pure heart they help to the same end those who are lower than themselves”
All three of these characteristics are pointed to in this word be, which is a word having to do with what is substantive. For that prefix sub (under) indicates humility. As it is written in 1 Peter: “Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God.” The other part of the word substantive comes from the Latin word for stand and indicates firmness. For about that land which Ecclesiastes says “stands into eternity,” it is written in the Psalms: “You have founded the earth on your firmness.” And the third characteristic, communicability, is indicated by word. For the word alone manifests the one speaking and communicates those things which are in his heart. There is an example in the uncreated word through which the Father communicates and pours out all things.
Be compassionate. In the first chapter of Acts it is written that “Jesus began to do and to teach.” In last Sunday’s Gospel we read that Jesus showed compassion and still shows compassion by receiving sinners, the lost which he joyfully puts on his shoulders, and by lighting the lamp to find the lost coin. We meet this example daily in the sacraments. We see another example in the Lord’s passion when “the dominion was laid on his shoulders” (Is. 9). We see still another in the Incarnation. According to Gregory, “the lamp is the light in the earthen vessel, divinity in our flesh” and that is truly “the heart of compassion” through which and in which “the rising star has visited us” (Lk. 1). For although he eternally had all things in his nature—thus “rich in all things”—he in no way had a way of suffering nor a back which could be beaten. In this sense there is another legitimate explanation of what Paul is saying in 2 Corinthians 8: “for our sake he was made poor.” For he did not have to beg for anything lacking to him, unless it be for the back which could receive blows. For the Psalms say, “Sinners hammer on my back.” Thus in all these ways he showed compassion. And Luke says: “Go and do likewise.” And this is what he teaches and taught, after he manifested it in deed.
He says: “Be compassionate, as your Father” and “a good measure.” First Christ exhorts us to compassion: “Be compassionate.” Then he gives us an example or model of this compassion: “as your Father.” And finally, he promises glory, “a good measure.”
Regarding the first point, we should know that there are four things for the sake of which we should understand ourselves as very much called to compassion. First, because it is this compassion which triumphs mightily over the enemy. There is where we should know about triumph over enemies, especially over such as those who themselves triumph over powerful people and frequently overcome great ones and who persecute with great vehemence and in every way are joyfully triumphant. This is the sort of thing we frequently read about in the biblical stories and in the canonical literature: Judith and Holofernes, Esther and Haman, the Maccabees; Isaiah 9:3, ‘They will rejoice in your sight as victors do when they take their spoils and divide their prizes.” Our enemy, the hateful devil, brought to a fall even Adam, who was put into Paradise and endowed with every virtue and knowledge. And the case has been similar with many other such falls. For it is written: “If a woman brought Adam, Samson, David, and Solomon to a fall, who will in any way be secure?”
It ought then to be most laudable, joyful, and glorious to conquer such a foe as this who has waged war in so many ways, so frequently overcome such great people, and who is fighting not only for our life but also for the eternal death of our body and soul. Thus we find Cyprian saying in one of his exhortations: “If it is glorious for soldiers to return to the fatherland, then it is even more glorious to return as victors to that fatherland whence Adam was expelled, after conquering the enemy who caused Adam to fall and bringing back the victorious trophies, rejoicing with patriarchs, prophets, and apostles in possessing the kingdom of heaven, being equal to the angels, becoming a co-heir of Christ and standing at his side when he sits in judgment.”
Compassion gives us this victory. The commentary on the phrase “my compassion and my refuge” is: “The devil is conquered by nothing so much as by compassion” and, further on, “for that person in whom is found a work of compassion, even if he have some ground for punishment, a wave of mercy like a flood of water will extinguish the fire of sin.” And it is added that “compassion is shown in two ways: in giving and in forgiving.” And this is what is meant in the Gospel statement: “Forgive and you will be forgiven; give and it will be given to you,” and in Matthew 19: “Sell everything you have and give it to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven.”
But this seems to be bad business: “Give what you have and you will have.” Isaiah 61 states: “In your land you will possess twice as much.” The lawyers say, “He who pays late, pays less; for by the extension of time, less is paid.” “Give what you have and you will have.” Someone says: “In the judgment of common folk you have is more valid than you will have. It is better to be related to a through have than to be related to a and b through will have.” It should be noted that Scripture frequently puts the past tense instead of the present or the future because of the infallibility of the event and, on the other hand, puts the future instead of the present because of its eternity. Thus one is able to understand “You will have treasure in heaven” as referring to a double reward, essential and accidental, or according to the clothing of the body and of the soul.
Second, compassion divinely adorns the soul, clothing it in the robe which is proper to God. Both the theologians and the Scriptures teach that in every work which God works in a creature, compassion goes with it and ahead of it, especially in the inwardness of the creature itself. This is why Saint Gregory says that “it is proper to God to be compassionate.” And the psalmist tells us that the compassion of God is over all his works. It does not say in all his works, as though it went with, but over all his works, because it goes ahead and overtops them. The Letter of James says that “compassion triumphs over justice” (allowing for other interpretations). For every work in a creature supposes the work of compassion and is grounded in it as in its root, the power of which preserves all things and works powerfully in them. For the psalmist says that “the earth is full of the compassion of the Lord” and, further, “his compassion is glorified to the heavens” and, further, “Lord, your compassion is in heaven” and “Your compassion is great above the heavens.”
