Open the Eyes of Our Heart, Lord.

From John Tauler (around 1300-1361), Dominican Sermon 53

“Blest are your eyes because they see”

"Our Lord said: “Many a prophet and many a saint longed to see what you see but did not see it.” We must understand the prophets as being the great, subtle and reasoning minds who hold to the sublety of their natural reason and draw from it emptiness. Those eyes are not happy.

We must understand the kings as being men who are naturally dominant, with strong and powerful energy, who are masters over themselves, their words, their works, their language, and who can do whatever they want when it comes to fasting, vigils and prayers. But they make a big thing of it, as if this were something extraordinary, and they despise the others. These are also not the eyes that see the things that make them happy.

All those people wanted to see and did not see. They wanted to see, and they held on to their own will. Evil resides in the will… Our own will covers our interior eyes like a membrane or a film covers the exterior eye and prevents it from seeing… So long as you stay within your own will, you will be deprived of the joy of seeing with your interior eye.

For all true happiness comes from real abandonment, from being detached from our own will. All that is born in the depth of humility… The more a person is small and humble, the less does he have his own will. When all has been calmed, the soul sees its own essence and all its faculties; it recognizes itself as the rational image of Him from whom it came.

The eyes… that look this far can rightly be called blest because of what they see. What a person discovers then is the marvel of marvels, what is most pure, most sure… May we be able to follow this path and to see in such a way that our eyes might be blest. And may God help us in that!"

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."