Monday May 15
It may be strange to our ears to hear the word ‘commandment’ immediately after the beautiful parable of the vine. We connect it with ‘commands’, ‘orders’, ‘rules’: all these words appear cold to us today - cold and external. How can one be commanded to love? Meister Eckhart has a penetrating insight into this. “If anyone commands me to do that which is pleasant, which avails me or on which my bliss depends, that is exceedingly sweet to me. When I am thirsty, the drink commands me; when I am hungry, the food commands me. And God does the same. He commands me to such sweetness that the whole world cannot equal. And if a person has once tasted this sweetness, then indeed he can no more turn away with his love from goodness and from God, than God can turn away from His Godhead.” This ‘commandment’ is an inner urgency to become what we really are: beloved and loving children of God; that is our true nature. Oak trees, for example, have a similar inner ‘commandment’ to become the fullest oak tree that they are capable of becoming.
