Beshara Publications

Extracts

From the 'Feast of St. Francis'

Commentaries on Meister Eckhart Sermons, by Dom Sylvester Houédard

Mind is being continuously approached by God in the self-gift of His luminous Being, and we try to stop and grasp at short moments of time. But mind is like a river in fluxu et in fieri, it flows as it becomes.

That man who is most detached and has most fully forgotten all transient things is the most pleasing to God, and thereby the nearest to God.

So he has been talking about the distinction between angels, where there is a distinction of nearness and distance and their distinction of nearness and distance is the distinction of capacity to receive. In our case it is a distinction of detachment: the more detached we are, the nearer we are to God. It is not just detached from outer things, it is also detachment from oneself. The phrase he uses, 'forgetting transient things'-- we began by looking at the word 'epectasy' from St. Paul, that it is stretching forward to God and forgetting the things behind so that the mind, turned towards itself, to its centre, is turned to the point where we are aware of God perpetually; the future perpetually becomes the present, the past never becomes the present, so our back is turned towards the past, we forget what is behind us, as St. Paul says, and we turn towards God. The qibla of the mind is always towards God even if we are not aware of the fact; even if we resent the fact this is something we can do nothing about, but what we should do about it is to become aware of it as far as we can; not merely to become aware of it but to live according to that particular truth, which is the truth of our nothingness.

Back to top

Books on the unity of existence