Finding the clear mirror
You who want
knowledge,
seek the Oneness
within.
There you
will find
the clear mirror
already waiting.
— Hadewijch II, trans. by Jane Hirschfield in Women in Praise of the Sacred (New York: Harper-Collins, 1992)
I’ve thought about this small quote from Hadewijch II many times over the years. I know that I want to find the Oneness within, and I know that I occasionally glimpse it and promptly forget it. But that’s about all I know. It’s probably a lifelong quest.
I recently read something that gave me a deeper look into the mind of Hadewijch, whose writings were annotated by so-called Hadewijch II. The original Hadewijch was a 13th-century mystic who wrote poetry, letters, and descriptions of her spiritual visions. She wrote in beautiful and highly literate Flemish that implied fluency in written French and Latin. Her insights preceded, and might have shaped, Meister Eckhart’s.
So here’s what I read about Hadewijch’s insight into God’s love. My interpretation of this crazy-dense paragraph is below it.
“From [her insight into the fact that love is the identity of God], Hadewijch derives the assurance that this nature of God cannot be known or, with even greater reason, be the object of our participation unless through and in the unheard-of experience in which the eternal Son, in becoming man, was to introduce us ourselves, all together but each one, for his part, irreplaceable. And from that, finally, that certitude, unshakable with Hadewijch and endlessly repeated, that it is only in uniting us, or rather in letting us unite, to this humanity of the God-made-man that we will be able to attain true deification, which will consist in rendering him love for love: in loving as we are and have been from all eternity loved in him by the Father. In fact, through this response of love that is, in God, the Holy Spirit, the Son loves the Father in return; so, in becoming one with us, he wished only to carry us all along in this return of love to its source, which is its consummation as well . . . .”
— Louis Bouyer, Women Mystics (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), pp. 25–26.
My interpretation
That paragraph has three sentences. To paraphrase in a way that fits better for me than Bouyer’s language, I’ll use the words Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer to refer to the persons of the Trinity. By God, I mean whoever God knows God’s self to be.
Here goes:
1. The Creator joins us in the mess by becoming fully human in the form of the Redeemer.
Love is one and the same as God; it’s God’s nature. What allows us to become part of that nature is that the Redeemer aspect of God becomes human so as to introduce us into participation in God’s nature. Us means all of us, separate but joined as one in some kind of mystical unity. We are each an irreplaceable part of the whole. (And what’s more, I think this Oneness includes all of creation, not just humans.)
2. Made one with God, we attain deification.
If A = B, B = C, and C = D, then A = D: God is one with the Redeemer. The Redeemer became one with us by becoming human. Humans are one with each other. Therefore humans are one with God. As the God-made-human is united with us, so we are united with God and attain deification, meaning total identification with God. Deification consists of loving God; participating in the love that is God.
3. This response of love is the Sustainer.
The Sustainer (Holy Spirit) is the interchange of love among the aspects of God, and among God and us; “so, in becoming one with us, [the Redeemer] wished only to carry us along in this return of love to its source. . . . ”
So here is my latest take on the great insight of the Christian faith, which I in no way believe to be the only spiritual path that leads Godward—it just happens to be the path I know best:
Jesus was killed because of his radical message of love for the least among us, and because he restored outcasts into community, and because he preferred death to taking up arms or accepting political power. In becoming human in Jesus, God shows us that God suffers with us when we suffer. But I’ve been missing a positive meaning for the life and death of Jesus, beyond just his willingness to suffer with us. What was the joy set before him? I’ve had an intuition of it here and there but never was able to put it into words until Hadewijch helped me out:
“[H]e wished only to carry us along in this return of love to its source. . . .”
He joined us in this painful mess so that all of us could be carried along with him as he returned / returns / is returning into unity with the God who is love.
Wow.
