In his Sermon XII, Meister Eckhart relates the idea of purity of love. He delves deeper into these origins through Jesus’ claim that this is foundational to our being. He opens his sermon with the following:
“HOC EST PRAECEPTUM MEUM, UT DILIGATIS INVICEM SICUT DILEXI VOS
(John 15:12ff.)
I have quoted three words in Latin from the Gospel. The first word that our Lord says is, ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.’ The second is, ‘I have called you my friends, for all the things that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.’ The third is, ‘I have chosen you that you should go and bring forth fruit and that your fruit should remain.’”
Eckhart points to Jesus’ fundamental moral imperative. He is calling forth the idea of sacred love or agape. “In the beginning was the word” and the word was with God and the word was God — “Love.” Jesus is the embodiment of love. In Genesis 2 it is written, “ 7 Then the Lord God formed a man[c] from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” Later, when he talks about the formation of animals, birds and fish, God brings them to man to name.
The basis for all creation was love and creativity. It is foundational to who we are as human beings on this earth. That expression of love extends to all animals and all creation. This may sound like a “new age” or “hippie” approach, but it is laid out in the first passages of the Bible and comes to pass through the New Testament and the New Covenant that is established through Jesus, “the son of Man.”
When Eckhart is addressing the nature of love, he is identifying it in its purest form. In other words, to seek out love first and foremost we are abiding by the purest elemental structure of creation. The first atom that was breathed into existence was an act of love, so therein lies the intention for all creation. Aquinas will later reveal a parallel idea when he sees God as the Great Artist. An artist creates out of love of being – to express the fundamental creative act of love.
What Eckhart is calling our attention to is the fundamental idea that God is love and love is the ground of our being. We cannot be separate and apart from it. We may be disturbed and distracted from this true intention, but the in breath of life we first breathe and the first breath that was breathed into us was love.
Henri Nouwen calls this “The first love.” Other theologians like Bernard Lonergan, S.J. have called it “the first principle.”
Lonergan writes:
“The fulfilment that is being in love with God is not the product of our knowledge and choice. It is God’s gift. Like all being in love, as distinct from particular acts of loving, it is a first principle. So far from resulting from our knowledge and choice, it dismantles and abolishes the horizon within which our knowing and choosing went on, and it sets up a new horizon within which the love of God transvalues our values and the eyes of that love transform our knowing.”
We are witness to this in the birth of a child. The maternal and paternal experience of encounter with being that was created in love is a transcendent experience. A mother who has given birth is wiped out after the experience. Some have experienced a sense of bewilderment and overwhelm because the act of giving birth is so intense that it annihilates ego in the process. Everything is about bringing this being of love into the world.
Ideally, when a mother bonds with a child, it is the first principle of that child’s being – that it is connected to someone who will care for him and be there for him unconditionally and serve his every need until he can stand on his own – or, hopefully, until the end of its life.
The horizon is not seen in the act of birth. A mother is present to what is happening now. Some people are so present to the experience that they shimmer with light. My midwife friend notes that the act of birth forces women to be present to the act of life – pushing, breathing, sweating out of every pore to be the instrument of a birth.
I’ve been told by women that the act of childbirth is paradoxically humiliating and empowering. You’re at the mercy of others to help you, you are in pain, you are bleeding and spilling goop and water all over the place. My sister said, “It’s the most disgusting and beautiful thing she’s ever seen and been a part of.”
The child is equally vulnerable and relies on others in the birthing process to be taken from the womb, carry him to his mother, break the chord and be open to the world, and given to the mother to bond with her.
Nouwen notes, “God’s love is the first love.” A mother’s love is the second love.
In addressing this idea of the “first love.” Nouwen states, “We are beloved.” We are “taken,” we are “blest,” we are “broken” and we are “given” to another.
Love in its purest sense is the equivalent to the “first love,” or “first principle of being.” We are the embodiment of creativity coming together as one entity in the name of Love.
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