Holy Week with Meister Eckhart

(4/10/23)

O Lover,

Wary of the sacrificial bent of Roman Catholic liturgies, especially during the Triduum, I set aside time this Holy Week for reading and pondering Meister Eckhart, OP (c.1260-1328). Given the numerous motifs contributing to the mosaic of the meaning of the Christ event, both in the Christian scriptures and the subsequent tradition, on what did Eckhart focus? What was his christology and how might that enrich how I experience You during these holy days? Specifically, what aid could he extend to me as to how to hold the death of Your Christ on Dark Friday? Bernard McGinn my guide, I identified three strands in Eckhart’s addressing of such questions, particularly in his commentary on the prologue of John’s Gospel.

First, the theme of solidarity. In Your Incarnation You have identified with all humanity (1:14), indeed, the entire creation by implication. Far more than memorable historical personage, the Christ, including his passion, evidences the reach and irrevocability, the inclusivity and universality, of Your loving embrace. While the sonship of the Christ is by nature, that same status is ours as humans via adoption. Your identification with us adopted daughters and sons has no exceptions, not even death itself. The pain, betrayal, abandonment, dereliction, and thánatos of Dark Friday, all familiar to us, have forever been shown to have been drawn up into Your Sacred Heart in Your Christ. He is the only Son, as are all of us (1:12), no less during the Triduum! All of these dimensions of solidarity mined by Eckhart emerge against the background of a neglected Christian theme going back to Irenaeus (c.130-c.202): “God became [human] so that [humans] might become God.” The Christ as Your embodied Word of solidarity.

Second, the theme of detachment. An immediate disclaimer: detachment in Eckhart’s christology has nothing in common with token self-deprivation, asceticism-lite, gnostic contempt for the material, or merit salvation. One of the terms Eckhart used for You is Nothing (“No-thing”): You, beyond form and thus depiction, are the Ground (Grunt) or Abyss of all this and thats rather than one thing among many (creatures). The subject/object structure thus cannot objectify and contain You. The Christ, on the cross most graphically refusing to exploit his identity with You (Phil 2:5-8), thereby models that very union. You, the God who is No-thing, invite us to allow ourselves to be emptied of all dependencies on and addictions to this or that thing. “Detachment” for Eckhart is thus both a pre-condition and characteristic of unítas Déi.

Third, the motif of transformation. While referencing the above by nature/by adoption distinction in some of his writings, Eckhart in other texts goes beyond it with language of an emerging unity with You, of but a single all-encompassing and inclusive Sonship. For example, he cites Paul in II Corinthians: “We, with faces unveiled reflecting as in a mirror the glory of the Christ, are being transformed into that very image from glory to glory” (3:18). Eckhart’s transformational motif is indeed Your process of drawing us into an increasingly complete identity with the Christ, both The eíkon of the (invisible) You (Col 1:15) and concrete prototype of that identity. While “solidarity” speaks of standing, of status, “transformation” harks of process, of movement, of “the long and winding road” into theósis (“deification”). The Christ as embodied harbinger of humankind’s transformational union with You.

O Lover, I marvel at the near complete absence in the above Eckhartian strands of the notions of expiatory sacrifice, divine propitiation, ransom, or celestial transaction. Rather, on the cross, amid the torment of both body and spirit (Mt 27:46), Your Christ embodied yet again gelássenheit (“letting go”), forgiveness, and the total openness to You central to the Great Commandment (Mk 12:28-34); the shape of his faith in You there was relinquishment, surrender, self-abandonment, emptying (Phil 2:7). In short, in his hours of darkness the Christ wagered everything on You. That truth, both simple and awash in the Mystérium, was at the center of my experience of You in the Triduum of 2023.