Passion for Creation

Note first of all that what is loved the most and loved first is the measure of all things that are lovable or loved. Hence, according to the philosopher, “friendliness toward another comes or flows from friendliness toward oneself.” The person who loves God with his or her whole heart surely loves himself or herself on account of God or in God. Hence the Lord, in instructing us in the meaning of love or affection, most fittingly puts the love of God with the whole heart in first place; and when this is achieved there follows most appropriately the commandment: Love your neighbor as yourself. And so you are to love yourself as you do your neighbor on account of God and in God. Otherwise, God would not be the first thing loved or the measure of our love. “For what is first in anything whatsoever is the cause of those things which come after.”

Again, God is not loved with one’s whole heart if something is loved that is not in him and not on account of him. Jesus mentions the “neighbor” first and “yourself” second in order to point out the full equality or parity or even identity of love of self and love of neighbor. The love of self, therefore, is no measure of the love of neighbor, but love of God from the whole heart is the measure or the principle and cause of love of both self and neighbor.

The measure of all love and of every virtuous act in general is, in principle, virtue or the love of virtue. Indeed, every virtuous person loves virtue more than oneself and one’s neighbor as oneself. For such a virtuous person, virtue stands for God and, in fact, virtue is like God and God is virtue for him or her. Consequently, the law of God and the commandment of God—virtue and truth—are loved by every virtuous or perfect and good person from the whole heart and “more than gold and topaz” (Ps. 119), and beyond oneself and “beyond thousands of gold and silver pieces” (Ps. 119:72).

Augustine writes in his De Vero Religione and in the De Libero Arbitrio that the law of God is the principle and root of all human laws and actions, and, further, that it is not right to judge the divine law, but that our laws ought to be judged according to it Augustine especially says that the law of God is superior to us and therefore we ought not to pass judgment on it. When he says it is superior to us, he means that it is more loving toward us than we are toward ourselves and therefore it is the principle and measure of love by which we also love ourselves and our neighbor. For otherwise it would not be beyond us or superior to us, that is, more excellent or more gracious and more pleasing. Bernard says in his Epistle on Charity: “In this love the joys of eternity and all heavenly sweetness are stored. In this love are peace, patience, long-suffering, and joy in the Holy Spirit and whatever pleasure the mind can conceive and more.”

“Your neighbor as yourself.” Augustine, near the beginning of his De Domo Disciplinae, says: “Your neighbors are many. Every person is a neighbor to every other person. Father and son, father-in-law and son-in-law are neighbors to one another. Nothing is so much of a neighbor as a person and another person . . . One should seek to discover, therefore, whether the person who is committed to neighborly love loves himself so that he may love these others as himself. Truly ‘he who loves iniquity hates his own soul’ and therefore if you love iniquity you hate yourself. How could you want to be committed to your neighbor and love him as you do yourself if you are busy destroying yourself? For if you love yourself in this way, that is, as destroying yourself, I do not want to love anyone else as you do yourself. Either perish alone or change your way of loving and quit society.”

Love “your neighbor as you love yourself”—not as you hate yourself. Augustine says in the fourteenth book of De Trinitate: “He who knows how to love himself loves God. But he who does not love God, does not even love himself, even if it is natural for him to do so. Hence it can be said that he hates himself since he acts to his own disadvantage and he persecutes himself as if he were his own enemy . . . But when the mind loves God it is right and proper to love one’s neighbor as oneself. For then one is loving not perversely but rightly when he loves God whose image we participate in. Our participation is not only in the image as it is, but even more so as it is renewed from having been old and is reformed from its deformity and is restored from wretchedness to blessedness.”

“Your neighbor as yourself.” This is not only a commandment, but also a promise or reward. For if I love any neighbor at all, as I do myself, then I enjoy, I delight and rejoice at his or her reward, merit, and glory just as much as at my own. Moreover, in such a situation there is no my nor your nor do I love or have affection for what is mine or yours. For this reason I rejoice no less at this person’s joy than at my own. One therefore will rejoice just as much at another’s glory as at one’s own. Take the example of a foot. It loves the eye in the head more than itself. And when the foot is stepped on, the tongue speaks out: “You are stepping on my foot.” When it comes to things that are first, each is in each and “all are in all.” In Corinthians (1 Co. 3:22) we read: “All things are yours.” A person rejoices, therefore, at the good of another, both because he loves him equally and because they are one, although this does not mean that they make one single person.

