Advent, as we considered a few weeks ago, is not just about humanity waiting to celebrate the birth of Jesus around 2000 years ago. It is also about Divinity waiting for the birth of the Christ in all of us.
In this context it behooves us to take Jesus and Mary off their pedestals and ask the question Meister Eckhart asked 700 years ago: How can I, How can we, better birth the Christ, the prince of peace? When do we birth the rabbi who teaches that God is ”Emmanuel” or God-with-us is also the Compassionate One and that we are capable of “being compassionate like God who is compassionate”? (See Luke 6.36)
In the Jewish tradition, compassion is “the secret name for God” and Jesus let that secret out of the bag in a big way not only in Luke’s gospel but consider Matthew 25, “do it to the least and you do it to me,” along with so many other parables including the Prodigal Son and the good Samaritan, and many more.
Christmas is not just about Jesus being born around 2000 years ago. To make it so is to tempt sentimentalism which, as sociologist Anne Douglas has demonstrated in her classic work called The Feminization of American Culture grounds itself in consumerism and thereby distorts our capacities for compassion and healing.
In defining sentimentalism as “rancid political consciousness,” Douglas alerts us to how works of compassion and justice can get swamped in feeling for feeling’s sake. In such a world, injustice is ignored and shopping becomes one’s identity—”I shop/consume therefore I am.”
If Christmas season is about the Cosmic Christ being born in us and from us, we are invited to imitate Mary by becoming birthers of the Christ ourselves. As Meister Eckhart put it in the 14th century in his Christmas sermon: “What good is it to me if Mary gave birth to Christ 1400 years ago and I do not do the same?”
What good indeed.
When do we imitate Mary and give birth to Christ? Says Eckhart:
The work that is ‘with,’ ‘outside,’ and ‘above’ the artist must become the work that is ‘in’ him or her, taking form within them—in other words, to the end that he or she may produce a work of art, in accordance with the verse, ‘The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee’
(Lk 1:35), that is, so that the ‘above’ may become ‘in.’
To be continued
Adapted from Matthew Fox, “Sermon 23: We are Children of God and Mothers of God,” in Fox, Passion For Creation: The Earth-Honoring Spirituality of Meister Eckhart, pp. 325-337, 409.
And Fox, “On Desentimentalizing Spirituality,” in Fox, Wrestling with the Prophets, pp. 297-315.
See also Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video teaching, click HERE.
Banner Image: Urban Black Madonna, Kensington Market, Toronto. Photo by Eric Parker on Flickr.
Queries for Contemplation
When have you experienced yourself as a Mother of God?
Recommended Reading
Passion for Creation: The Earth-Honoring Spirituality of Meister Eckhart
Matthew Fox’s comprehensive translation of Meister Eckhart’s sermons is a meeting of true prophets across centuries, resulting in a spirituality for the new millennium. The holiness of creation, the divine life in each person and the divine power of our creativity, our call to do justice and practice compassion–these are among Eckhart’s themes, brilliantly interpreted and explained for today’s reader.
“The most important book on mysticism in 500 years.” — Madonna Kolbenschlag, author of Kissing Sleeping Beauty Goodbye.
Wrestling with the Prophets: Essays on Creation Spirituality and Everyday Life
In one of his foundational works, Fox engages with some of history’s greatest mystics, philosophers, and prophets in profound and hard-hitting essays on such varied topics as Eco-Spirituality, AIDS, homosexuality, spiritual feminism, environmental revolution, Native American spirituality, Christian mysticism, Art and Spirituality, Art as Meditation, Interfaith or Deep Ecumenism and more.
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
In A Spirituality Named Compassion, Matthew Fox delivers a profound exploration of the meaning and practice of compassion. Establishing a spirituality for the future that promises personal, social, and global healing, Fox marries mysticism with social justice, leading the way toward a gentler and more ecological spirituality and an acceptance of our interdependence which is the substratum of all compassionate activity.
“Well worth our deepest consideration…Puts compassion into its proper focus after centuries of neglect.” –The Catholic Register
8 thoughts on “Meister Eckhart on Our Becoming Mothers of God”
Matthew, Today you ask, “the question Meister Eckhart asked 700 years ago: ‘How can I, How can we, better birth the Christ, the prince of peace?'” And later you say: “If Christmas season is about the Cosmic Christ being born in us and from us, we are invited to imitate Mary by becoming birthers of the Christ ourselves. As Meister Eckhart put it in the 14th century in his Christmas sermon: ‘What good is it to me if Mary gave birth to Christ 1400 years ago and I do not do the same?’” Let me give you the full quote as it is in Matthew’s book, MEDITATIONS WITH MEISTER ECKHART: “What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly but does not take place within myself? And, what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace and if I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his/her Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and my culture? This, then, is the fullness of time: when the Son of God is begotten.” You ask us: “When have you experienced yourself as a Mother of God?” when I give birth to paintings, books and music…
Testimony to the ‘birth of Christ’ within ourselves comes with great pain from within and without, without which there can be no birth. — BB.
Really appreciate the moxa in todays DM, it’s rocking my world of Advent!
With regards to todays query, “When have you experienced yourself as the Mother of God?”… my answer is, through continously learning and evolving through the art of relationship with! And as B.B. mentioned in his comment today, this can at times be experienced as a painfilled process of birthing… and yet at the same time there is also much beauty and sacred moments of joy in the midst of it all. What also comes to mind is the comment of the mystic whom I believe was Eckhart that Mathew has often quoted… that being, “God is lying on His/Her maternity bed, continously giving birth.” I find this quote to be empowering, in the sense that it helps me to accept and surrender to the transformational processes of giving birth, allowing myself to be broken open into becoming a greater measure of who I am, as both human and yet also divine. It’s as if I am being midwifed by the Mother of God through all that unfolds, evolves and emerges from within, as I give birth to the Cosmic Christ, through the art of relationship with… with myself, others and the all and the everything of creation.
Jeanette, You comment today: “the mystic whom I believe was Eckhart that Mathew has often quoted… that being, “God is lying on His/Her maternity bed, continuously giving birth.” You are right, it was Eckhart and the whole quotation goes: “From all eternity God lies on a maternity bed giving birth. The essence of God is birthing.”
Matthew/Eckhardt message about the Christ in everyone reminds me of the conclusion to my 1980s poem
‘Kingdom an Interim Report’.
a spirit lifting me up from my
own dark space so
I can see LIFE
cheering herself on
veering ’round dark corners
steering clear of blank despair
writing sonatas to herself in
sunsets and sundry places…
She writes such lilting measures I
can hear resonances of treasures
from those patchy but persistent
heavens proliferating every
Christ knows where….
Gwen, Thank you for your poem !!!
Thank you Matthew! Another beautiful and profound DM on the true meaning and Spirit of Christmas on the eternal birth of Christ within our compassionate hearts and among us every Sacred day/moment in our daily lives, especially with one another, Beautiful Mother Nature, and All of our ongoing co-Creation~Evolution in our multidimensional/multiverse Cosmos within our Loving Diverse Oneness — Cosmic Christ Consciousness….
🔥💜🌎🙏
So much more good going on in the world, but we can not see it. Only the heart sees and knows…
}:- a.m.