Faith & Spirit Quote by Meister Eckhart

Eckhart’s line has the blunt elegance of a paradox that refuses compromise: you don’t add God to a crowded life like another possession; you make room by subtracting. The first clause aims at a medieval version of a very modern problem - accumulation as identity. “Full of things” isn’t just about wealth or objects. It’s about the mind stuffed with status, anxieties, plans, appetites, even “good works” performed as spiritual trophies. In that condition, God becomes one more item in the inventory, safely contained, psychologically manageable. Eckhart’s provocation is that a managed God is functionally no God at all.

The second clause clarifies the scandal: “empty” is not nihilism, it’s availability. He’s writing in a Christian mystical tradition (and as a Dominican preaching to urban audiences) where contemplation competes with commerce, social climbing, and late-medieval religious busyness. His theology leans hard on detachment (Gelassenheit): the soul must release its grip, not because matter is evil, but because clinging turns everything - including faith - into a possession.

The subtext is quietly radical for an institutional church: salvation isn’t secured by religious accumulation (rituals, merits, proofs). It’s a reorientation of attention. The quote works because it frames spirituality as an economy of space: whatever you clutch crowds out the infinite. In an age of relentless acquisition, Eckhart reads like a diagnosis, not a sermon.