It is therefore evident that compassion clothes the soul with the robe of God and divinely adorns it. Isaiah 58 says, “When you pour out your soul to the thirsty”—this pertains to corporal compassion—”and when you fill the afflicted soul”—this pertains to spiritual compassion—”your light will rise in the darkness and your darkness will be like the noontime; and God will grant you rest forever and he will fill your soul with glories and liberate your bones and you will be like a well-irrigated garden, and a fountain of water which never fails.” “The light will rise in darkness”—a commentary on this text says: “Your light will rise in the darkness means that even in the midst of evil men and among adversities, the virtuous person will shine bright and clear.” And the text “your darkness will be like noontime” means that the virtuous person will receive both of them—darkness and noontime—without distinction. This is the fourth age of the new, the inward, the heavenly human being.
Augustine in his treatise On True Religion (chapter 48) distinguishes seven ages or stages of the new human being, and he says there that in the third age the carnal appetite is married to the rational power, when the soul has intercourse with the mind and is shadowed in the veil of modesty, so that it will no longer allow sin, even if everyone else were to allow it. The fourth age is what Augustine calls the development of the perfect person, ready to sustain and break the persecutions and all the storms and waves of this world. The fifth age is when the soul lives totally at peace in what it has and in the abundance of ineffable wisdom. The sixth age means a transformation into the perfect form which is perfect according to the image and likeness of God. This is the new human being of whom it can truly be said: “You are adorned in beauty and clothed in light as in a garment.” The seventh age is eternal rest, a perpetual beatitude no longer able to be divided into stages. And therefore blessed are the compassionate. So much for this second point.
“Be compassionate.” Third, compassion directs a person to relationships with his fellow human beings. Fourth, it wins for us heavenly blessings and brings us to final salvation or beatitude. Pertaining to these second, third, and fourth points we read in Proverbs 21 that those who follow compassion find life and justice and glory. Life pertains to the second point in respect to oneself, justice pertains to the third point in respect to the neighbor, and glory pertains to the third point in respect to God. And this is what is promised to the compassionate in Isaiah 58: “Your healing will spring up speedily and justice will go before your face and the glory of the Lord will surround you.” “Your healing”—that is your entire healthy life so that it can be called healed. For present life is a dying life or, according to Augustine, a living death. “For we who are born immediately cease to be” (Ws. 5:13). And “we all die and like water which does not return, we are poured out on the earth” (2 S. 14:14). It is not said of mortals that they will die but that they are dying.
But the life which the prophet calls healing is according to Isidore of Seville a living life. In his essay “On the Highest Good” in the next to last chapter, he argues that the present life does not merit the name life for this reason: “Our present condition does not deserve the name life because in order for us to be enlightened and be given life, eternal life came down and told us in John 10: ‘I came that they might have life.’“ Augustine makes the same point in a letter to Consentius, where he says: “This life is the act of the soul in the body, or its existence. But the soul in the present life does not have the power to give life to the body all the way to the taking away of corruption or death. But why would we call something hot which was not able to take away an object’s coldness?”
It follows that “and your justice will go before your face” applies to the neighbor. For this is the nature of justice. This is explicitly said insofar as compassion is just to the extent that it gives each one what is his. This is why Isidore of Seville says in another chapter of the aforementioned treatise that “it is a great crime to give the wages of the poor to the rich and from the livelihood of the poor to increase the luxuries of the powerful, taking water from the needy earth and pouring it into the rivers.”
There it is evident how compassion triumphs over the enemy, perfects a person in himself and adorns him, and is directed to the neighbor. It is because of this that the commentary on 1 Timothy 4:8 says: “The entire sum of Christian discipline consists of compassion and piety, and anyone following this discipline, if he experiences the deceits of the flesh, will without doubt be knocked about but will not perish.” This is true if one is truly compassionate, as we read in Ecclesiasticus: “Having compassion toward your own soul, you are pleasing to God.” Or, according to Aristotle, “Friendship toward others is rooted in the ability to be a friend to oneself.” How then can anyone be compassionate toward me or toward you who is not compassionate toward himself? For, in the words of Ecclesiasticus 14:5: “If one is of no use to oneself, for whom can such a one be of any use?” It is for this reason that our Saviour says so explicitly, “Be compassionate!” For he wants us to be compassionate even to our own body and soul. Enough for this third point.