Take the example of the whole person who sees with the eyes, hears with the ears, speaks with the mouth, and so forth. Or consider the example of the whole fiery sphere that fills space according to different parts which are natural and appropriate with each and every part. Taking and having through another what it does not take or have in itself, it shares its being with every other part. Its being in one thing is not different or superior to another, but it is immediate, being without a medium, and supreme without being superior. These analogues apply in moral matters as well and in the matter of gratuitous gifts: The blessed person takes divine gifts in himself or in others, and then his desire can rest, when all are one in God, in charity and in the Holy Spirit. That which he does not receive in himself he rejoices to see received in another, especially since he loves the other as he loves himself. For when a person with whom I am one receives anything at all, I also receive it. Yes, I too. For all the saints are one in God but do not make one single person.

Consider this example: When part of a log is thrown in the fire and changes into a spark or a sort of fire, soon it deserts the log by which, through which, and in which it once had its whole being as an intimate part of itself and it flees backward and tends upward, as it were, forgetting itself, even though it will be extinguished on its way. Everyone, therefore, who loves God from one’s whole heart necessarily loves his neighbor as himself. Otherwise he does not love “with all his heart.”

“As yourself.” The word “as” bespeaks equality; this is clear from Augustine’s De Disciplina Christiana, where he says: “You will not find an equal to God, of whom it may be said: Love God as you love that person. A rule has been found for you concerning your neighbor because you have been found to be equal to your neighbor.” Therefore, one who has God and who loves him loves his neighbor equally and on a par with himself. Whence Augustine in the passage referred to on several occasions above uses the text found in Mark 12: “Love your neighbor as much as (tamquam) yourself.” “As much as” is what the word tamquam means. Thus we see in nature that the eye does not see for itself more than for another part of the body. It sees first of all for the whole and for itself, and on account of the whole it sees for other parts and for itself and insofar as they are in the whole and insofar as they are something of the whole in fact or in anticipation, that is to say, either because they already are or they may be.

But Luke in his tenth chapter seems to say the opposite. To the lawyer who asks: “Who is my neighbor?” the Lord replies that neither priest nor Lévite is a neighbor but the one “who had compassion.” Therefore, not every person should be loved or liked as much as one loves oneself. Therefore, not every person should be loved in the same way or as much as one loves oneself.

But my reply to this objection is that by the very word of the Lord what I am saying is true. For he says: “Go and do likewise.” It is as if he were saying, like the Samaritan, who was neither a priest nor a Levite, and who cared for the wounded man, pouring wine and oil on his wounds, etc.: “So too should you act toward every person regardless of ties of affection, relationship, or reward. Take nothing into account except the need and the necessity of this other person.”

“With your whole heart” The creature is distinguished in its own way by the fact that it cannot be divided. It is divided from others but undivided in itself. Hence the more undivided or the less divided it is in itself, the more divided it is from others; and, conversely, the more it is distinguished from others, the less it is distinguished in itself. In the first example we have a cause; in the second, a sign. And so with a person or a soul whom God has told to love with all one’s heart, it might be said as it was of certain others: “Their heart is divided, now they will die (Ho. 10:2). The first reason for such a death is that a person divided from God is thereby divided from being, which is from God alone. A second reason is that every division is a separation from the one, from the whole, from the perfect, and therefore from being. For one and being are interchangeable. A third reason why death results from division is that division of its very nature is a journey into nonbeing (non esse). If an object of two cubits is divided, none of its parts is two cubits. Moreover, a division is of its very nature a privation. But nothing—no thing, no being—exists as a result of privation. Furthermore, God is not in division; but since God is in all being, that in which God does not exist is nonbeing. Therefore, since God has ordered that he be loved with the whole heart, whatever in the heart does not love God is nothing. It is nothing both because it is divided and because all things love God. The psalmist sings: “All things serve Thee” (Ps. 119:91).

Again, a heart is said to be divided when it is dispersed in many directions and toward many objects. However, “every kingdom divided against itself shall be brought to ruin” (Lk. 11:17). Taken literally, we see that a virtue that is divided grows defective, is extinguished, and decays. Near the beginning of the first book in his De Ordine, Augustine says: “A soul which sets out toward many things is pursuing poverty greedily, completely oblivious to the fact that greed can be avoided only by keeping oneself apart.” And then he adds: “The more the soul seeks to embrace many things, the more it suffers deprivation.” He gives the following example: “Take any sized circle and there is a center where everything converges . . . This center dominates everything else by a certain law of equality so that if you wished to exit from it into any direction everything would be lost by your decision to journey into so much multiplicity. In the same way, a soul poured forth from itself is torn apart by too much universality and is wasted by true poverty or falsity because its very nature urges it to seek oneness everywhere; yet multiplicity prevents its finding this oneness.”

