Mechtild of Magdeburg on Undergoing “Our Easter”

I ended my Saturday DM on “Easter 2026” with the phrase, “We become an Easter.” I want to give credit where credit is due. I am borrowing from Mechtild of Magdeburg who wrote:

God speaks:
When your Easter comes
I shall be all around you,
I shall be through and through you
And I shall steal your body
And give you to your Love.*

We all undergo Easter and Easters just as we all undergo deaths and resurrections. Francis of Assisi talks about our “first” and “second” death, and Thomas Aquinas talks about a “first” and “second resurrection,” the first being “waking up in this lifetime.”

Mechtild of Magdeburg was a 13^th century beguine, a woman’s movement that carved out a new lifestyle for women who chose not to be married and not to be nuns living in a cloistered monastery. (At that time, what we know as religious sisters today, did not exist.)

Beguines worked especially with the young and sick and poor and made a living with their hands such as sewing, making stained glass, etc. They lived generally in small communities.

All her life Mechtild kept a journal, and her spiritual director, a Dominican, urged her to publish it. Years ago, in 1982, one of my students, Sister Sue Woodruff of the Sisters of the Holy Names, wrote an excellent book called Meditations with Mechtild of Magdeburg, that laid out the essence of Mechtild’s teachings using the four paths of creation spirituality as a format.

Easter or the Resurrection certainly pertains to the Via Creativa. Our creativity is an expression of resurrection. There is a special relationship between the Via Positiva—awe, wonder, joy and delight—and the Via Creativa, because our creativity too is a response to awe and gratitude for existence. Indeed, humans by their creativity bring more wonder and awe into the world. In the Via Positiva we acknowledge the beauty of the world, and in the Via Creativa we add to the wonder and beauty in the world.  

And just as Genesis names the Spirit as bringing creation forth, so is the Via Creativa the work of the Holy Spirit with whom we co-create. As Aquinas put it, “the same Spirit that hovered over creation at the beginning of the world hovers over the mind of the artist at work.”

When religion becomes so wrapped up in sin and redemption that it ignores creativity and co-creation, it forgets the Holy Spirit as well.

The Via Transformativa puts our creativity to the best work possible: Birthing healing, celebration, justice-making and compassion into the world. How important it is to remind us of this, since humanity is fully capable of using its god-like creative powers to bring more chaos, hatred and destruction into the world if it chooses. Of choosing the demonic over the divine.

The president and his party have just demanded $1.5 trillion for the war department, and cuts in Social Security and aid for the poor to pay for it. No Via Transformativa there.

We need parameters on our God-given powers of creativity in order to steer it into the best possible direction for the future of Earth and its creatures, humanity included.

As Mechtild puts it:

Do not shun power
Nor despise it.
But use it correctly.
When is power used correctly?
Power is made for service.
I am your servant;
I am not your master.
Be a servant.
Not a master.*

Again:

What should you do?
Do good by doing compassion
To everyone you know needs it.
Expect adversity.
Bear adversity with love.*

* Sue Woodruff, Meditations with Mechtild of Magdeburg, pp. 95, 126, 127.

To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video meditation, click HERE.

Banner Image: Easter flowers in Helsinki, 2009. Photo by Annelis. Wikimedia Commons. 

Queries for Contemplation

How do you find yourself “undergoing your Easter”? And using power correctly and for service? And doing compassion and bearing adversity?

Related Readings by Matthew Fox

The Tao of Thomas Aquinas: Fierce Wisdom for Hard Times, pp. 53-56, 167-172. 

Sheer Joy: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality, pp. 248, 361. 

Christian Mystics: 365 Readings and Meditations. 

Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality. 

Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth. 

A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice. 

Sins of the Spirit, Blessing of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul & Society. 

Trump & the MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ. 

Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision For a New Generation. 

Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson and Jen Listug: Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action.