Meister Eckhart: The Book of Consolation
Benedictus deus et pater domini nostri Jesu Christi (2 Cor. 1:3f.)
The noble apostle Paul says this: ‘Blessed be God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all consolation, who comforts us in our tribulation.’
There are three kinds of tribulation which affect and oppress us in this place of exile.
The first comes from damage to our worldly goods, the second from the harm which befalls our relatives and friends and the third comes from the injury we suffer when we become the object of others’ disdain, when we experience hardship, physical pain and emotional distress.
Therefore it is my intention in this book to record certain precepts with which men and women can find consolation in all their distress, grief and suffering. And this book has three parts.
In the first there are a number of truths from which it can be deduced what can and will give us appropriate and complete consolation in all our suffering.
Following this, there are some thirty extracts and maxims in every one of which we can find complete consolation.
Finally, the third part of this book contains examples of words and deeds which wise people have spoken and done in the face of suffering.
I
First of all we should know that a wise man and wisdom, a true
man and truth, a just man and justice, a good man and goodness relate to one another in the following way.
Goodness is neither created nor made nor begotten, but it is generative and gives birth to a good man.
Thus a good man, in so far as he is good, is himself unmade and uncreated though he is still the child and son of goodness.
Goodness reproduces itself and all that it is in a good man. It pours being, knowledge, love and activity into a good man, and a good man receives the whole of his being, knowledge, love and activity from the heart and core of goodness and from it alone.
A good man and goodness are nothing but a single goodness, wholly one in all things, except for the giving birth on the one side and the being born on the other, while the giving birth of goodness and the being born in a good man are wholly one essence and one life.
A good man receive everything which belongs to him from the goodness in goodness. He is, lives and dwells there.
It is there that he knows himself and knows all the things that he knows, and loves all the things that he loves, and acts with the goodness in goodness, and goodness performs all her works with and in him in accordance with Scripture, where the Son says:
‘It is the Father who dwells in me doing his own work’ (John 14:10), ‘the Father works until now and 1 work” (John j:r7) and ‘all that belongs to the Father is mine, and all that is mine and pertains to mine is the Father’s: his in the giving and mine in the receiving’ (John 17:10).
Further, we should know that, when we speak of the ‘good’, the name or the word signifies or includes nothing other, neither more nor less, than goodness, pure and simple, but goodness which overflows.
When we say ‘good’, then we understand that its goodness is given to it, poured into it and born into it by the unbegotten goodness.
Therefore the gospel says: ‘As the Father has life in himself, so he has given to the Son to have the same life in himself (John 5:26). He says ‘in himself’ and not ‘of himself, for it is given to him by the Father.
Everything which I have just said concerning a good man and goodness is no less true of a true man and truth, a just man and justice, a wise man and wisdom, God the Son and God the Father, indeed of all that is born of God and has no father on earth, in which nothing created is born and in which there is no image but only God, naked and pure.
For John in his gospel states, ‘To all of them is given power and strength to become sons of God, who were not born of blood nor of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God and from God alone’ (John mf).
By ‘blood’ he means everything within us which is not subject to the will.
By the ‘will of the flesh’ he means everything within us which, while being subject to the will, is so only with struggle and conflict, which inclines to the desires of the flesh and which properly belongs to both the soul and the body together and not to the soul alone, on account of which these lower powers of the soul grow old, tired and enfeebled.
By the ‘will of man’ John means the highest powers of the soul, whose nature and activity is wholly independent of the flesh and which are located in the purity of the soul, detached from all time and space and from all those things which look to time and space or have any taste for them: that is, powers which have nothing in common with anything else at all, in which we are formed in the image of God and are members of God’s race and family.
And yet, since they are not God himself, being created in and with the soul, they must lose their own form and be transformed into God alone and be born into and out of God so that he will be their sole father, since they will thus also be the sons of God and God’s only begotten son.
For I am the son of all that forms me and gives birth to me as identical to itself according to and in itself.