Augustine alludes to this point in De Vita Christiana: “The great virtue of piety is peace and unity, because God is one.” And therefore, “those who are cut off from unity do not possess this”—or God. The reason is that one and many are opposites. And yet without unity there would be no multiplicity. Hence Augustine says at the end of chapter twelve of the fourteenth book of his De Trinitate, “It is a great misery of the human person not to be with him without whom one could not exist. For there is no doubt that without him in whom we exist there is no being. And still if we do not remember him and if we do not understand him or do not love him, then we are not with him.”

“You should love your Lord your God” because in him alone does the soul find rest. In the first book of the Confessions, Augustine says: “You have made us for yourself . . .” First, because nothing better than God can be imagined. Second, because he is the “Beginning and the End” (Rv. 22:13). Third, because “his flowers are fruits” (Si. 24:23). Fourth, because a person does not do well who could do better, as Augustine has said. And vice versa—if he cannot do better, he is doing well.

“Your God.” Augustine says your God will be yours wholly. You will eat him up, lest you starve, you will drink him, lest you thirst, you will be illumined by him lest you go blind, you will be sustained by him, lest you grow weary. Whole and entire, he will possess you whole and entire, lest you become narrow there. With him, with whom you possess the whole, you will have the whole, because you and he will be one and he who will possess us will have one whole. The reason for this is that without him all things would be nothing for you.

Here it should be noted that those who love and savor God himself do not love him on account of his eternity nor do they love him more because he is eternal or because he is wise or good or any other such thing. On the contrary, they love, enjoy, and savor eternity, wisdom, and all such things solely because they are God and from God and in God. One does not love God for the sake of something else but one loves all other things, no matter what names they might boast of, on account of God. And they love God for his own sake.

COMMENTARY: The Meaning of Torah Is Compassion, Where Love of God and Love of Neighbor Are One Love/Holiness Means Wholeness/The Identity of Ourselves and Our Neighbor/The Mystical Body Rejoices Banquet-style Because All Things Love God/God Too Rejoices and Is Tickled Through and Through by Our Works of Compassion

The Gospel text that Eckhart has chosen for this sermon is a classic text on Jesus’ teaching about the law of Yahweh. This Torah or way of walking through life is less a commandment than a promise or reward. It is less an ethic than it is a way of life, a Torah, a spirituality. It is a law of life and a way of life called compassion. Compassion realizes that all is one, all is in God and therefore to love self or others is to love God. And to relieve the pain of self or others is to relieve God’s pain; and the converse is true also, to love God is to relieve the pain of self and others. This is why the story of compassion—the Good Samaritan story—follows from the quest about the one great commandment in Luke’s Gospel. The following text, then, is Eckhart’s starting point for this sermon:

There was a lawyer who, to disconcert Jesus, stood up and said to him, “Master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the Law? What do you read there?” He replied, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” “You have answered right,” said Jesus, “do this and life is yours.”

But the man was anxious to justify himself and said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was once on his way down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of brigands . . . But a Samaritan traveler who came upon him was moved with compassion when he saw him. He went up and bandaged his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them . . .(Lk. 10:55–30, 33–34)

The summary of the law or Torah is oneness: God-love and neighborly love are one. But compassion too is a law of oneness and wholeness. It too is a summation of Torah and the way to walk in the law of God. If our heart is divided, we will die, warns Eckhart—we were made for unity, for compassion. Or as Jesus puts it, “do this and life is yours.” The doing of Torah, the doing of God’s one great commandment, is the doing that Jesus is talking of. Compassion is not restricted to feeling—it is doing: a doing based on awareness of the pain of others. Jesus says: “Go and do likewise” It is as if he were saying, like the Samaritan, who was neither a priest nor a Levite, and who cared for the wounded man, pouring wine and oil on his wounds, etc.: “So too should you act toward every person.” Eckhart invokes one of the Torah psalms, Psalm 119, on several occasions in this sermon and makes the connection between the law Jesus asks the lawyer to reflect on and the joy he promises from following this law—a law that is not a commandment but a promise and reward. In that psalm we read:

I put the Law you have given

before all the gold and silver in the world.

