Passion for Creation

“Jesus went into a certain city, and a certain woman named Martha received him.” (Lk. 10:38)^a

Saint Luke writes in the Gospel: “Our Lord Jesus Christ went into a small city. A woman named Martha received him. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at our Lord’s feet and listened to his words. But Martha went about and served the dear Christ” (Lk. 10:38–40).

Three things caused Mary to sit at our Lord’s feet. The first was that God’s goodness had embraced her soul. The second was a great, unspeakable longing: she yearned without knowing what it was she yearned after, and she desired without knowing what she desired! The third was the sweet consolation and bliss that she derived from the eternal words that came from Christ’s mouth.

Three things also caused Martha to run about and serve her dear Christ. The first was a maturity of age and a depth of her being, which was thoroughly trained to the most external matters. For this reason, she believed that no one was so well suited for activity as herself. The second was a wise prudence that knew how to achieve external acts to the highest degree that love demands. The third was the high dignity of her dear guest.

The masters of the spiritual life say that God is ready for every person’s spiritual and physical satisfaction to the utmost degree that that person desires. We can clearly distinguish with respect to God’s dear friends how God satisfies our spiritual nature while, on the other hand, he also provides satisfaction for our physical nature. Satisfying our physical nature means that God gives us consolation, bliss, and satisfaction. Being spoiled in this way causes God’s good friends to go astray in the sphere of their inner senses. By way of contrast, spiritual satisfaction is satisfaction within the spirit. I speak of spiritual satisfaction when the highest peak of the soul is not so humbled that it drowns in a feeling of pleasure but rather stands in might above it. For people are in a state of spiritual satisfaction only when love and sorrow of creatures cannot humble the highest peak of their souls. I call a creature whatever we perceive and see beneath God.

Now Martha says: “Lord, tell her to help me.” Martha did not say this out of anger. She spoke rather out of loving kindness because she was hard pressed. We must indeed call it a loving kindness or a lovable form of teasing. How was this? Pay attention! She saw that Mary was reveling in a feeling of pleasure to her soul’s complete satisfaction. Martha knew Mary better than Mary knew Martha, for Martha had already lived quite a long time. Living offers the most noble kind of knowledge. Living causes pleasure and light to be better known than everything we can attain beneath God in this life. In a certain way pleasure and light are better known than what the light of eternity can bestow. For the light of eternity causes us always to know only ourselves and God but not ourselves without God; but life gives us to know ourselves without God (that is, by absenting ourselves from God). Only where life has looked at itself does it perceive more clearly the difference between like and unlike. Saint Paul on the one hand and the pagan scholars on the other attest to this. In his rapture Saint Paul saw God as well as himself in a spiritual way in God. And he still did not recognize intuitively in him each and every virtue in the most minute fashion. This was because he had not practiced each and every virtue in his actions. The pagan scholars, however, achieved through the practice of virtue such great knowledge that they clearly knew every virtue more accurately than Paul or any other saint in their first raptures.

This was how it was with Martha. Therefore she said: “Lord, tell her to help me.” It was as if she meant: “My sister thinks that she can already do what she wishes so long as she is only seated beneath your consolation. Let her know now if this is so, and tell her to get up and go away from you!” Next, it was tender love although Martha said it after due reflection. Mary was so filled with longing that she yearned without knowing why and desired without knowing what she desired! We cherish the suspicion that our dear Mary somehow had sat there more out of a feeling of pleasure than for spiritual gain. Therefore Martha said: “Lord, tell her to get up!” For she feared that Mary would remain in this feeling of pleasure and make no further progress. Then Christ replied to her: “Martha, Martha, you are concerned, you are upset about many things. One thing is necessary! Mary has chosen the better part, which can never be taken from her.”

Christ did not make this statement to Martha in a reproving way. He rather informed her and gave her the consolation that Mary would become the way she wished her to be.

But why did Christ say, “Martha, Martha,” and call her twice by name? Isidore says: “There is no doubt that before God became man, he never called by name anyone who was then lost. Concerning those he did not call by name there is doubt.” I characterize Christ’s calling people by name as his eternal wisdom, recorded before the creation of all creation from eternity to the present in the living book of the “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” None of those persons was lost who had been named by name or whose name was uttered by Christ This is attested by Moses to whom God himself said, “I have known you by name” (Ex. 33:12), and by Nathaniel to whom Christ said, “I knew you under the fig tree” (Jn. 1:50). The fig tree signifies a disposition that does not deny itself to God and whose name from all eternity was written in God. Thus it is proven that no one has ever been lost or will be lost whose name has been named by our dear Christ with his human mouth out of the eternal Word—that is to say, out of the eternal book, out of himself.

