Dare to go without everything

A gem from Meister Eckhart (around 1260-1327), Dominican theologian

“Whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is brother and sister and mother to me.”

"Many people say: “We are of good will.” But they don’t have God’s will. They want to have their own will. They want to tell our Lord that things have to be done in this or that way … In all things, it is God’s plan that we give up our own will.

Saint Paul talked a lot with the Lord and the Lord with him, but none of that was of any use so long as he could not say to him: “What is it I must do, sir?” (Acts 22:10) For our Lord knew very well what he would do with Paul.

It was the same when the angel appeared to the Virgin Mary. Everything that each of them had said would never have made of her the Mother of God, but from the moment she gave up her own will, she immediately became the true Mother of the eternal Word. She immediately conceived God, who became her natural son.

Nothing in the world makes true human beings of us like giving up our own will before God... If we succeed in abandoning our own will, if, for love of God, we dare to go without everything, both what is interior and what is exterior, then we will have realized our profound being.

Thus, you have to abandon yourself entirely to God, with all that you are, and no longer worry about what he will then do with what belongs to him… The more we advance on this path, the more we are truly in God."