Yahweh, my maker, my preserver,

explain your commandments for me to learn.

Seeing me, those who fear you will be glad,

since I put my hope in your word . . .

Treat me tenderly, and I shall live,

since your Law is my delight. (Ps. 119:72–74, 77)

The theme of delight at God’s law permeates Eckhart’s sermon and, as we shall see, crescendos in a banquet of heavenly rejoicing. It also permeates Psalm 119, where numerous times God’s law is called our “delight.”

But the doing that God’s law is about, and that is the doing of compassion, is not just any doing; it is not even an ethical doing of right over wrong. It is a doing born of a consciousness of wholeness and oneness. It is born of the common sea that we are all bathed in. It is born of the holiness that wholeness is. It is born of our experience of being altogether in God. A person divided from God is thereby divided from being, which is from God alone. To exist outside the circle of being that is God is not to exist at all. For one and being are interchangeable. To divide is to destroy. An object of two cubits cut in half is no longer and will never again be the object of two cubits. Separateness, the sin behind sin, is a journey into nonbeing. Thus it is as much a journey into death as the law Jesus pronounces from the Torah—a law of oneness, interdependence, and compassion—is a journey into life. Our experience of being in God is a holistic experience, the source of all our compassionate actions. Whole and entire, he will possess you whole and entire. Everything we love and take delight in comes from this same holistic source. We love, enjoy, and savor eternity, wisdom, and all such things solely because they are God and from God and in God. These ecstatic experiences become God for us because whatever is in God is God. But all things are in God, all things serve God, as the psalmist sings:

Creation is maintained by your rulings,

since all things are your servants. (Ps. 119:91)

But, as Eckhart comments, all things love God. All creation loves God, for all creation is in God. Only the human personality is capable of imagining and acting out a division between God and us, between others and us. Thus only it can become a house divided and bent on ruin and destruction. It alone can choose the separation which sin is. If we would let creation go and let creation be, all things would teach us their common love of God. There is no escaping our unity with God and all things. The only way out is nothingness itself, for outside God there is nothing but nothing. Thus whatever in the heart does not love God is nothing. After all, God is wholly ours, your God will be yours wholly. And that is why we are already holy, already perfect. To be whole means to be perfect and vice versa and that is why a departure from the whole that is panentheism is a death-dealing separation from the one, from the whole, and therefore from being.

The wholeness that holiness is applies to our relationship to ourselves as well as our relationship to God. Compassion and wholeness begin at home. So do division and separation. As Aristotle put it, “friendliness toward another comes or flows from friendliness toward oneself.” We love ourselves in God and therefore in the wholeness of the sea that compassion and existence are about. Indeed, the compassion that pours forth from this divine sea Is more loving toward us than we are toward ourselves. That is where we first learn self-love and all love of creation and Creator. It is the “fountain of being” that never stops flowing, never stops bathing us if we let it. Since we are instructed to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, there can be no holistic love of others without a holistic love of self. If we haven’t learned to love ourselves well, we ought to perish alone or change our way of loving or quit society. For we are called to love our neighbor as we love ourselves—not as we hate ourselves. If ours is a self-destructive love, it is no love to project onto others; love of self must be learned first. As Augustine put it, “he who knows how to love himself loves God.” Self-love that is authentic is a holistic love, a love of our roots in the divine sea of creation and blessedness. For, in fact, there exists a full equality or parity or even identity of love of self and love of neighbor. Here, then, lies the core reason for the Torah that Jesus calls us back to: that separate loves do not exist, for separations of others and self are a lie, a nothingness or falsehood. Our unity as one body, one mystical body—but not one single person—is so real and so great that there is no “my” or “your” nor do I love or have affection for what is mine or yours. The divisions of “my” and “your” are broken through in the breakthrough that ushers in the full compassionate consciousness and way of living. God is one and those who are in God are one—all are one in God, in charity and in the Holy Spirit. God is also Compassion and Compassion presumes the oneness that God and all creatures are. Eckhart gives as analogies the human body and the cosmic body. Our wholeness presumes a oneness, for it is the whole person who sees with the eyes, hears with the ears, speaks with the mouth, and even the parts of the body that do particularized work for us do it for the whole person. The mystical body of people reborn to wholeness is no different, nor is the communion of saints, for all the saints are one in God but do not make one single person. Uniqueness is preserved in Eckhart’s view of our oneness, for our unity is a verb-oriented unity, a unity of the flowing process that all growth and all existence are. It is a unity of lovers, not of nouns. He takes an example from the stars. All beings are interdependent in their constant action of receiving and giving.