But why did he call Martha twice by name? He indicated in this way that Martha had practically everything in the way of temporal and eternal goods that a creature could possess. By his first “Martha” he implied her perfection in temporal activities. When he said “Martha” a second time, he indicated that she lacked nothing of everything needed for eternal happiness. For this reason he said, “You are concerned.” He meant by this that you are among things, but that things are not in you.

Those who are hindered in all their “pursuits,” however, are full of cares. On the other hand, those who manage all their activities in an orderly fashion after the model of the eternal Light are without hindrance. We manage an “activity” externally, but it is a “pursuit” if we devote ourselves to it internally and with comprehensible prudence. Such people are among things and not in things. They are quite close, and yet have no less than if they were up at the circle of eternity. “Quite close,” I say, for all creatures “serve as means.” There are two kinds of “means.” There is one kind without which I could not reach God. This is activity and “pursuits” in time that do not diminish our eternal happiness. The other “means” consists of giving up the first one. For we are placed in time so that we come closer to God and become more like him through “pursuits” that are enlightened by our reason.

This is what Saint Paul meant when he said: “Overcome the times; the days are evil” (Ep. 5:16). “To overcome the times” means that we unceasingly ascend toward God through our reason—not in the diversity of figurative ideas but in reasonable, lively truth. You should understand “the days are evil” in the following way. “Day” points to “night,” for if there were no night there would be no day, and we would also not speak of a day because then all would be just one light. This is what Paul was aiming at. For a bright life is indeed too small for there to be in it any darkness that veils or overshadows eternal happiness for an exalted spirit. This was also what Christ meant when he said: “Go forward as long as you have light” (Jn. 12:35). For all who are active in the light are soaring toward God, free and unencumbered of all that is intermediary. Their light is their works and their works are their light.

This was how things were with our dear Martha. Therefore he said to her: “One thing is necessary, not two things. I and you, embraced once by the eternal light—that is one thing.” The “two in one,” however, is a burning spirit that is above all things and yet is under God at the circle of eternity. This spirit is two things because it does not see God directly. Its knowledge and its being, or rather its knowledge and form of knowledge, never become one thing. We see God as quite formless where he is seen in the spirit. There one thing becomes two; two is one thing; light and spirit are one thing in the embrace of the eternal light.

Pay attention to what the “circle of eternity” is. The soul has three ways to God. One of them is to seek God in all creatures through multiple “pursuits” and through burning love. This is what King David meant when he said: “In all things I have sought rest” (Si. 24:11).

The second way is a wayless way that is free and yet bound. On it we are raised up and carried off without will and without form above ourselves and all things, although there is no essential permanency. This is what Christ meant when he said: “You are a happy man, Peter! Flesh and blood do not enlighten you but an elevation into reason when you say ‘God’ to me: my Father, rather, has revealed this to you” (Mt. 16:17). Even Saint Peter did not see God unveiled. Yet he indeed was swept up above all created power of comprehension through the power of the heavenly Father, up to the “circle of eternity.” I say that he was seized fully unaware by the heavenly Father in a loving embrace with impetuous power and in a spirit that was gazing fixedly on high. This spirit was swept up above all power of comprehension into the might of the heavenly Father. Saint Peter was addressed from above in a tone sweetly creative but free of all physical joy, in the simple truth of the unity of the God-man and in the person of the heavenly Father and Son. I boldly state that, if Saint Peter had directly seen God in his nature at that time, as he later did, and as Saint Paul did when he was snatched up to the third heaven, the speech of even the most noble angel would have seemed coarse to him. But he spoke there many a sweet word of which our sweet Jesus had no need. For he who stands quite directly before God in the freedom of the true presence sees into the depth of the heart and the spirit. This is what Saint Paul meant when he said: “A man was caught up and heard such things that are unutterable for all humanity” (2 Co. 12:2–5). From this you can know that Saint Peter was just “at the circle of eternity” but still not seeing God’s unity in his own being.

