Meister Eckhart, the fourteenth-century mystic theologian, teacher, philosopher, and preacher, exerts a hold on many contemporary spirituality writers. Long ago, he made the startling declaration that God and human beings are already bonded together, already in intimate contact. The only obstacle is our consciousness and the dreadful construction of dualism that constricts our ongoing divinization.
In this classic text with translations and commentary, Reiner Schürmann presents three sermons by Meister Eckhart delivered to nuns of the Rhineland in Germany. Each is followed by an explanation of its principal themes. The foreword by David Appelbaum, a poet and editor of Parabola magazine, notes that Eckhart's "single-pointed concern" is with the birth of God in the soul.
Two insights stand out in Eckhart's mystical understanding of things, and they both have relevance to the contemporary scene. "Know this: as long as in one way or another you seek your own advantage you will never find God for you. Do not seek God exclusively. You are looking for something else besides God." Here Eckhart slams our tendency to grab, to control, to possess — all evidence of the ego's need to have things its own way. The search for God means letting go or what Schürmann assesses as Gelassenheit.
Eckhart makes the second point in another sermon: "People fancy that God became man only formerly. That is not so. Indeed, God becomes man right here and now exactly as before. The reason why he has become man is that he may beget you as his first-born Son, and nothing less." He's talking here about divinization, something that contemporary believers still have trouble accepting.
Schürmann, a German professor of philosophy who died in 1993, provides us with a chance to dialogue with Eckhart as we mull over his immensely fertile sermons. There is so much mystery and magnificence in them.