Sermon One (in Walshe, Complete Mystical Works) has become known as capturing the essence of Meister Eckhart’s thought. “Here, in time, we are celebrating the eternal birth which God the Father bore and bears unceasingly in eternity, because this same birth is now born in time, in human nature.” And why does this lofty thought matter? “What does it avail me that this birth is happening, if it does not happen in me? That it should happen in me is what matters.”
Eckhart, therefore, offers a corrective to the way Christianity and indeed Christmas is usually articulated today. Where does this birth take place? Not in Bethlehem, not in a stable, not around 4BC, not even from Mary, but primarily “in the very purest, loftiest, subtlest part that the soul is capable of”.
Only, is this itself not only too rarefied a form of Christianity, but one inadequate to our times, in denial of moral imperatives or simply a gospel of spiritual bypassing?
In fact, precisely the opposite is the case. Without that birth of the Word in the soul, Christianity’s moral meaning is lost, its injunctions become pathways to demoralisation, with the happiness promised transitory or elusive.
Eckhart, therefore, has crucial things to say to a church dedicated to filling people up with experiences and demands, as well as a time keen on practices that miss the stillness and silence he argues is fundamental.
Rather, alongside the author of The Cloud of Unknowing and Mother Julian, Eckhart preaches the direct and easy path, that depends not on our efforts but on a capacity to not know and stay before the ground from which the Word is born.
Unity with God is the purpose and promise of life - the secret that I feel is regularly absent in presentations of Christianity, though so much sought and needed.
