Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message
Meister Eckhart
April 10, 2013
“Do exactly what you would
do if you felt most secure.”
“If you would be serene and
pure, you need but one thing: detachment.”
“You may call God love, you
may call God goodness. But
the best name for God is Compassion.”
--Meister Eckhart
Fear, striving for self,
alienates us from who we are meant to be and how we are meant to act and
interact with other. Meister
Eckhart, a Dominican monk, Medieval theologian and mystic, taught that the
key to happiness is to lose oneself and desire, and overcome fear: if we cannot actually get rid of
fear, then we at least can act as if we do not have it.
In
one of his most famous sermons, he said that the highest virtue is
disinterestedness or detachment, and that the heart of God is
compassion. This is because
both detachment and compassion cast out fear. The truth be told, he often sounds
more Buddhist than Medieval Christian.
Eckhart ran afoul of
Franciscan academic competitors, who accused him of heresy. He made a strong defense, but died
before judgment was made in his case. Dominicans honor him to this day,
as do all who see in his writing an insight about desire, fear, and self
rarely seen as clearly in Western theological or mystical texts.
Grace and Peace,
Fr. Tony+ 
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