How does compassion merit heavenly rewards and finally save us and lead us to glory? In the treatise cited earlier, Isidore of Seville says that earthly things lead some people to perdition and others to salvation. This, then, is salvation, when we marvel at the beauty of created things and praise the beautiful providence of their Creator or when we purchase heavenly goods by our compassion for the works of creation. Notice which kinds of goods are purchased and you can see how compassion eventually leads to glory. And this is what I said above about the compassionate person finding glory (Pr. 21) and being embraced by the glory of the Lord (Is. 58). It is called finding because the glory far surpasses anything which could be merited. This is what we read in today’s Epistle (Rm. 8:18) about the sufferings of this time not being worthy to be compared to the glory which is to come. The word “embrace” is used because in its abundance it exceeds any expectation of the soul. Thus it is written in Matthew 25: “You good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of the Lord.”
We move now to a consideration of the text about the good and overflowing measure which is poured into our lap. We have already spoken of how Christ exhorts us to compassion: “Be compassionate, etc.” It remains for us to see how he proposes a model or paradigm of this compassion—”as your Father is compassionate”—and finally how he promises a reward or crown—”a good and overflowing measure will be poured out in your lap.”
As your Father is compassionate—first one must know that the heavenly Father is called compassionate and that he is compassionate in a twofold sense in providing the model which we are to imitate. He is compassionate without passion, and he is compassionate in a simple and essential act.
On the first point, we read in the first part of Augustine’s book On Patience: “God is angry without perturbation, patient with out passion, zealous without spite, showing compassion without sorrow.” We therefore are compassionate like the Father when we are compassionate, not from passion, not from impulse, but from deliberate choice and reasonable decision. For Psalm 84 says: “Compassion and truth meet one another”—that is, passion and reason. And again in Psalm 32: “He loves compassion and judgment.” Second Corinthians 9 says of compassion: “Each one as he decided in his heart, not as though out of sadness.” A gloss on the phrase “as he decided” tells us that it means preordained, and “in his heart” means “in the deliberation of reason”; “not as though out of sadness” means that the passion does not take the lead but follows, does not rule but serves.
We find a sign of this in Genesis 21 and Galatians 4: “Throw out the maid and her son.” The maid is that sensuality which should serve reason; her son refers to the force of passion. We should be very much on the alert lest the force of passion dominate our actions. This is why Jeremiah, in Lamentations, considers this to be a great scandal and says: “Consider, O Lord, what has happened to us and look at and view our scandal.” And further in the text he says: “Servants have become our masters.” Ecclesiastes 10 says: “It is an evil thing which I see under the sun—that a fool is placed in a high position and the rich sit beneath him.” The fool here is sensuality or passion. It is called foolish, according to Boethius, both because it is not susceptible of discipline and because it clouds over the light of wisdom. “In a high position” means in leadership and power; the rich refers to the intellect and the will by which all of reality is ours; “sit beneath him” means being subject to passion. A following text says: “I saw servants on horses and princes walking on the ground like servants.” Servants on horses shows how those whom passion dominates are very much like horses. It is against this that it is said in Psalm 32:9: “Don’t be like the horse and mule . . .”
Another way in which we ought to be compassionate like our heavenly Father is with a sincere and simple intention. For just as God is compassionate without passion, so is he compassionate with nothing added, compassionate in a simple and essential act. Thus we are told in Wisdom 1 : “Search for him in simplicity of heart.” This simplicity of heart is a simplicity of intention. Matthew 6:23 states that “if your eye is single, then is your whole body bright.” Augustine in his essay “On the Sermon on the Mount” says: “We should understand eye here as intention.” And Augustine goes on to say: “What is to be considered is not what anyone does but in what spirit he does it.”
“If your eye is single.” Jerome, in commenting on this text from Matthew, says: “The bleary-eyed are accustomed to seeing many lights, but the person whose eye is sound and healthy sees reality clear and simple.” Because, therefore, according to Augustine in his treatise On True Religion, chapter 16, “we seek the one, than which nothing is more simple,” we should seek that one in simplicity of heart. This requires that from our part nothing else be added, and that we do not seek anything additional in God, but only God himself. This is what Christ teaches us in Matthew 6:3, where he speaks about the works of compassion: “Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.” The gloss on this text says: “What virtue does is something of which either pride or vainglory or any other vice is ignorant, but the light of a good deed flees the darkness of sin.” For, as Maximus says in his Ash Wednesday sermon: “The master of heavenly teaching does not allow the work of those who call on him, those for whom he prepares an eternal reward, to perish by the vice of fruitless boasting.”
“Let not your left hand know.” For such as these belong to those goats, standing at the left side, to whom those terrible words are spoken: “Depart, cursed ones . . .” For a poet writes: ‘The world and all its joys are only like a dream. Those who follow and love these things are given over to the depths of the abyss.”
The intention must be simple so that we seek nothing in addition to God and nothing except God. There is a gloss on the phrase in Ephesians 3, “rooted in love”: “If you love, love freely; if you truly love, let your reward be the one you love.” “See in him the one who crowns you, your reward; and expect nothing other than himself.” Augustine says toward the end of the tenth chapter of the Confessions: “Through my avarice I wanted to possess the entire lie and so I lost you, because you could not be possessed along with a he.” So the psalmist asks: “For what reason do you love vanity and seek falsehood?” This is enough for the point about God’s being the example and paradigm of compassion: “like your Father . . .”