In so far as such a person, God’s son, who is good as the son of goodness and is just as the son of justice, is the son solely of justice, to that extent justice is unbegotten-begetting, and the son to whom it gives birth has the same being as justice has and is, and possesses all the properties of justice and of truth.
It is all this teaching, which is written in the sacred scriptures and is known with certainty in the natural light of the rational soul, which gives us true consolation in all our suffering.
St Augustine says: ‘There is nothing which is far or remote from God.’
If you wish that nothing should be far or remote from you, then join yourself to God, for then a thousand years will be like a single day.
Thus I say that in God there is neither sadness, nor suffering, nor distress, and if you wish to be free of all distress and suffering, then turn to God and fix yourself on
him alone. It is certain that all your suffering comes from the fact that you do not turn to God or not to him alone.
If you were formed and born solely in justice, then truly nothing could cause you pain, any more than justice can cause God pain.
Solomon says: ‘The just will not grieve whatever may befall’ (Prov. 12:21).
He does not say: ‘the just man’ or ‘the just angel’ or this or that He says: ‘the just’. Whatever belongs to the just man or woman, whatever it is that constitutes his or her justice in particular and the fact that he or she is just, that is the son with an earthly father, and is a creature, both created and made, since its father is a creature, either created or made.
But suffering and distress can no more affect ‘the just’ pure and simple than they can God, for it has no father, whether created or made, since God and justice are entirely one and justice alone is its father.
Justice can cause no suffering to the just since all joy, delight and bliss are justice.
Indeed, if justice were to cause the just pain, then it would be causing itself pain. Nothing which is dissimilar to itself or unjust, which is created or made, can cause the just pain, for all that is created is as far beneath them as it is beneath God, and it cannot affect or influence the just nor reproduce itself in those whose father is God alone.
Thus we should strive to shed our own form and the forms of all creatures, knowing no father but God alone.
Then nothing shall be able to cause us pain or oppress us, neither God nor any creature, neither things created or uncreated, and our whole being, life, understanding, knowledge and love will be from God and in God and will actually he God.
And there is something else which we should know and which can give us consolation in all our suffering.
This is that someone who is just and good certainly rejoices and delights immeasurably, unspeakably more in the works of justice than they do, or than the highest angel does, in their natural life and being.
That is why the saints gladly gave their lives for the sake of justice.
Now I say; when it happens that a good and just person who has suffered an outward misfortune remains unmoved in serenity and peace of heart, then indeed, nothing that befalls them will distress them, as I have said.
If the contrary should prove the case, and they are disheartened by their outward misfortune, then it is only right and proper that God should have permitted the misfortune to befall such a person who thought that they were just, even though such insignificant things could weigh on them so heavily.
And if it is God’s right so to do, they should not allow themselves to be troubled, but rather they should rejoice in it more than they do in their own lives, which everyone delights in and values more than they do the whole world.
After all, what would the whole world profit us if we did not have life?
The third thing we can and should know is this, that according to natural truth God is the sole fount and vein of all goodness, essential truth and consolation, and that everything which is not God has its natural bitterness, despair and suffering from itself, adding nothing to goodness, which stems from God and is God.
Rather, its bitterness reduces, veils and conceals the sweetness, bliss and consolation which God gives.
Now I say further that all suffering comes from our love for what misfortune takes from us.
If the loss of external things causes me pain, then this is a clear sign that I love external things and thus, in truth, love suffering and despair.
Is it surprising then that I suffer, since I love and seek suffering and despair?
My heart and my affections assign to creatures that goodness which is
God’s possession. I turn to creatures which, by their nature, are
the source of suffering and turn my back on God, from whom all
consolation comes. Is it then surprising that I suffer and that I am
sad?
Truly, it is impossible for God or for the whole world to console someone who seeks consolation from creatures.
But they who love only God in the creature and the creature only in God, will find true, just and constant consolation in all places. Let this be enough for the first part of the book. ~Meister Eckhart, Selected Writings, The Book of Divine Consolations, Page 53-54
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