Meister Eckhart

Sermon Seven
Précis
This is an interpretation and précis of Meister Eckhart’s Sermon Seven.1

Transported into the Divine Essence

To know God and be known by him, and to see God and be seen by him is the
same thing. 

1 John 3:1 says we are children of God, but we cannot be sons and daughters of
God unless we share in the filial nature of the Son of God. Because we share in God’s
nature, we are his children. We are children of God “by having the same essence the Son
has.”

“In this life all things are one and all things are common: all things are all in all and
all in one.” Just as the members of one’s body are united, so too are we united with the
saints. For example, the grace of Our Lady exists in me not because it comes from outside
of me, but it is in me as my own.

Since God’s nature is “not to be like anyone, we have to come to the state of being
nothing in order to enter into the same nature that He is.” I must uproot and cast out what
is in me and establish myself in Nothing and Nothing in myself. “[T]hen I can pass into the
naked being of God, which is the naked being of the spirit.”

When likeness is ousted, then I may be transplanted into God and become one
with him. “Once this happens there is nothing hidden in God that is not revealed, that is
not mine. Then I shall be wise and mighty and all else as He is, and one and the same
with Him.” This is God-seeing man, “from whom nothing in the Godhead is hidden.” No
image can reveal the Godhead. “To be one with God, there must be in you nothing
imagined or imaged, so that nothing is covered up in you that is not discovered or cast
out.” All defects and deficiencies must be expunged from the soul. Then we will be all in
all as God is all in all. 

Man is born twice: once into the world and once into God. If you “grieve in your
heart for anything” or your heart is “sore” about anything, including your own sins, then
your child is not yet born. The child is fully born only “when a man’s heart grieves for

1Original text and all quotations from Meister Eckhart, “The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart,”
Edited and translated by Maurice O’C Walshe, with forward by Bernard McGinn, New York: The Crossroad
Publishing Company (2009).
(c) 2019 Andrew Garofalo
www.saintsjourney.com 1
nothing: then a man has the essence and the nature and the substance and the wisdom
and the joy and all that God has. Then the very being of the Son of God is ours and in us
and we attain to the very essence of God.” 

When we deny ourselves, pick up our crosses and follow Christ, then perpetual joy
(which is permanent and never changes) reigns in our hearts and the child is born. Then I
am fully transported into the divine essence and all that God has is mine. “That is when I
have true joy, when neither pain nor sorrow can take it from me, for then I am installed in
the divine essence, where sorrow has no place.” 

“[W]hen everything is perfect joy to you, then your child has really been born.”  
 

(c) 2019 Andrew Garofalo

www.saintsjourney.com 2