“the meeting between ourselves and Christ”

Jan van Ruusbroec (1223-1381) on “the meeting between ourselves and Christ” or the birth of Christ in the soul: “According to its essential being, you should know that the spirit receives Christ’s coming in its bare nature without intermediary and without interruption, for the being and life that we are in God, in our eternal image, is immediately and indivisibly united with the being and life that we possess in ourselves and that we are according to our essential being. For this reason the spirit, in the most intimate and highest part of its being, in its bare nature, ceaselessly receives the imprint of its eternal image and of the divine resplendence and becomes an eternal dwelling place of God. … For this reason the spirit possesses God essentially in its bare nature, and God possesses the spirit, for it lives in God and God in it. (“The Spiritual Espousals,” Light from Light 188)