God not only loves his creatures as a craftsman does his work, but also by a kind of social friendship, as a friend does a friend, inasmuch as he attracts them into the society of his own enjoyment. This he does that their glory and blessedness may be that which is his.

Saint Thomas is here speaking of the amicable society. between God, Three in One, and the soul endowed with grace, which finds its full enjoyment in the communion of saints to which God’s love attracts. This companionship in holiness is entirely suited to man’s social nature, though it transcends the powers of nature, and every human hope and aspiration. According to St John, those who see God have eternal life.—This is eternal life, that they may know thee, the only true God. (Jn. 17, 3.)

In spite of this, Christians frequently do not live up to the ideals of their Master. The antidote for such human weakness cannot be to water down those very ideals so as to make them more acceptable to unbelieving critics.

Since the Ancren Riwle was written for realuses of a solitary and strict type we might suppose it to contain either the bare bones of a very strict rule of life—horary, penances and prayers—or the highest form of spiritual teaching designed for the well-nigh perfect. When we remember that Mother Julian was an anchoress at Norwich we may expect to find a rule, designed for such as her, to contain deep mystical doctrine. It is probably for reasons of this nature that so few people open this straightforward and normal book of sound spiritual advice. In effect the Riwle is an ascetical work designed to instruct beginners in their first retirement from the world. Although he is evidently writing for contemplatives, the author scarcely mentions ‘mental prayer’ or its equivalent and passes in silence all mystical experience. Indeed he expressly states that he is writing for those who belong to the ‘Order of St James’, by which he does not mean, as some have supposed, a special religious order of that name.

These words were written in the fourteenth century, when Europe and Christendom were still synonymous terms. They speak of a state of mind and soul almost unknown in our modern world save to the few who profess to lead the contemplative life. Yet this state, which is called recollection, or the ‘gathering together’ of one’s thoughts and desires, is perhaps more necessary now than in other times, for it is the one means by which our age can be restored to sanity.

All those who would re-enter Paradise must first be tried by fire’, says St Ambrose. Thus the soul which aspires to the earthly Paradise of union with God in contemplation must necessarily be purified, for only the pure of heart can see God. Thus purification both of the senses and of the mind, says Père Garrigou-Lagrange, is caused by a special breathing of the Holy Spirit whose working here becomes manifest in the Gifts of knowledge, Filial Fear and Fortitude for the purification of the senses, and the Gift of Understanding for the purification of the mind.

Knowledge shows experimentally the nothingness of creatures, both within and outside ourselves. It differs from Wisdom in that we see created things in their proximate cause (i.e., failures and imperfections) and not in the Supreme Cause. This Knowledge of the nothingness of created things is meant to lead us to the desire of God alone.

Filial Fear is the Gift which inspires the soul with the fear of being unfaithful, and in spite of the sensitive nature being greatly depressed, weak and sluggish in good works by reason of the lack of attraction, the spirit is ready and strong.

Records and diaries of individuals, especially of such as this creature’ Margery, reveal both highlights and shadows, black chaos on either side of the mountains of youth. In this long-forgotten book of Margery Kempe the slightest innuendo, the merest agitation, the unbalanced phrase, the flicker of surprise each in its own allusive manner betrays some chosen subject for human enquiry and scholarship above all others and sweeter in the discovery than the gums and vineyards of Engaddi. Like Christina Mirabilis—the surprising character who lived two centuries before Margery—this burgher’s wife has been called the ‘Astounding’. The Philosopher’s happy phrase admiratio est delectationis causa may then be our invitation to share the medieval experiences of one whose delights were found in the homesteads, and on the pilgrim paths of the crumbling later Middle Ages when the youthful bloom of the thirteenth century was wellnigh a memory and the modern decay already growing.

[The translation is taken from the Middle High German text from the authoritative edition of Josef Quint. Few of the sermons have as yet appeared in this edition so that the choice was limited; moreover these sermons are for the most part reconstructed somewhat disjointedly from verbatim notes. In reading this sermon therefore one should be careful to remember that here only a portion of the mystic’s thought is given, and that it stands out of its context. But in view of the immense importance of Meister Ekkhart in the subsequent development of mystical theology almost any words of his have a tremendous significance. At risk of misrepresenting the author this excerpt is published as being of considerable interest to those who study the development of mysticism.]

’In hoc apparuit caritas Dei in nobis (1 John iv. 9).

What has revealed the love of God, where we are concerned, is that he has sent his only-begotten Son into the world, so that we might have life through him’ (that is with him and in him); for all who do not live in the Son, are surely on the wrong road’.