a thousand times better, put thou upon it the bridle oflove. With love thou overcomest it most surely, with love thou loadest it most heavily. God lies in wait for us therefore with nothing so much as ' with love. For love is like the fisherman’s hook. To the fisher- man falls no fish that is not caught on his hook. Once it takes the hook the fish is forfeit to the fisherman ; in vain it twists hither and thither, the fisherman is certain of his catch. And so I say of love: he who is caught thereby has the strongest of all bonds and yet a pleasant burden. He who bears this sweet burden fares further, gets nearer therewith than by using any harshness possible to man. Moreover, he can cheerfully put up with whatever befalls, cheerfully suffer what God inflicts. Naught makes thee so much God nor God so much thine own as this sweet bond. He who has found this way will seek no other. He who hangs on this hook is so fast caught that foot and hand, mouth, eyes and heart and all that is man’s is bound to be God’s.
So then thou canst not, better than by love, prevail over thy foe and stop him doing thee a mischief. Wherefore it is written : “Love is strong as death and hard as hell.’ Death separates soul from body, but love separates all things from the soul; she will not tolerate at any cost what is not God nor God’s. Who is caught in this net, who walks in this way, whatsoever he works is wrought by love, whose alone the work is: busy or idle it matters nothing. Such an one’s most trivial action is more profitable, his meanest occupation is more fruitful to himself and other people and to God is better pleasing than the cumulative works of other men, who, though free from mortal sin, are yet inferior to him in love. He rests more usefully than others labour.
Await thou therefore this hook, so thou be happily caught, and the more surely caught so much the more surely freed.
That we may be thus caught and freed, help us O thou who art love itself. Amen.
Deus Charitas Est
Deus charitas est et qui manet in charitate in deo manet et deus in eo (1 Joh. 4,,). ‘God is love, and he who dwells in love dwells in God and God in him.’ This is the epistle we read at Mass, and it is St John speaking. '
Take the opening words: ‘God is love.’ That is so, inasmuch as all that can love, all that does love, he compels by his love to love him. God is love, secondly, inasmuch as every God-created and loving thing compels him by its love to love it, willy-nilly.
26 Meister Eckhart
God is love, thirdly, inasmuch as his love drives all his lovers out of multiplicity. The love of God in multiplicity pursues the love which is himself right out of multiplicity into his very unity. © God is love, fourthly, who by his love provides all creatures with their life and being, preserving them in his love. The colour of the cloth is preserved in the cloth : even so creatures are preserved in existence by love, that is, God. Take the colour from cloth, its subsistence is gone: so do creatures all lose their subsistence if taken from love, to wit, God. God is love, and so lovely is he that lovers all love him, willy-nilly. No creature is so vile as to love what is bad. What we love must be good or must seem to be good. But creaturely good, all told, is rank evil as compared with God. St Augustine says, ‘ Love, that in meditating love thou mayst provide the wherewithal to satisfy thy soul.’ God is love.
My children, mark me, I pray you. Know! God loves my soul so much that his very life and being depend upon his loving me, whether he would or no. To stop God loving me would be to rob him of his Godhood; for God is love no less than he is truth; as he is good, so is he love as well. It is the absolute truth, as God lives. There were certain theologians who maintained that the love which is within us is the Holy Ghost, but this is false. For the bodily food we take is changed into us, but the spiritual food we receive changes us into itself, hence love divine is not preserved in us, otherwise there would be two. Divine love preserves us in itself as one in the same.
’* God is love, and he who dwells in love dwells in God and God in him.’ There is a difference between ghostly things and bodily things. One ghostly thing dwells in another; but nothing bodily dwells in another. There may be water in a tub, with the tub round it. But where the wood is the water is not. In this sense no material thing dwells in another. But spiritual things dwell in each other : each several angel with all his joy and happiness is in every other angel as well as in himself, and every angel with all his joy and happiness dwells in me, and God to. boot with his entire beatitude, though I discern it not.
If anyone should ask me what God is, I should answer: God is love, and so altogether lovely that creatures all with one accord essay to love his loveliness, whether they do so knowingly or unbeknownst, in joy or sorrow. Instance the lowest angel in his pure nature: the smallest spark or love-light that ever fell from him would light up the whole world with love and joy. See his innate perfection! Moreover, as I have explained at various times, the angels are numerous beyond number.—But to leave love and come to knowledge. If only we knew God it would be easy to forsake the world. All that God ever made or shall yet make,
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all this (I say), if God should give it to my soul without himself, he staying, so to speak, a hair’s-breadth off, would not content my soul nor make me happy. Iam happy when all things are in me and God, and where Iam God is, and where God is I am.