The third way is indeed called a “way,” yet it means being “at home”: seeing God directly in his own being. Our dear Christ says, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the life” (Jn. 14:6) : one Christ in the Person, one Christ in the Father, one Christ in the Spirit as three—-Way, Truth, and Life—one as our dear Jesus in whom all this is. Outside this way all creatures form an encirclement and a separating “means.” But on this way all creatures are led to God the Father by the light of his Word and are surrounded by the love of the Holy Spirit for them both. This goes beyond everything we can grasp in the Word.

Listen then to this wonder! How wonderful it is to be both outside and inside, to seize and to be seized, to see and at the same time to be what is seen, to hold and to be held—that is the goal where the spirit remains at rest, united with our dear eternity.

We now wish to return to our statement that our dear Martha and, with her, all God’s friends are “among cares” but not “within cares.” In this connection, activity in time is just as noble as any kind of linking of self and God. For it carries us just as close as possible to the highest thing, except for the vision of God in his pure nature. For this reason Christ says: “You are among things and among cares,” and means that she was exposed indeed to the lower powers of sadness and sorrow, for she had not been spoiled by a tasting of the spirit. She was among things, not in things. She was separated from things and they from her.

In particular, three things are indispensable in our activity: that we act in an orderly, judicious, and prudent way. I call “orderly” whatever corresponds in all matters to what is highest. But I call “judicious” whatever we cannot do better at the time. And finally I call something “prudent” when we trace in good actions the lively truth with its beneficial presence. When these three points are present, they convey us just as close to God and they are just as beneficial as all the joys of Mary Magdalene in the desert.

Christ says: “You are concerned about many things, not about one thing.” This means that, if a soul is purely, simply, and without all “pursuits” directed toward “the circle of eternity,” it will be “concerned.” If it is hindered by something like a separating “means” from its ability to remain up there in joy, then such a person will be concerned about this hindrance and will be among cares and affliction. But Martha possessed a mature, well-established virtue and an undisturbed disposition that was unhindered by all things. For this reason she wanted her sister to be placed in the same situation, for she saw that her sister was not yet essentially in it. Out of a mature depth of soul she wanted Mary to be in everything that has to do with eternal happiness. On this account Christ says: “One thing is necessary!”

What is this one thing? It is the One, and that is God. This one thing is necessary for all creatures. For if God were to attract to himself what is his, all creatures would become nothing. If God were to remove from Christ’s soul what is his in the place where the spirit of the soul is united with the eternal Person, Christ would remain just a creature. Therefore we have indeed need of this one thing. Martha was afraid that her sister would remain in a feeling of pleasure. She wanted her to become like herself. On this account Christ meant: “Be reassured, Martha, she has chosen the better part, which will lose itself in her. The highest thing that can happen to a creature will happen to her. She will be as happy as you.”

Let yourselves be instructed concerning the virtues! A virtuous life depends on three matters that have to do with our will. The first is to surrender our will to God, for it will be inevitable for us to carry out fully what we then know, whether it be in rejection or acceptance. There are three kinds of wills. The first is a “physical” will, the second a will “enlightened by reason,” and the third an “eternal” will. The physical will yearns for instruction, and wants us to listen to truthful teachers.

The will enlightened by reason consists of our following all the actions of Jesus Christ and the saints. This means conducting our words, actions, and “pursuits” in a way uniformly directed toward what is highest. If all this is fulfilled, God will send down an additional depth within the soul. This is an eternal will along with the loving commandment of the Holy Spirit. Then the soul will say: “Lord, inspire me as to what your eternal will is!” If the soul satisfies in this way what we have demonstrated previously, and if the soul then is pleasing to God, our dear Father will proclaim his eternal Word in the soul.

Our upright people, however, say that we must become so perfect that no kind of joy can move us any longer, that we must be immovable to joy or sorrow. They are wrong in this matter. But I say that there was never a saint so great that he or she could not be moved. Moreover, I say in reply that it indeed happens, even in this life, that nothing can take the saints away from God. Do you think that, so long as words can move you to joy or sorrow, you are imperfect? It is not so! This was not the case even for Christ. He let us know this when he said: “My soul is grieved to the point of death” (Mt. 26:38). Christ was so grieved by words that even if all the woes of creation befell a single creature, it would not have been so bad as the woe Christ felt This was because of the nobility of his nature and the holy union of the divine and human nature in him. Thus I say that there have never been saints whom sorrow did not grieve and love did not please, and there never will be such saints. Occasionally we might find saints so influenced by God’s love, kindness, and mystery that we might reproach them for their belief or some other reason when they remain bathed in grace and indifferent to good times or bad times. On the other hand, saints may make so much progress that nothing can take them away from God. Even though the heart of such a saint may be grieved that people are not in the state of grace, his or her will remains quite uniformly in God and says: “Lord, I belong to you and you to me!” Whatever may happen to such a person does not hinder his or her eternal happiness so long as the very peak of the spirit is not affected in the place where the spirit is united with God’s most precious will.