The whole fiery sphere . . . fills space according to different parts which are natural and appropriate with each and every part. Taking and having through another what it does not take or have in itself, it shares its being with every other part. Its being in one thing is not different or superior to another, but it is immediate being without a medium and supreme without being superior.

Equality of being is returned to in this image of Eckhart’s. If all beings are equal as being, then there are no superior and inferior beings, there are no intermediaries as we swim in this bath called compassion. The mystical body harbors no inequalities. Everyone, therefore, who loves God from one’s whole heart necessarily loves his neighbor as himself. Otherwise he does not love “with all his heart.” For to love with all one’s heart is to love from a whole heart—a heart that knows the wholeness of all that is and has been.

It has been said that Eckhart’s doctrine is “essentially that of the identification with Christ the mediator, the head of the body of which the Christians are the members, which modern theology has called the doctrine of the mystical body.”¹ Ms. Ancelet is correct, for the mystical body is the body of compassion and panentheistic creation that has been renewed and born anew by the instruction and reminding of Jesus. We have seen Eckhart stress this same unity of the mystical body in previous sermons, for example, number Two and number Twenty-nine. The resurrection and breakthrough are the resurrection of all or none. “All are sent or no one is sent, into all or into nothing.” “In the kingdom of heaven all is in all, all is one and all is ours.”²

But the kingdom of heaven, as we saw in the previous sermon, has already arrived! Realized eschatology has happened, even if not fully and definitively yet. What does this imply? It implies celebration and rejoicing, a rejoicing at all the gifts and all the beauty and all the grace that are already everywhere. We are bathing in it already—not a grace or beauty of “yours and mine,” but a glory that is ours. Not something divided, hoarded, used competitively or divisively, but something that flows in and out of all of us. Because all “my” consciousness and all envy have been washed away by the sea named compassion, we can say with Eckhart: I rejoice no less at this person’s joy than at my own. One therefore will rejoice just as much at another’s glory as at one’s own. The celebration seems to have no end, no limit, no death built into it. Ecstasy shared is ecstasy unbounded. Joy shared at beauty—at all beauty—one’s own and others’ which is also one’s own—is a sign of the kingdom of heaven begun. In such a kingdom, each is in each and “all are in all.” As Paul has written, “all things are yours” (1 Co. 3:22). In such a reign, praise of one another will be valued more than rivalry. Indeed, “the mark of a good person is that a good person praises good people.”³ Instead of competing against one another, we are invited to drink in one another’s beauty. Others’ joy is ours, others’ goodness is ours, others’ wholeness is ours. Blessedness is shared. That which he [the blessed person] does not receive in himself he rejoices to see received in another, especially since he loves the other as he loves himself. If there is no separateness in being, there is no separateness or hoarding of gifts. For when a person with whom I am one receives anything at all, I also receive it. Yes, I too. Desire rests when one is open to goodness everywhere and where celebration breaks through competition. The blessed person takes divine gifts in himself or in others, and then his desire can rest, when alt are one in God. This rest, a repose at the source of all creativity and all birthing, is not a passive sort of rest but a celebrative rest at the origins of the One who is the “Beginning and the End.” Eckhart calls on wisdom literature to express the kind of nourishing and nurturing rest that is being spoken of.

From eternity, in the beginning, he created me,

and for eternity I shall remain.

I ministered before him in the holy tabernacle,

and thus was I established on Zion.

In the beloved city he has given me rest,

and in Jerusalem I wield my authority . . .

I am like a vine putting out graceful shoots,

my blossoms bear the fruit of glory and wealth.

Approach me, you who desire me,

and take your fill of my fruits,

for memories of me are sweeter than honey,

inheriting me is sweeter than the honeycomb.

They who eat me will hunger for more,

they who drink me will thirst for more.

