I have loved you with an everlasting love, and so I have drawn you to myself with loving kindness.
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Christian
Meister Eckhart
Christianc. 1260 – c. 1328Hochheim, Thuringia (modern-day Germany)175 quotes
Meister Eckhart was a 13th-century German Dominican friar, theologian, and Christian mystic whose sermons and treatises described a radical path of inner emptying (Abgeschiedenheit) through which the soul comes to know God directly in the ground of being. His ideas were declared partly heretical after his death, but he is now celebrated as one of the greatest mystical theologians in Christian history.
Born around 1260 in Thuringia, Eckhart joined the Dominican order and rose to become a distinguished theologian, teaching in Paris and serving in administrative roles across Germany. In his later years he turned his formidable philosophical training to the task of preaching mystical theology in the German vernacular — a radical move that made these ideas accessible to laypeople and religious women far beyond the Latin-literate clergy. His key teachings include the idea of the Gottheit (the Godhead beyond God), the spark of the soul (Funklein) that shares the divine nature, and the practice of Gelassenheit (letting go), through which the soul releases all attachment and enters the divine ground. In 1329, shortly after his death, Pope John XXII condemned 28 propositions drawn from his work as heretical or dangerous, though Eckhart himself had maintained his orthodoxy. His influence on later mysticism — including Tauler, Suso, and through them on Protestant spirituality and modern contemplative Christianity — is profound, and today he is widely studied alongside Sufi and Vedantic mystics.
Wisdom
The Holy Spirit said, 'I will also draw with my cords and my net.'
The person who lives in God's will desires nothing but what God is and what God desires.
If someone truly lives in God's will, they find joy in all pain and simplicity in all complexity; even the torments of hell would be a joy to them.
The person who lives in God's love must be detached from themselves and all created things, and consider themselves just one among millions.
May God and Eternal Wisdom grant us the ability to remain as steadfast and unchanged as God Himself. Amen.
Lord Jesus Christ never showed greater love than when he suffered on the cross, gave his life for us, and washed away our sins with his precious blood.
With the intense heat of his love, he drew the entire world to himself.
Deadly sin is a breach of nature that leads to spiritual death, inner turmoil, and a loss of power and spiritual sight. It also leads to a loss of goodness and virtue, and ultimately, to hell.
To turn away from sin and come to God, one must be drawn by the heavenly Father's divine power.
The Father draws the Son, who helps us with His grace, stimulating our free will to turn away from sin and hate it, which has separated us from God and the unchanging goodness of the Godhead.
The Holy Spirit saw that the Only Begotten Son of the Father had drawn all things to Himself and felt compelled to draw as well.
It is good to serve God with fear, better to serve Him with love, but best to serve Him with both fear and love.
The soul should be equally detached from all earthly things, just as the heavens are equally distant from the earth.
To know God, the soul must know Him beyond time and space, for God is not limited by time or place, but is One and transcendent.
To see God, the soul must not focus on anything within time, for as long as it is preoccupied with time, place, or any such concept, it cannot recognize God.
Only one who understands that all creatures are essentially nothing can truly know God.
To know God, the soul must forget itself and let go of its own identity, for as long as it is focused on itself, it cannot focus on God.
God is always trying to live with humans and teach them in order to bring them closer to Himself.
No human being desires anything as strongly as God desires to bring people to the knowledge of Himself.