Christ says: “You are worried about many problems.” Martha was so real that her works did not hinder her. Her activity and works brought her to eternal happiness. This happiness was indeed somewhat indirect, but a noble nature, constant industry, and virtue, as mentioned above, are very helpful in this connection. Mary also had to become such a Martha before she would become the mature Mary. For when she sat at our Lord’s feet, she was still not the true Mary. Of course, she was so according to her name but not yet in her being. For she sat still in a feeling of pleasure and sweetness, was received into the school, and learned how to live. But Martha remained quite real there. Therefore she said: “Lord, tell her to get up!” as if to say: “Lord, I wish her not to sit there in pleasure. I would much prefer for her to learn how to live so that she will have life wholly as her own. Tell her to get up so that she can become complete.” Her name was not Mary when she sat at Christ’s feet. I rather call Mary a well-practiced body that is obedient to wise instruction. Also, I call it obedience when the will is sufficient for what our insight commands.

Our honest people believe that they can manage their affairs so that the presence of physical things no longer has any significance. But they cannot achieve this. I shall never reach the point where a painful buzzing is as beneficial to my ears as a sweet piece of string music. In this connection we should add that, if our insight perceives the painful buzzing, then a will formed by knowledge suits the insight and instructs the physical will not to be concerned about it. Then the will says: “I shall do so gladly!” Behold, there would be a struggle against desire. For what a person has to fight with great effort will become the joy of that person’s heart. Only then will it become fruitful.

Certain people, however, wish to manage things so extensively that they become unencumbered of activities. But I said: “This cannot happen!” Only after the disciples received the Holy Spirit did they begin to carry out acts of virtue. For this reason, when Mary was sitting at our Lord’s feet, she was still learning. Then she was admitted into the school and learned how to live. Later, however, when Christ had gone up to heaven and she had received the Holy Spirit, she began to be of service. She traveled across the sea, preached, taught, and became a helper of the disciples. When the saints become saints, they begin to carry out acts of virtue. For only then do they gather a treasure for their eternal happiness. Everything that formerly was accomplished atones only for guilt and averts punishment. On this point we have a proof in Christ. From the beginning, when God became a human and humans God, he began to do things for our happiness until the end when he died on the cross. There was no limb of his body that had not practiced a special virtue.

May God help us to follow him sincerely in the practice of the true virtues! Amen.

COMMENTARY: How Work Is as Noble and Spiritual as the Desert Itself/How Spiritual Maturity Is the Basis for a Spirituality of Work and Where This Maturity Is Learned/Work Becomes Spiritual Work When We Are Among Things But Not In Things/A Theology of Work Presumes an Appreciation of Matter, the Senses, and Passion

It is evident from the previous sermon that Eckhart’s spirituality is not in opposition to complete involvement in the world. As deeply mystical as he is, he in no way pits spirituality against activity or prayer against work. In fact, as he insists in the present sermon, a person who is too involved in religious feelings, who is “basking in religious feelings,” as Caputo puts it,¹ is an immature person living an immature spirituality. If we have not yet integrated our activity and our mysticism, then we are still dualists and part of the sinful condition that lies behind all sin and lack of compassion. For Eckhart, work is an absolutely essential ingredient to the living and expression of spirituality. Our work is noble; it is spiritual; it is divine. For it is the bringing about of the kingdom of God and the new creation wherever we live and wherever we work. Far from competing with spiritual activities, our work actually brings us closer to God. For we are placed in time so that we come closer to Cod and become more like him through “pursuits” that are enlightened by our reason. Our works that are done from within the Compassion and Justice that God is convey us just as close to God and they are just as beneficial as all the joys of Mary Magdalene in the desert. There is no longer any conflict between contemplation and action for those who are bathed in the true meaning and origin of work.