Whoever listens to me will never have to blush,

whoever acts as I dictate will never sin. (Si. 24:9–11, 17–22)

All come to the celebration, for all beings love God.⁴ There is joy all around, filling up is plentiful. Compassion rains down joy. There is joy at equality and since the sin of separation is let go of, equality reigns at this banquet. We saw in the previous sermon how people are equal. In this sermon Eckhart elaborates on this theme. One who has God and who loves him loves his neighbor equally and on a par with himself. Equality is an attitude we bring to all of life and its celebrations. In Sermon Twenty-nine we saw Eckhart insist on this same theme (see p. 399). To rejoice at another’s joy, then, is like “being in heaven.” Joy returns as the fruit of realized eschatdogy. Celebration is multiplied when we are “constantly in joy and honor.” There is joy at justice. “Justice cannot harm them, for all joy, pleasure, and happiness are justice.”⁵ There is joy at works of justice. The just person “rejoices inexpressibly more in the work of justice than he—or even the highest angel—has joy and happiness in this natural being or life.” The saints too come to this celebration. They are the ones who “for this reason gladly gave their lives for the sake of justice.”⁶ There is joy, not sorrow, wherever the works of compassion are being carried out. “The person who finds a good and godly work heavy and burdensome does not yet have God the Father working in him and has not yet tasted ‘how sweet the Lord is’ “ (Ps. 34:8).⁷ As we saw in Sermon Nine, the kingdom of heaven is a community of compassion and celebration and to “rejoice in all our neighbor’s joys as if they were our own” is like finding “the kingdom of heaven itself.”⁸ The whole body of Christ is resurrected, unleashed, celebrating the divine breakthrough.

All we faithful are one body with Christ, the firstborn (1 Co. 12:12ff. and 27). But of the whole and its parts, there is one being and one function. If one suffers, all suffer with it; if one rejoices, all rejoice.⁹

The relief of the suffering of one is the relief of the suffering of all. Therefore suffering and its relief also come to the celebration. There is no complaining at the celebrative gathering since “the gifts of all people are my own.”¹⁰ Sadness, which is the “root of all evil,”¹¹ has been driven out. Even God is caught rejoicing at this gathering. As we learned in Sermon Thirty-three, God will “rejoice especially at every work of the just person, however small it is. Indeed, God will rejoice at these works through and through. For nothing remains in his ground that is not thoroughly enlivened by joy.”¹² Yes, God too is invited to this celebration of the compassionate ones.

What else goes on at such a grand and glorious party? Eating does. There is a banquet. Just as in the story of the first fall into dualism, as reported by the Yahwist author of Genesis where the word “eat” or “food” is used at least fifteen times,¹³ so in the vision of the full times eating is reexperienced. But it is an eating of oneness—a banquet together—not an eating that separates and divides. We eat at “the table in the kingdom of God.”

Our Lord said to one of his disciples: “Those who follow me will sit at my table in my Father’s kingdom and will eat my food and drink my drink—the table which my Father has prepared for me and which I have prepared for you” (Mt. 19:28; Lk.20:29).¹⁴

All are invited. All beings can come to the feast. “Surely we have been invited to the greatest feast ever, where the king of heaven ‘puts on a feast for his son’s wedding’ (Mt. 22:1–14).”¹⁵ The host for this banquet is altogether unique. “He who has prepared the supper for God and man, the ineffable One, has no name . . . Who prepared this feast? A person. The person who is God.”¹⁶ And what is being served at this banquet? Union, still more union between God and creatures, creature and creature, God to God. Life to life. Christ said that he “was the bread giving life to the world . . . What is proper to heavenly bread is that it give life.”¹⁷ The bread eaten is body to body.

Indeed, in the body of our Lord the soul is so closely joined to God that all the angels, both of the cherubim and of the seraphim, cannot know or find any difference between them. For, where they touch God they touch the soul, and where they touch the soul they touch God. There never was so close a union. For the soul is much more united with God than body and soul which form one person.¹⁸

The menu for the banquet is nothing less than the compassionate Creator of all. “In the Last Supper God gives himself with all he is as food for his dear friends.”¹⁹ With this eating, this total union, the breakthrough is achieved once again. We reenter God still another time. “The soul enters into God more than any food enters into us; in fact, it changes the soul into God . . . My soul is more closely united with God than food with my body.”²⁰

The banquet is a celebration of divinity in which transformation takes place. God with people; people with God. God into food; food into God; God into people; people into God. Many are called to this great sacrament of eating. How many will respond to this invitation? How many are hungry enough to eat Compassion? And how many would dare to become what they eat?