Joos van Cleve, Virgin of Sorrows

 

Yale University Art Gallery

 

Meister Eckhart, on Penance

 

Of True Penance and Holy Living

Many people think they are performing great works by outward things such as fasting, going barefoot, or other such things which are called penance.

But the true and best penance is that whereby one improves greatly and in the highest degree; and that is that a man should experience a complete and perfect turning away from whatever is not entirely God and divine in himself and in all creatures, and have a full, perfect, and complete turning toward his beloved God in unshakeable love, so that his devotion and yearning for Him are great.

In whatever you do, the more of this is present, the more righteous you are... Indeed, you might well turn away quickly and in a short time from all sins, so strongly and with such true revulsion, and turn so strongly to God that, though you had committed all the sins that ever were... they would all be forgiven you, together with the punishment for them, so that if you were to die now you would come before the face of God...

The more a man enters into that, the more all sin, and all penalties of sin, drop away from him...

This penance is truly a state of mind lifted into God away from all things, and in whatever works you find you can have it most, and have it from those works, do them the more freely; and then, if any outward work should hinder you, whether it be fasting, watching, reading, or whatever else, you can safely leave that alone without worrying about failing in any penance.

For God regards not what the works are, but only what love and devotion and what kind of a spirit is in the works. For He is little concerned with our works, but only with our state of mind in all our works, that we love Him alone in all things...

 

For a man is too greedy if he is not satisfied with God...

Thus you should be a common savior of all that you have spoilt in yourself by sin; and you must commit yourself to Him with all that, for with sin you have spoilt all that is in you - heart, mind, body, soul, powers, and whatever else there is in and about you: it is all sick and spoilt.

Therefore flee to Him, in whom is no fault, but all is good, that He may be to you a common savior of all your rottenness within and without.

 

 Excerpts taken from the complete mystical works, the talks of instruction, pages 503-504.