Indeed, our works “overcome the evil times” one often lives in insofar as they bring about the new time, the end time, the new creation and are immersed in realized eschatology. They bring about a time of light, not darkness; joy, not sadness; peace, not discord. For a bright life is in-deed too small for there to be in it any darkness that veils or overshadows eternal happiness for an exalted spirit. For this exalted spirit our works become the new light that accompanies the dawn of the new creation—light was the first of God’s acts of creation in Genesis, chapter one—and the new light becomes our activities and work. For those whose activities take place in the light of the new creation, their light is their works and their works are their light. Called to become sons of God, we are also called to become sons and daughters of light and creation, who enlighten the world and whose reason and activity is itself enlightened.

“The light will be with you only a little longer now.

Walk while you have the light,

or the dark will overcome you;

he who walks in the dark does not know where he is going.

While you still have the light,

believe in the light

and you will become sons of light.” (Jn. 12:35–36)

Eckhart combines this admonition to “walk in the light” with the warning from Paul that it is our lives and our activity that constitute this “walking” and this redeeming of our often evil times.

You were darkness once, but now you are light in the Lord; be like children of light, for the effects of the light are seen in complete goodness and right living and truth. Try to discover what the Lord wants of you, having nothing to do with the futile works of darkness but exposing them by contrast . . . This may be a wicked age, but your lives should redeem it . . . be filled with the Spirit . . . so that always and everywhere you are giving thanks to God who is our Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Ep. 5:8–11, 16, 18, 20)

If our gratitude to God the Creator is truly to be an “always and everywhere” gratitude, then surely for adults our work and activity is integral to this gratitude. In this sermon Eckhart continues to develop a theology of work as a spirituality. When does our work become a spirituality? A holy work? A work integral to building and maintaining spirituality?

First, when it arises from the depth of our being. In the previous sermon and Commentary we saw Eckhart develop at some length his theology of work as a theology of the creative Word—that all true work is born from the depths of one’s creativity. Indeed, that only creative work is authentic human work (see also Sermon Twenty-nine). In the present sermon he lists three elements to what he calls the work of the mature person or three elements to what the economist E. F. Schumacher in our day calls “good work.”² First is a depth of being which was thoroughly trained to the most external matters—in other words, Martha had the experience that practice brings in doing her work well. Indeed, she had such self-confidence in her own skills that she believed that no one else was so well suited for activity as herself. She had pride in her work and in her capacity to do her work well. Second, Martha, who is Eckhart’s symbol of a mature person and a mature worker, possessed a wise prudence that knew how to achieve external acts to the highest degree that love demands. In other words, she could translate her goals of love and living without a why into her actions and her activity. She knew how to bring compassion about. And third, her work of serving Christ was born of the noble dignity of the person she was serving. The sign of Martha’s maturity was the fact that her work did not hinder her relationship to God and vice versa. She knew this ultimate truth about the interdependence of work and spirituality: activity in time is just as noble as any kind of linking of self and God. In other words, contrary to many traditional exegeses of the Martha/Mary story and the theology of action/contemplation that was behind these interpretations, Eckhart believes that contemplation is not better than, nor, in the mature person, even different from, work. For work too carries us just as close as possible to the highest thing, except for the vision of God in his pure nature. Compassion and the works born of compassion are themselves acts of contemplation. This is the fullness of spiritual maturity: to be in the world, active in the world, and yet not hindered by these actions from being always in God. It is our being real: Martha was so real that her works did not hinder her. Her activity and works brought her to eternal happiness. Caputo calls this interpretation of the Martha/Mary story by Eckhart a “startling reinterpretation” of the Gospel narrative and “one of Eckhart’s most inventive sermons.”³