Sensuality as such cannot inherit the eternal kingdom because it has nothing eternal in itself, whereas reason is eternal. Passion, properly speaking, is a long distance from reason and intellect. Nor is sensuality in the will or the senses, except at the periphery, namely in the sense of touch, and that is only accidentally so. Thereby we see that it is blameworthy to be led by passion, as the blind person is led by a dog. Consider what great folly it is to sell what merits eternal life for the wind of vanity! Thus it is that we daily sing and pray: “May our inmost hearts be pure and may our folly cease.”
Now we move on to the third point, namely about the reward or glory: “the good measure.” Note this about the condition of our true fatherland: it is the most excellent sublimity which belongs to those blessed ones who dwell in God, for “they will pour the good measure into your lap.” For the first and most simple measure of all things is God, both in his existence and in general in every perfection. But the good is the last thing, the goal and the best: “No one is good but God alone” (Lk. 18:19; Mk. 10:18). God is good because he is simply the goal, and because he pours himself out, which no one else can do. From this it is clear how great is the happiness which is the inwardness of God. Who as the first has in himself beforehand all those things in which and through which and for which, as a goal, all beings love and desire what is ultimate and best. Tobit 10:5 (Vulg.) : “Having all things in you, the One . . .” For the first is in himself rich and is the greatest riches. For this reason the psalmist exclaims: “Lord, how great is the multitude of your sweetness.” Look at the meaning of this. Not only are they in him but without him they could not be and their life is in him. “For he is not the God of the dead, for all things live in him” (Mt. 22:32).
We should note the perfect and unmixed purity of all those over whom the saints rejoice, because the measure is called full. Not: the pure and perfect integrity of joy in itself. First Corinthians 13:10 tells us that “when what is perfect comes, what is imperfect disappears.” Taken literally, Paul is talking about the condition of our fatherland. Many know something and yet no one on earth knows anything perfectly. This is true of this joy and its nature. For no one has this joy completely and this is the point Paul makes when he says in another place: “Now I know partially but then I will know as I am known.” And 1 Peter 5: “The God of all grace will himself perfect, confirm, and make solid.” Thus is fulfilled the text which says: “You will fill me with joy in your countenance; pleasures are in your right hand all the way to the end.” For everything is full and pure in its source and precisely there, not outside. Thus it says “all the way to the end,” for only at the goal will anything be fulfilled in what it is.
Consider also the variety and abundance of joys, for the measure is said to be “pressed down, shaken together.” Boethius says that happiness is a state consisting of the gathering together of all good things. And “state” denotes a rest after a final end is reached. Isaiah 32:18 says: “My people will sit in the beauty of peace in the tents of faithfulness” and then follows the phrase “in a rich rest.” What Isaiah calls rest, Boethius calls a state; and what Isaiah calls rich, Boethius calls a gathering of all good things (cf. Tobit 10:5: “Having all things in you, the One . . .”).
Moreover, there is a fullness of the overflowing abundance of heavenly joy: overflowing. There are numerous ways in which this is explained: because this joy has no end; because it is beyond all merit; because it exceeds any hope; because it is beyond any desire; and because it is beyond all knowledge and apprehension. About the first, note Matthew 25: “The righteous will go into eternal life.” Concerning the second, see Romans 8: “Our sufferings are not worthy . . .” Concerning the third, read Wisdom 5: ‘They marveled at the sudden arrival of an unhoped-for salvation.” Concerning the fourth and fifth, see Ephesians 3: “superabundantly, beyond what we could ask for or understand.” Also regarding the fifth, read Isaiah 64 and 1 Corinthians 2: “Eye has not seen nor ear heard nor has it entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love him.” “It has not arisen into the heart of a human being.” The gloss on this reads that the eternal is not below but above the heart; “in the heart of man” means according to someone living in the human condition: “Are you not fleshly and do you not live like men?” “Not risen” means that “it is said that something rises in the heart which pleases the intellect.” Or “not risen in the heart” can mean as material things which rise by abstraction. Or take “not risen” as in the example of a number rising through multiplication and always getting larger.
Concerning the final way we would better say: an overflowing measure. For happiness overflows so copiously from the higher powers to the lower that the senses seem to be transformed into the nature of reason and reason into something yet higher, as is written in the book On Spirit and Soul. For this joy overflows so powerfully into the very body that the body is totally submissive to the soul, like air to light, where there is no resistance, as is clear from the gifts of the risen body: clarity, inability to suffer, subtlety, and agility. Then life will be full indeed and the subjection of matter will be complete. For the psalmist says: “You will be inebriated from the fullness of your house . . .” Amen.
