Eckhart “Whether it is contemplation or rapture or whatever you welcome, whatever is created, is not God”

The Night Office, First Reading, had an amazingly vivid description of the trees, aromas, incense, and drawing into the settings of flower garden and meadows giving the aliveness of experience. (Sir: 24:7-24).

More striking is the language of Sirac, of time and place, nothing primitive awaking to the wonder of God’s creation.

The choice of the Second Reading is from Meister Eckhart seems to follow another track – itself another eye-opening, “Whether it is contemplation or rapture or whatever you welcome, whatever is created, is not God”.   

Sapentia Sirach  

Sir 24:23  As the vine I have brought forth a pleasant odour: and my flowers are the fruit of honour and riches. 

Sir 24:24  I am the mother of fair love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope. (DRB)

TWENTY-EIGHTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

SATURDAY       Year II

First Reading

Sirach 24:1-22

Responsory: Sir 17:9-11

The Lord has set before them knowledge, a law of life as their inheritance. + An everlasting covenant God has made with them.

V. His majestic glory their eyes beheld, his glorious voice their ears heard. + An everlasting covenant.

Second Reading  

 

The Meister Eckhart portal of the Erfurt Church OP

From the writings of Meister Eckhart (Sermon 3: Sermons and Treatises 11, 3-4)

With spiritual things there is no satiation

Our Lord says: They who eat me shall hunger again, they who drink me shall thirst again. How are we to understand this? For it is not so with physical things: the more you eat, the more sated you are. But with spiritual things there is no satiation: the more you have of them, the more you want. And therefore this text says: They shall become more thirsty who drink me, and more hungry who eat me. These people are so hungry for God's will, and it is so much to their taste, that whatever God sends them satisfies and pleases them so much that they could not wish or desire anything else. As long as a man is hungry he enjoys his food, and the greater the hunger, the greater the satisfaction in eating. So it is with those who hunger after God's will: His will tastes so good, and whatever God wishes and sends them pleases them so much that, even if God wanted to let them off it, they would not want to be let off - so pleased are they with what God wanted in the first place. If I wanted to please someone, and make myself agreeable to him alone, whatever suited that person, through which I was pleasing to him, that I would wish more than anything else. And if I pleased him better in a poor dress than in velvet, then assuredly I should wear that poor dress rather than any other. So it is with those who are pleased with God's will: whatever God gives them, sickness or poverty or anything else, they prefer that to anything else. Because it is God's will, it tastes better to them than anything else.

Now you might want to ask, "How do I know if it is God's will?" I reply: "If it were not God's will for a single instant, it would not be - it must always be his will." Now if you really enjoyed the taste of God's will, you would be just as if you were in heaven, whatever happened or did not happen to you. It serves them right who want anything other than God's will, for they are always in sorrow and distress. They often suffer violence and oppression, and are always in trouble. And that is just as it should be, for they act as if they were to sell God, as Judas did. They love God for the sake of something else that is not God. And if they get something they love, they do not bother about God. Whether it is contemplation or rapture or whatever you welcome, whatever is created, is not God. Scripture says: The world was made by him, and what was made knew him not. If anyone should think that to gain a thousand words plus God were any more than to gain God alone, he would not know God or have the slightest idea of God and would be a boor. Therefore a man should he d nothing but God.