Where does one learn this maturity of union between work and spirituality that Eckhart insists must be the sign of a spiritually advanced person or society? It is learned in the school of living. Martha was more mature than Mary because Martha had already lived quite a long time. Living is the finest school for spirituality and compassion: living offers the most noble kind of knowledge. Indeed, a life lived in depth and in appreciation and in awareness is the best spiritual training that exists. Living causes pleasure and light to be better known than everything we can attain beneath God in this life. And living includes working: it is far more than mere religious satisfactions or contemplative feelings. These latter goals are those of the immature spiritual seeker, whom we have in the example of Mary. We cherish the suspicion that our dear Mary somehow had sat there more out of a feeling of pleasure than for spiritual gain. Those who seek feelings of pleasure in their spirituality need to grow up to the level of living that includes integrating their work with their desire for compassion. For true spiritual breakthrough, as we saw in Path Three, is not at the level of emotion but at the full experience of birthing. In giving birth we are ourselves birthed. And our work is such an activity of giving birth. Mary was learning how to live while sitting at Jesus’ feet, but Martha already knew how. Only later was Mary so full of the Holy Spirit that she knew what true service meant. She learned how to work and do works of compassion. When the saints become saints, they begin to carry out acts of virtue. The full expression of the Spirit, then, is in our work that brings about the Spirit’s intentions. Spiritual satisfaction is satisfaction within the spirit. Such a spirituality does not drown in a feeling of pleasure but, rather, stands in might above it and does the works of the Spirit, unhindered by any temptations to dualism.

How do we learn to work in the world without being of the world and to work out of spiritual maturity instead of out of feelings of pleasure alone? How do we learn how to live? It is by learning to live among things but not in them. Jesus was saying to Martha, you are among things, but things are not in you. Work is deeply spiritual when we, like Martha and all God’s friends, can exist “among cares” but not “within cares.” What it means to be a person who is among things but not in things is that we do more than merely manage our affairs in an external manner; we devote ourselves to them internally and with comprehensible prudence. In other words, we are committed to works that are, in fact, of the highest order, of the new creation. There are two kinds of means or two ways we can treat the creaturely elements of our work: in one way, our activities lead us to God; in the other way they do not. In other words, for Eckhart there is no distinction between good works and bad works based on the being or nature of the work itself. The distinction is based on the end result of the work. For all work, like all being, insofar as it is being, is holy and good and divine. But its results may not be such, and if the work is not capable of drawing our commitment from deep within ourselves, it is most likely not a work that is worthy of our divine calling. When our work fulfills the following criteria, that is, when it corresponds . . . to what is highest and is therefore a striving for the best; when it is the best we can do at the time; and when we can trace in good actions the lively truth of its beneficial presence, in other words, when we see good fruits from it, then work becomes holy. So holy, in fact, that such work is at least as holy as contemplative experiences. They convey us just as close to God and they are just as beneficial as all the joys of Mary Magdalene in the desert.

How is it possible that we can work among things but not in things? It is possible to the very extent that we are already grounded and at home in God. If we are in God thoroughly, then we do not fall into being in things instead. Being concerned and being committed is a good thing. But the finest way to be concerned and caring is to remain outside of things, without all works. We are outside them because we are inside God. When we are well grounded in God, then we can be among things and among our work without being among cares and affliction. We can let go of our work. At some deep level we are beyond the hindrances that too much attachment can bring. Martha possessed a mature, well-established virtue and an undisturbed disposition that was unhindered by all things. Because we are so intimately in God, the peak of our spirit remains uninfluenced by the wearisome troubles that activity brings with it. Whatever may happen to such a person does not hinder his or her eternal happiness so long as the very peak of the spirit is not affected in the place where the spirit is united with God’s most precious will. Thus Eckhart has recourse once again to his basic theology of panentheism, a theology of inness, to explain his theology of work. The third way to God is our being at home in all we do and wherever we are. But being at home with God is being in God and having all of our actions flow from this divine source. Such a way of being and of acting is a dialectical way filled with wonder and beauty. Listen to this wonder! How wonderful it is to be both outside and inside, to seize and to be seized, to see and at the same time to be seen, to hold and to be held—that is the goal where the spirit remains at rest, united with our dear eternity. In this way and along its path we spin and flow out from the circle of eternity like energy spiraling out of a falling star or springing from a sprung and empty tomb. It is “eternal” energy because it is always new, always being born, always creative and giving birth. Such is the work of those who work among things but in God and therefore not in things. Such is the work of those mature persons who have learned to let go and let be while still caring and committing themselves to the divine work that compassion is. Thus Caputo can comment how for Eckhart true perfection “nourishes itself in the midst of activity” and deep spirituality that is adult takes place amid an “active and robust commerce with things.”⁴