COMMENTARY: Four Reasons Why Giving Birth to Compassion Is the Finest Birthing We Can Do/Compassion Is a Divine Attribute and God Is Our Model for Compassion/Compassion Is About Works and Deeds of Justice, as Christ Teaches/Compassion Begins with Self—the Relationship of Passion and Compassion/Compassion Is About Celebration and Glory
In the previous sermon Eckhart established that all of us, like God the Creator, are called to give birth, to be artists and to leave gifts behind vs. In the present sermon, and indeed in all of Path Four, Eckhart delineates what this most divine of gifts that we are to give birth to as children of God and as parents of God is all about. Its name is compassion. There are four reasons that call us very much to compass/on, he says. They are as follows:
1. Compassion triumphs over enemies. Eckhart’s biblical examples for this phenomenon are, interestingly enough, both women. Judith and Esther triumphed over their enemies by works of compassion.
2. Compassion renders us divine and clothed in our proper divinity, or, as Eckhart puts it, compassion divinely odorns the soul, clothing it in the robe which is proper to God.
3. Compassion directs a person to relationship with his or her fellow human beings by way of justice and in this sense compass/on means justice.
4. Compassion bestows heavenly blessings on us all and therefore begins the end time which is the time of our final salvation and healing and of beatitude or full happiness.
So much for a summary of Eckhart’s four exhortations to compassion. In this commentary, based on Eckhart’s own development of these themes, we will be developing his second, third, and fourth points. First, however, we should read the text that Eckhart was reading as he created this sermon on compassion:
“But I say this to you who are listening: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who treat you badly . . . Instead, love your enemies and do good, and lend without any hope of return. You will have a great reward, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.
“Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate. Do not judge, and you will not be judged yourselves; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned yourselves; grant pardon, and you will be pardoned. Give, and there will be gifts for you: a full measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be poured into your lap; because the amount you measure out is the amount you will be given back.” (Lk. 6:27 35–38)
Commenting on this text, Eckhart points out that we are being told that God the Creator (whenever “Father” is used of God in the New Testament it means Creator, says scholar Thorleif Boman1) alone is the Compassionate One. Compassion was present at creation and indeed was the motivation for creation, Eckhart points out, following the tradition laid down in Jewish midrash. “The first of God’s works is compassion,” he says, and “the highest work of God is his compassion” (Sermon Thirty-one). All of creation is a continual process and in all this gift-giving of being by the Creator, compassion leads the way. In every work which God works in a creature, compassion goes with it and ahead of it, especially in the inwardness of the creature itself . . . it goes ahead and overtops all his works. Eckhart cites Saint Gregory, who teaches that “it is proper to God to be compassionate.” Thus compassion is a uniquely divine attribute. Indeed, compassion forms the very core and root of all creation and all creatures and that is why those in touch with their true core or inwardness are in touch with and giving birth to compassion. For every work in a creature supposes the work of compassion and is grounded in it as in its root, the power of which preserves all things and works powerfully in them. And this is why the psalmist sings that “the earth is full of the compassion of the lord” and the Lord’s compassion is glorified to the heavens. The heavens themselves are rich with compassion, rich with divinity. Compassion is integral to a cosmic consciousness for Eckhart since a cosmos (from the word for order) implies a plan, a providence. And the plan of Providence is compassion and the continual birth of creatures from a matrix of compassion.
In the context of discussing compassion and creation Eckhart neatly slides over the subject of original sin, which received so much treatment in Augustine’s theology but which can be an obstacle for trusting the cosmos and trusting self and creation. This trust is a prerequisite for compassion, as psychologist William Eckhardt points out.2 Eckhart notes that not only Adam fell, in the original Paradise, but there have been many falls since, including Samson, David, Solomon, and others. Eckhart refuses to allow an exaggerated doctrine of original sin to sidetrack him from the basic message of the first chapters of Genesis, namely, that God created things “very good” and very trustworthy and with compassion at the very heart of their origin. Indeed, a return to our origin is a return to compassion. Everything is full and pure in its source and precisely there, not outside. Therefore, the true meaning of purity—since, as we saw in Sermon Eighteen, purity means a return to our origin—is compassion.
Because God is truly compassionate, people can learn lessons from examining how God is compassionate. God is compassionate with a sincere and simple intention, with nothing added. God is wholly compassionate, compassionate in a simple and essential act. This is why letting go and letting be properly lead to compassion. They lead to a simplicity of heart and a simplicity of intention. We learn compassion from letting go of all that is not compassion, that is, of all that is not God or is not in God. The intention must be simple so that we seek nothing in addition to God and nothing except God. Simplicity is the fruit of letting go and letting be. It is the root of all authentic compassion. In this respect we are to imitate the simplicity of God. For compassion is not just one more virtue learned in the way one acquires virtues. It is a divine attribute, and for this reason needs to be learned in our experience of the unity of all things in God. It is the Creator alone who is our example or model of this compassion, warns Eckhart.
But if compassion is so divine, then it is also the breaking out of our own divinity. Compassion is the fullness of divine and human perfection, says Eckhart. It represents the fourth age of the new, inward, heavenly human being. It represents the development of the perfect person, ready to sustain and break the persecutions and all the storms and waves of this world. “The soul is made blessed by compassion,” says Eckhart.3 Compassion divinely adorns the soul, clothing it in the robe which is proper to God. Compassion divinely adorns the soul, he repeats in his sermon. Compassion is the true name for our breakthrough, the true art that we are to give birth to. We are to become—as God the Creator is—an artist of compassion.
