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'In agro dominico' - March 27, 1329
The papal bull condemning Meister EckhartArticles 7-9 : Prayer
Page 3
It was love, union, friendship and knowledge of God himself that Eckhart taught, freeing thus people from the commercial and servile relationship with God, which, as he saw, they had developed. He explained the limits of petition and the meaning of a higher and unceasing prayer, without which petition is revealed as a denial of God and nothing more, an enclosure of oneself within oneself (even by exercising ‘good works’).
Eckhart says on prayer that "when we ask for temporal things we should always add, if it be God's will and if it be for my soul's health. But when we pray for virtues, we need add no qualification, for these are God's own working."
St. Symeon the New Theologian writes that “whoever does not believe, does not ask, not asking he does not receive, and since he did not receive, he is dead”.[3] Someone is spiritually dead, not because he didn’t receive this and that, but because he did not ask and did not receive God himself and only. This is what Eckhart reminds; if someone always asks, that means that he never received, that is: he never asked for God himself, but for this and that (no matter if he prays for ‘good’ things, or the best...). St. Symeon (Moral speech 11) says that even he who did receive God, and lives in ineffable beauty, happy above all other people, powerfull, rich beyond all need, he is in danger at any moment, of loosing the immaterial treasure, if he tries to win or even keep what was granted to him.
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