Here in time we make holiday because the eternal birth which God the father bore and bears unceasingly in eternity is now born in time, in human nature. Saint Augustine says this birth is always happening. But if it does not happen in me, what does it profit me? What matters is that it shall happen in me. We intend therefore to speak of this birth as taking place in us, as being consummated in the virtuous soul, for it is in the perfect soul that God speaks his word. What I shall say is true only of the devout man, of him who has walked and is still walking in the way of God, not of the natural undisciplined man who is entirely remote from and unconscious of this birth. There is a saying of the wise man, "When all things lay in the midst of silence, then leapt there down into me from on high, from the royal throne, a secret word." But where is the silence and where the place in which the word is spoken? To begin with, it is spoken in the purest, noblest ground, yes, in the
very center of the soul. That is mid-silence, for no creature ever entered
there, nor any image, nor has the soul there either activity or understanding,
therefore she is not aware of any image either of herself or any creature.
Whatever the soul effects, she effects with her powers. When she understands,
she understands with her intellect. When she remembers, she does so with
her memory. When she loves, she does so with her will. She works then
with her powers and not with her essence. Well, but how does he give him birth there? See, God the father has perfect insight into himself, profound and thorough knowledge of himself by means of himself, not by means of any image. And thus God the father gives birth to his son in the very oneness of the divine nature. Thus it is, and in no other way, that God the father gives birth to his son in the ground and essence of the soul, and thus he unites himself with her. Were any image present, there would be no real union, and in real union lies true bliss. "I will sit in silence and hearken to what God speaks within me," said the prophet. Into this retirement steals the word in the darkness of the night. Saint John says, "The light shines in the darkness; it came unto its own and as many as received it became in authority sons of God: to them was given power to become God's sons." Notice the fruit and use of this mysterious word and of this darkness. In this gloom which is his own, the heavenly father's son is not born alone: you too are born there a child of the same heavenly father and no other, and to you also he gives power. Call this if you will an ignorance, an unknowing, yet there is in it more than all knowing and understanding without it, for this outward ignorance lures and attracts you from all understood things and from yourself. This is what Christ meant when he said, "Whosoever denies not himself and leaves not father and mother and is not estranged from all these, he is not worthy of me." As though to say: he who abandons not creaturely externals can neither be conceived nor born in this divine birth. But divesting yourself of yourself and of everything external does indeed give it to you. May the God who has been born again as man assist us in this birth, continually helping us...to be born again in him as God. Amen. - Meister Eckhart |
