The Nearness of the Kingdom: Selections from Meister Eckhart’s Sermons, Part 1 of 2

Eckhart von Hochheim, widely known as Meister Eckhart, was a German theologian, philosopher, and mystic who lived in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. Today we present selections from the venerated Meister Eckhart’s sermons, through which we will realize how precious it is to find God within us. "I have a capacity in my soul for taking in God entirely. I am as sure as I live that nothing is so near to me as God. God is nearer to me than I am to myself; my existence depends on the nearness and presence of God. He is also near things of wood and stone, but they know it not.…For this reason man is happier than the inanimate wood, because he knows and understands how God is near him. His happiness increases and diminishes in proportion to the increase and diminution in his knowledge of this. His happiness does not arise from this that God is near him, and in him, and that he possesses God; but from this, that he knows the nearness of God, and loves Him, and is aware that 'the Kingdom of God is near.'"