Mechthild of Magdeburg
Boundless desire fulfilled with limitless lavishness
“Stay, Lady Soul.”
“What do you bid me, Lord?”
“Take off your clothes.”
“Lord, what will happen to me then?”
“Lady Soul, you are so utterly formed to my nature
That not the slightest thing can be between you and me.
Never was an angel so glorious
That to him was granted for one hour
What is given to you for eternity.
And so you must cast off from you
Both fear and shame and all external virtues.
Rather, those alone that you carry within yourself
Shall you foster forever.
These are your noble longing
And your boundless desire.
These I shall fulfill forever
With my limitless lavishness. (FL I.44)1
Mechthild of Magdeburg
Folks warned Mechthild, a 13th century Beguine, about her book The Flowing Light of the Godhead. “It could be burned,” they said. But threats and warnings could not dissuade her from communicating her experience of divine love. For thirty years, she used the language of courtly-love and an astounding array of literary forms to communicate the divine “greetings” she received.
“This is a greeting that has many streams. It pours forth from the flowing God into the poor, parched soul unceasingly with new knowledge, in new contemplation, and in the special enjoyment of the new presence. (FL I.2)
An Insatiable Longing for God
Like other Beguine women who recorded their experiences of the divine presence, Mechthild did not appeal to the authority of the church, with its exclusively male hierarchy, but to the authority of God who chose her “unlearned mouth” to teach “the learned tongue.” The Dominicans who later translated her work from Middle Low German into Latin tried to soften her criticism of clerics and her use of erotic imagery. Happily, a copy of the original, translated into Middle High German, survived and was discovered in 1861.
Mechthild’s mysticism is centered on her desire for union with God. Margot Schmidt explains: “Mechthild’s basic assertion about the human heart is its insatiable longing for God. It comes to the fore as the infinite relationship reveals itself. Humans as finite beings reach out toward the infinite being of God. And the goal, for Mechthild, is attained in a vital infinite relationship of heights and depths which is stirred by intense emotion. It is only to pure longing that God reveals himself…” (FL xxx). This insatiable longing of the human heart is mutual. Just as the soul longs for union with God, God longs for union with the soul.
“Lord, you are constantly lovesick for me.
That you have clearly shown personally.
You have written me into your book of the Godhead;
You have painted me in your humanity;
You have buried me in your side, in your hands and feet. (FL III.2)
Self-emptying and Divine Filling
A central theme in the Flowing Light is self-emptying.
“No one is able or is permitted to receive this greeting unless one has gone beyond oneself and has become nothing. In this greeting I want to die living.” (FL I.2)
To our ears, it probably sounds counter-productive and self-defeating to become nothing. But, for Mechthild, a soul emptied for the sake of God is necessarily filled with God. This self-emptying and divine filling is our true nature.
How, then, am I to resist my nature?
I must go from all things to God. (FL I44)
Meister Eckhart was fond of saying that a person can gain the whole world together with God, and all they will have is God. To turn from “all things to God” is to empty oneself of attachment to “creatures,” which amounts to anything but God. The term used by a number of contemplatives, including Mechthild, is “detachment.” The soul that is detached is rightly related to all of creation because she loves others and uses things in freedom and for love of their Creator (FL I.1,6).
“The Seven Gifts of a Brother”
My favorite lines in Flowing Light come from “The Seven Gifts of a Brother.”
16. The Seven Gifts of a Brother
The soul is boundless in her longing,
On fire in her loving,
Amiable in her bearing,
A mirror of the world,
Small in her greatness,
Reliable in helping.
Recollected in God. (FL II.16)
In her boundless longing for God, the soul is “recollected in God.”2 Inwardly, the soul’s love is “on fire” for God; outwardly, the soul’s love is “reliable in helping” others. The soul’s experience of divine love involves both ecstatic heights and sinking depths, but she bears them amiably because her single desire is union with God. The soul, being empty of self and filled with God, is “small in her greatness.” Finally, since the world has no entrance into the recollected soul, she is “a mirror of the world,” reflecting back what can find no place in her.
Mechthild of Magdeburg The Flowing Light of the Godhead (Trans. Frank Tobin; Preface by Margot Schmidt; Paulist Press, 1998)
I read these lines, rightly or wrongly, beginning with the first and last lines, reading them as a couplet, and then working in so that the last line becomes “A mirror of the world.” Also, among medieval mystics and contemplatives, “recollection” is a favored term for contemplation/contemplative prayer.