Selected Writings by Meister Eckhart

Author:Meister Eckhart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion, Philosophy, Christian Theology, General, Mysticism
Publisher: Penguin UK
Published: 1994-08-25T05:08:48+00:00

SERMON 8 (DW 50, W 93)

Eratis enim aliquando in tenebrae (Eph. 5:8).

St Paul says: ‘Once you were in darkness, but now a light in the Lord.’ The prophets who walked in light, recognized and found the hidden truth under the influence of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes they were moved to turn outside themselves and to speak of things that they knew would sanctify us, teaching us to know God. But then they were struck dumb and could not speak. This happened for three reasons.

Firstly, the goodness that they saw and recognized in God was so great and mysterious that their minds could not retain its image, for the images in their minds were all wholly unlike what they saw in God and were such a travesty of the truth that they preferred silence to lies. The second reason is that all they saw in God was so great and sublime that they could derive neither an image nor a form from it in order to speak of it. The third reason why they fell silent was that they looked into the hidden truth and saw there the mystery of God, without being able to put it into words. But occasionally it happened that they turned outside themselves and spoke, but then they lapsed into gross matter and wanted to teach us to know God through lowly creaturely things, since there was nothing that could adequately capture that truth.

Now Paul says: ‘Once you were in darkness, but now a light in the Lord.’ If we explore the Latin word aliquando fully, then we see that it means ‘once’ and refers to time, which is what keeps us from the light. For nothing is as opposed to God as time. Not only time is opposed to God, but even clinging to time, not only clinging to time but even having contact with time, not even having contact with time but even the smell or scent of time – just as a certain smell hangs in the air where an apple has lain: this is what is meant by contact with time. Our best teachers say that the firmament, the sun and the stars have no more than occasional contact with time.29 In my opinion the soul is far higher than the heavens since in its highest and purest part it has nothing whatsoever to do with time. I have said on many occasions before that the Holy Spirit flowers from the work in God, from the birth in which the Father generates his only begotten Son and from this outflowing in such a way that it proceeds from them both and the soul flows forth in this procession. The image of the Godhead is impressed on the soul, and in the flowing out and flowing together of the three Persons the soul flows back and is formed back into its own first imageless image.30.

This is what Paul means when he says: ‘now a light in the Lord’. He does not say: ‘You are a light’, but ‘now a light’.

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