What does it mean to give birth to compassion and to be artists of compassion? What is compassion besides being a divine attribute? Compassion is about deeds, Eckhart notes. Compassion is doing. Eckhart invokes on several occasions in this sermon chapter 58 of the prophet Isaiah. In that chapter the prophet, as we saw Eckhart do in Path Two, preaches against tactical ecstasies like fasting and other religious works in favor of active relief of the sufferings of others.
Look, you do business on your fastdays,
you oppress all your workmen;
look, you quarrel and squabble when you fast
and strike the poor man with your fist.
Fasting like yours today
will never make your voice heard on high.
Is that the sort of fast that pleases me,
a truly penitential day for men?
Hanging your head like a reed,
lying down on sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call fasting,
a day acceptable to Yahweh?
Is not this the sort of fast that pleases me
—it is the Lord Yahweh who speaks—
to break unjust fetters
and undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and break every yoke,
to share your bread with the hungry,
and shelter the homeless poor,
to clothe the man you see to be naked
and not turn away from your own kin?
Then will your light shine like the dawn
and your wound be quickly healed over
Your integrity will go before you
and the glory of Yahweh behind you
Cry, and Yahweh will answer;
call, and he will say, “I am here.”
If you do away with the yoke,
the clenched fist, the wicked word,
if you give your bread to the hungry,
and relief to the oppressed,
your light will rise in the darkness,
and your shadows become like noon.
Yahweh will always guide you,
giving you relief in desert places. (Is. 58:3–11)
All these deeds of relief and healing of the pain of others is what constitutes the works of compassion for Eckhart as well as for Isaiah. For it is not enough that one listen to the Word, Eckhart declares. One must develop communicability or the ability to give further whatever is received. In this way the word received becomes a creative word or work as in the example given us in the uncreated Word through which the Father communicates and pours out all things. We too are fo pour out all things as the Father does and as we saw in the previous sermon. Our creativity culminates in creatively compassionate deeds. Eckhart speaks of works of compassion that are corpora/and of those that are spiritual. Eckhart says that Jesus carried on this same tradition from the prophets in his teaching and his living and even in his Incarnation itself. In all these ways he showed compassion. Twice in this sermon Eckhart quotes from the Last Judgment story in Matthew, which is a story about compassionate deeds. “I tell you solemnly, insofar as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me” (Mt. 25:31–46). Christ exhorts us to compassion and he proposes a model or paradigm of this compassion in the example of his heavenly Father. God the Creator is the model of compassion whom Christ followed and whom we are fo imitate. For it is proper to God to be compassionate. Compassion, then, is the imitatio Dei for Eckhart as for Jewish theologians.4
First, regarding the Incarnation, Eckhart teaches that Jesus became one of us because he lacked the human condition that would allow God to suffer what people suffer and thus to know what true human compassion is about. He begged from us the human flesh in which he could suffer and the back which could be beaten. The meaning of Jesus’ being made poor was that he was made vulnerable. He lacked nothing unless it be a back which could receive the blows. In compassion, Christ’s humanity and his divinity come together to teach us by his parables as well as by his deeds what compassion is all about. Christ our Saviour says explicitly, “Be compassionate!” To be compassionate is the summary of his teaching that we are sons of God as he also is a Son of God. We are sons of the Compassionate One, like he is. Because Jesus taught us what compassion means, he also taught us what salvation means. It means to be compassionate, which means to enter into the fullness of the blessing that all creation is and to work to pass creation on as a blessing. Eckhart puts it this way: This, then, is salvation, when we marvel at the beauty of created things and praise the beautiful providence of their Creator or when we purchase heavenly goods by our compassion for the works of creation. The works of creation are the focus for our compassion—all of them, animals and earth, water and air, plants and music, children and adults. Christ teaches us . . . about the works of compassion, Eckhart observes. Our works are to be simple and sincere—like God’s are—works that do not look for rewards. Works without a why. Compassion is about works, but it is not about reward for our works.
“Be careful not to parade your good deeds before men to attract their notice; by doing this you will lose all reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give alms, do not have it trumpeted before you; this is what the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets to win men’s admiration. I tell you solemnly, they have had their reward. But when you give alms, your left hand must not know what your right is doing; your almsgiving must be secret, and your Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you. (Mt. 6:1–4)
Compassion, then, is about relieving the misery of the poor, but not for philanthropy’s sake or for the sake of one’s reputation. Presumably we have learned to let go of such motivations and to act for God’s sake and compassion’s sake, that is, without a why.
Christ not only taught compassion, he did compassionate works of healing and relief of people’s pain. He manifested compassion in deed. We too are to do the works that Jesus did. “Every believer becomes reddened and inflamed with the love of Christ and is wholly imbued with Christ, so that he or she is informed by Christ to do his works.”5 Our works, like Jesus’, are to be works of compassion. The most basic work of compassion is justice, or, if you prefer, the relief of injustice. For without justice there can be no compassion, no love of neighbor that is also love of God, no love of God that is also love of neighbor. Eckhart invokes Proverbs, chapter 21, in this regard. It is a hymn to the royal person who is a just person.
