No Greater Love

“And no greater love can any other man have than to sacrifice his very self for the good of all who are his brothers and sisters by nature or grace.”
—Privy Counsel, Ch. 4

In Chapter 4, the author briefly makes a strong, orthodox profession of Christian faith, and ties soteriology (the study of salvation) into this practice of contemplative prayer. Thus far in Privy Counsel, the anonymous author has talked at length about God and spiritual practice, but has made little mention of Christ. He quickly addresses this, probably intuiting that a casual reader might assume that his emphasis on meditation and the direct experience of the Divine sets him outside the mainstream of Christian thought.

The author makes it clear that his practice is firmly rooted in Christian theology, though the experience of God transcends all category and description. In his salvific death and resurrection, Christ provides an example of contemplation in action. Just as Jesus surrendered his “self” and bridged the gap between God and humanity, in meditation we surrender our own sense of a separated self in order to reveal the ultimate interconnectedness of all beings and all phenomena. The self metaphorically dies on the cross as all attachments and aversions are surrendered, and with the enlightened heart and mind that emerges from contemplation, we are reborn to new life.