He who dwells in love dwells in God and God in him.’ Suppose I am in God, then where he is I am; and if God is in me, then, unless the scriptures lie, where I am God is. It is the absolute truth, as God is God.
£ F aithful servant, I will set thee over all my goods,’ i.e. the manifold goodness of God in creatures will I set thee over. Secondly, ‘I will set thee over all my goods’ means: at the source of creature happiness, in the pure unity of God himself wherein he has his own felicity. In other words: God being the good, in that sense will he set us above his manifold goodness. Thirdly, he will set us over all his goods, means : above all name- ‚ables, all effables, all so-called good things and all intelligibles. Thus he sets us over all his goods. \
“ Father, I pray thee, make them one as I and thou are one.’ Where two grow one, one loses its nature. Ergo, tor God and the soul to be one the soul has to lose her own life and nature. They are one as regards what is left. But for them to be one, one must lose its identity and the other must keep its identity. Then they are the same. Now, the Holy Ghost says: ‘I pray thee, let them be one as we are one. I pray thee, make them the same in us.’
When I pray for aught my prayer goes for naught; when I pray for naught I pray as I ought. When I am one with that wherein are all things, past, present and to come, all the same ' distance and all just the same, then they are all in God and all inme. There is no thought of Henry or of Conrad. Praying for aught save God alone is idolatry and unrighteousness. They pray aright who pray in spirit and in truth. When praying for someone, for Henry or Conrad, I pray at my weakest. When praying for no one I pray at my strongest, and when I want nothing and make no request I am praying my best, for in God is no Henry nor no Conrad. To pray to God for aught save God is wrong and faithless, and, as it were, an imperfection. For to set up something beside God is, as I lately said, but to make naught of God and God of naught. Whoso is far and foreign to himself as the chief angel of the Seraphim is far from him, that man owns that same angel just as God does and is God, and that’s the naked truth, as God is God. ‘God is love, and he that is in love is in God and God in him.’
May all of us attain this love whereof I speak. So help us our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
28 Meister Eckhart
Jesus Went Into the Temple
Intravit Jesus in templum dei et ejiciebat omnes vendentes et ementes etc. (Matt. 21,). We read in the gospel that our Lord went into the temple and cast out all them that sold and bought and said to them that sold doves: ‘ Take these things hence!’ It was his purpose to have the temple cleared, as though he said : This temple is by rights mine own and I want it to myself to be lord therein. This temple that God means to rule in is man’s soul which he has made exactly like himself, as saith the Lord, * We will make man in our image and likeness.’ Which he did. So like himself God made man’s soul that nothing else in earth or heaven resembles God so closely as the human soul. God wants this temple cleared of everything but himself. This is because this temple is so agreeable to him and he is so comfortable in this temple when he is there alone.
Now consider who they were that sold and bought therein and who they are still. Mark me well: I name none but the virtuous. Yet, even so, I can point out who the merchants were, and still are to this day, that thus buy and sell: those whom our Lord drove forth and cast out. He still does so to those that buy and sell in this temple: he would not leave a single one therein. Lo, they are merchants all who, while avoiding mortal sin and wishing to be virtuous, do good works to the glory of God, fasts, for example, vigils, prayers, etc., all of them excellent, but do them with a view to God’s giving them somewhat, doing to them somewhat, they wish for in return. All such are merchants. This is plain to see, for they reckon on giving one thing for another and so to barter with our Lord, though they are mistook as to the bargain. For all they have and have the power to do, they have from God and do effect by means of God alone. God has no call to do to them or give to them anything unless he choose to. For what they are they are from God and what they have they get from God, not from themselves. God is in no wise bounden to requite their acts or gifts, except he care to do so of his own free will, apart from what they do or give; for they give not of their own nor do they act of their own selves, as God says, ‘ Without me ye can do nothing.’ They be sorry fools who bargain with our Lord like this; they know little or nothing of the truth. God cast them out of the temple and drove them forth. For light and darkness cannot dwell together. God is the truth, he is the light itself. When God enters the temple he drives out ignorance and darkness, revealing himself in the light of truth. Merchants go when the
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truth appears, for the truth needs no merchanting. God seeks not his own, he is perfectly free in all his acts, which he does in true love. So does the man who is at one with God: he is perfectly free in all his deeds; he does them out of love and without why, just to glorify God, not seeking his own therein, God energising in him.