Like flowing water is the heart of the king in the hand of Yahweh,
who turns it where he pleases.
A person’s conduct may strike him as upright,
Yahweh, however, weighs the heart.
To act virtuously and with justice
is more pleasing to Yahweh than sacrifice . . .
For the virtuous person it is a joy to execute justice,
but it brings dismay to evil-doers . . .
He who pursues virtue and compassion
shall find life, justice, and honor. (Pr. 21:1–3, 15, 21)
It is noteworthy that Eckhart’s translation of the Bible in this case was evidently that from the Hebrew, which talks of compassion and justice, rather than that from the Greek, which talks of “life and honor.”6 For Eckhart comments on this text, those who follow compassion find life and justice and glory. And he invokes Isaiah’s similar promise in chapter 58:8. The promise, Eckhart points out, is one of healing. Your entire life will be ca//ed healed, he suggests, when you have entered into compassion and its works of justice. For a healing life is a living life.
Eckhart is insistent on the identification of justice with compassion. It is explicitly said in Scriptures, he maintains, that compass/on is just to the extent that it gives each one what is his. And Eckhart does not hesitate to invoke the criticism of unjust economic and political structures that Isidore of Seville railed against when he said: “It is a great crime ta give the wages of the poor to the rich and from the livelihood of the poor to increase the luxuries of the powerful, taking water from the needy earth and pouring it into the rivers.” Elsewhere too Eckhart defines compassion as justice. He says that in God “what is compassion is also justice”7 If we are in God and acting out of this inness, then our compassion is also our justice and vice versa. Furthermore, Eckhart calls Jesus, the Son of God and the Son of Compassion, the “Son of Justice.” God is called “Justissimus,” the Most Just One, by Eckhart,8 and Jesus is the Son of the Most Just One. So too, all who are reborn as the sons of God are the sons of Justice.
The just man is the offspring and son of justice. He is called, and actually is, the son because he becomes different in person but not in nature. “I and my Father are one” (Jn. 10:30): we “are,” that is to say . . . “one” in nature, because otherwise justice would not beget the just man, nor the Father the Son . . . Now if the Father and the Son, justice and the just man, are one and the same in nature, it follows that the just man is equal to, not less than, justice.9
Moreover, our being born into justice and into the son of justice is a process. “The just man is always in process of being born from justice itself.” And Jesus is “unbegotten justice itself.”10 Eckhart explains this birthing to justice elsewhere:
A person so fashioned, God’s son, being good as the son of goodness, just as the son of justice, insofar as he or she is the son of justice alone, then justice is unborn and yet bearing, and the son to whom justice gives birth has the self-same being as justice has and is, and he enters into all the properties of justice and truth.11
It is important in Eckhart’s theologizing on justice not to platonize him, for he himself has defined justice as giving each person what is his. He has also applied it to the subject of the rich over the poor, as we have seen. He also insists that justice Is that dimension of compassion which applies to your neighbor. For this is the nature of justice, namely, to direct a person to relationships with his fellow human beings. Compassion as justice is this kind of compassion. It regulates the interactions of people and their institutions.
Since compassion also boasts a mystical side—that of our relation to all of the cosmos and its origins and goal in compassion—Eckhart invokes as a summary of his teaching on compassion the psalmist, who sings:
“Justice and peace have kissed.” (Ps. 85:10)12
Eckhart insists that compassion begins at home, namely with oneself. We need to trust ourselves in order to trust the cosmos and to trust others, or, as Aristotle put it, “friendship toward others is rooted in the ability to be a friend to oneself.” It is the love and compassion toward ourselves that we will project onto others, as Jesus warned us when he said: “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” Eckhart asks: How then can anyone be compassionate toward me or toward you who is not compassionate toward himself? And then Eckhart draws an explicit conclusion: Christ wants us to be compassionate even to our own body and souI. Both body and soul are part of the blessing that creation is: if we bless them, they will bless us in return. We are reminded of Eckhart’s saying cited earlier, “the soul loves the body.” We learn compassion even from the relationship of soul and body. We will never learn it if we fall into dualistic battles of body warring against soul. The dialectical relationship—instead of dualistic relationship—is to be the very manner in which we relate to all of life. Indeed, humility itself, Eckhart says in this sermon, is our capacity for strength and for gentleness at once. By it we stand firm and we stand under, as in the Latin word substantia—to stand under. A substance, that is, a whole person, is one who can stand firm and under at the same time. This is authentic humility.