The authentic grounding for our authentic work is God. There is one thing necessary. What is this one thing? It is God. Yet our being bathed in God as one thing, our swimming in the divine ocean of compassion, is this very same one thing that erases all separations, all dualisms, all two’s. This union of us and God includes our work and God. Our work is not two but one, and we and God and our work are not two or three but one. When our consciousness toward work alters, then our work—instead of being two things in relation to our spirituality—becomes diaphanous and transparent. In it we can “apprehend all things.” A person “must always do one thing at a time; he cannot do everything at once. It must always be one thing, and in this one thing we must apprehend all things.”⁵

When the one necessary thing, namely God, embraces us, then all becomes united and our work becomes our prayer and vice versa. For the God who embraces us is a God of Compassion and from this nearness to Compassion our compassionate works flow. It should be remembered in this respect that the Gospel text Eckhart is commenting on, Luke 10:38—42, follows immediately on two discourses by Jesus on compassion: that of the one great commandment and that on the Good Samaritan as an example of a compassionate person (see Sermon Thirty-seven). Eckhart was not unaware of how the Martha/Mary story properly belonged within this same instruction on how to become compassionate. As one contemporary exegete puts it, commenting on this same story of Martha and Mary: “Having illustrated the command to love one’s neighbor [in the Good Samaritan story] Luke describes the meaning of the commandment to love God . . . In contrast to the Samaritans, who have rejected Jesus, Martha receives him as a guest in her house.”⁶

True obedience, Eckhart suggests, is related to our work. It is when the will is sufficient for what our insight commands. True obedience to God’s work carries out this word—which is always a creative work—in our work. It perseveres and is true to the insight it has received. Mere listening—which is what Mary did while sitting at Jesus’ feet in hopes of learning the word of God—is not enough. We are called to follow God truly in the practice of compassion.

But true compassion presumes passion. It presumes a relationship—but a correct one—with things. There are honest people who imagine that they can manage their affairs so that the presence of physical things no longer has any significance. But they cannot achieve this. Physical things are important to the spiritual person and to the work of such a person and to deny it is to forsake compassion and to fall into dualisms. I shall never reach the point where a painful buzzing is as beneficial to my ears as a sweet piece of string music. In other words, love your senses! Let your ears be! Let them enjoy the difference between good music and painful noise and relish the former. From this spring of celebration and union, true compassion is learned. For Eckhart, as for the prophets of Israel,⁷ the only proper basis for a prophetic or compassionate spirituality is a sensual one. Sensual spirituality forms a basis for his theology of work. For only a sensual spirituality is itself nondualistic and seeks out the harmonious living that all true compassion is about.⁸ We cannot be compassionate toward others if we are dualistic and in a master-slave relationship with our own senses or our own passions. Eckhart resists all temptations to emotional stoicism. We are to be moved, not refrain from being moved!

Being moved, being passionate, is integral to being perfect or compassionate. Do you think that, so long as words can move you to joy or sorrow, you are imperfect? It is not sol And Eckhart invokes the example of Christ, the firstborn of the compassionate sons of God. Christ let us know the importance of feeling and passion when he said: “My soul is grieved to the point of death” (Mt. 2638). Indeed, the sensitivity Christ felt to pain and suffering stemmed from the very Godhead itself that suffers pain. His passion stemmed from the nobility of his nature and the holy union of the divine and human natures in him. We remain unmovable in God but vulnerable to the pain and suffering that is part of human existence. Indeed, there can be no authentic compassion without this sense of well-developed vulnerability.

A spirituality of work culminates in our becoming “fellow helpers with God.”⁹ Being fellow workers with the Creator, we are busy bringing about the new creation. By breaking into the depths of the Creator we emerge as co-creators “in everything we do.”

I have often said: “The shell must be cracked apart if what is in it is to come out; for if you want the kernel, you must break the shell” . . . When the soul finds the One who gathers all things into itself, there your soul must stay. Who “honors” God? He or she who intends to honor God in everything he or she does.¹⁰

Everything we do—all our work and activity—is an honor to God if it comes from within self and from within God, if it is born of our breakthrough and rebirth in God. Then the work and the Word become so closely united that the work is accomplished “divinely in God.” For when

the soul is united with God and embraced by God, and grace escapes the soul so that it now no longer accomplishes things with grace but divinely in God. Thus the soul is in a wonderful way enchanted and loses itself.¹¹

Our work is more than work. It is an enchantment. A divine act of creation and re-creation which is also a recreation. It is compassion on the loose.