Meister Eckhart ‘Divine Comfort’

 

Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time

FRIDAY Year II

Night Office

Meister Eckhart Second Reading has riveting words of ‘Divine Comfort’:
1. “The eye is free of all colour, it perceives all colours”...

2. “Poor in spirit means: as the eye is "poor" and bare of colour yet receptive of all colours, so is he poor in spirit who is receptive of all spirit, and the spirit of all spirits is God. 

3. “When nothing can comfort you but God, then God will comfort you, and with him and in him all that is bliss,..

First Reading  Job 22:1-30

Responsory          1 Cor 1:30-31; Jn 1:16

God has given us Christ Jesus to be our wisdom, our strength, our holiness and our redemption; + this is why Scripture tells us: Let him who would boast, boast in the Lord.

V. Of his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. + This is why ....

Second Reading

From the writings of Meister Eckhart
(Book of Divine Comfort Part II)

Learn not to love that you may learn to love

No vessel can hold two separate kinds of drink. If it is to contain wine, we must pour out the water; the vessel must be bare and empty. And so, if you would receive divine joy and God, you must pour away creatures. Saint Augustine says: "Pour out, that you may be filled. Learn not to love that you may learn to love. Turn away that you may be turned toward." In short, to take in, to be receptive, a thing must be empty. The masters say that if the eye had any colour in it in perceiving, it would perceive neither the colour it had nor those it had not. But since it is free of all colour, it perceives all colours. The wall has colour in it, and so perceives neither its own colour nor any other; it cares naught for colour, no more for gold and azure than for coal-black. The eye has no colour, and yet truly has it, for it rejoices in colour with pleasure and delight. And the more perfect and pure the powers of the soul are, the more perfectly and extensively they take in what they perceive, and receive the more widely and have the greater delight in, and become the more one with what they receive, so much so that the highest power of the soul, which is bare of all things and has nothing in common with things, receives nothing less than God himself in the extent and fullness of his being. And the masters show that nothing can equal this union, this fusion and bliss for joy and delight. Therefore our Lord says in striking words: Blessed are the poor in spirit. He is poor who has nothing. Poor in spirit means: as the eye is "poor" and bare of colour yet receptive of all colours, so is he poor in spirit who is receptive of all spirit, and the spirit of all spirits is God. The fruit of the spirit is love, joy and peace. Bareness, and poverty, having nothing and being empty transforms nature; emptiness makes water run upwards and performs many other miracles of which it is not the place to speak now.

So, if you would seek and find perfect joy and comfort in God, see to it that you are free of all creatures and of all comfort from creatures; for assuredly, as long as you are or can be comforted by creatures, you will never find true comfort. But when nothing can comfort you but God, then God will comfort you, and with him and in him all that is bliss, while what is not God comforts you, you will have no comfort here or hereafter, but when creatures give you no comfort and you have no taste for them, then you will find comfort both here and hereafter.