In this context of compassion toward our whole self, Eckhart turns to the subject of passion and compassion. In saying that God is compassionate without passion, Eckhart is not denying the God who feels whom we met in Sermon Ten. After all, in another sermon he says that “the wrath of God comes from love, for he is wrathful without bitterness.”13 And in another place he warns that “love, which is charity, is a fire.”14 This is reminiscent of Thomas Aquinas’ comment on Luke 6:36, when he writes that “compassion is the fire that Jesus came to set on the earth.”15 Eckhart also talks about our deeds of compassion as deeds of fire. He exegetes the flaming sword in the flight from Paradise story in Genesis in the following manner: “The flaming sword—this means that the soul should return to heaven through good and holy works which are done in a fiery love of God and fellow Christians. That we are thus brought home, God help us.”16 Thus Eckhart prays that we may become “fiery” in our love and passion for works of justice. Furthermore, he warns that without passion no compassionate deeds are accomplished: “All deeds are accomplished in passion. If the fiery love of God grows cold in the soul, it dies-, and if God is to have an effect on the soul, God must be united to the soul.”17 What then is he getting at in talking of passionless compassion? He is emphasizing, as he points out, that compassion is not feeling or sentiment alone. It includes the intellect and decision-making; it includes justice. It involves the reason and the will as well as the feelings.
We therefore are compassionate like the Father when we are compassionate not from passion, not from impulse, but from deliberate choice and reasonable decision. For Psalm 84 says: “Compassion and truth meet one another,” that is, passion and reason.
Indeed, Eckhart has just identified compassion and passion. Truth is reason, he says, and passion is compassion. Compassion, then, is a kind of passion, but it is not limited to emotions or rhetoric. Rather, it embraces reason and will as well as caring and feeling. And then it expresses itself in authentic deeds.
Eckhart nowhere calls for putting down passion, for that dualistic action would destroy the unitive starting point that all compassion presumes. Rather, he warns that passion by itself and without reason, judgment, and justice can get out of hand and mislead us. Thus he calls for our being very much on the alert lest the force of passion dominate our actions. “Being on the alert” is not the same as controlling, forgetting, or repressing. Otherwise we become like the horse and mule. Passion is present but not as our leader. It does nof take the lead but follows. It is to be put to the service of our decision-making and commitments. It is important that we not leave it behind as the Stoics would want to do. To allow passion to lead, however, would be a mistake. Dogs lead blind people, but passion does not lead us where we most want to go. Justice is a rational as well as an emotional issue.
The true role of senses, sensuality, and passion is to be instruments in our transformation. They participate fully in the joy and celebration that all compassion is about. We and our senses are transformed by such ecstasy.
The overflowing of happiness floods so copiously from the higher powers to the lower that the senses seem to be transformed into the nature of reason and reason into something higher, as is written in the book On Spirit and Soul.
Far from putting senses and passion down, compassion leads them into the origin and depth of ourselves where all transformation, and ultimately joyful celebration, dances. They are entrances to the depths of our selves. Our body becomes almost transparent when we become a risen body.
This joy overflows so powerfully into the very body that the body is totally submissive to the soul, like air to light, where there is no resistance, as is clear from the gifts of the risen body: clarity, inability to suffer, subtlety, and agility.
Eckhart turns to the promise Jesus makes to those who are compassionate. We move now to a consideration of the text about the good and overflowing measure which is poured into our lap. The first good that is poured into our lap as a result of compassion is the Compassionate One, God. God comes to us as goal and as the source of compassion. The first and most simple measure of all things is God . . . but the good is the last thing, the goal and the best: “No one is good but God alone.”
A second measure to our joy and celebration is that of the entire communion of saints. All saints swim in an ocean of compassion and rejoice where it is shared and lived out. All are in God, who is not the God of the dead but the God for all things, which live in him. The measure is called full because of the perfect and unmixed purity, that is, origin, of all of those over whom they rejoice. And so, the celebration is full and complete. It is a celebration, Eckhart points out, of pure and perfect integrity of joy in itself. It is a taste of heaven, of our fatherland. It is full because everything is full and pure in its source and precisely there, not outside. And compassion is our source. We have returned to celebrate at our origin, which is compassion. It is also a celebration of not yet, of our goal, for only with a taste of the goal is anything fulfilled. It is a rich rest where all good things gather. A reunion of goodness, Eckhart is saying I No wonder the celebration is so full. Furthermore, compassion is an overflowing abundance of heavenly joy that does not end, is not merited, exceeds our wildest hopes, expectations, and desires. Indeed, it is the origin of eternal life. This overflowing of happiness floods our whole selves—body and senses as well as spirit and mind—to the point of our being inebriated from the fullness of its energies. Eckhart describes this process elsewhere: “When the Lord descends the soul is fecundated and inebriated by compassion with an abundance of virtues and graces . . . ‘there arises in his days justice and abundance of peace’ (Ps. 72:7).” At such time we flow with “milk and honey, which means humanity and divinity.”18
No wonder, given such human and divine celebration, Eckhart can say that compassion brings glory and life to the individual. Then life will be full indeed, he exclaims, and cites Paul: “Eye has not seen nor ear heard nor has it entered the heart of a person what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Co. 2:9). Compassion indeed is the fullest of all divine births. It alone eventually leads to glory.