The Eckhart Center at Albertus Magnus College
The Meister Eckhart Center for Catholic and Dominican Life engages the community in dialogue by integrating the Dominican values of contemplation and action with the calling to promote a more just and peaceful world. We pursue this mission through lectures, panels, workshops, and community initiatives around issues of contemplation, action, justice, and peace.
What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we will reap in the harvest of action.
Meister Eckhart
History
The idea for the Eckhart Center emerged through conversations between Albertus Magnus
faculty, staff, and Board of Trustee members for the College’s strategic plan, Albertus 2025: Lighting the Way to a Second Century. The Center is named in honor of the 14th century Dominican friar, theologian, and
mystic Meister Eckhart, whose writings reveal an intimate relationship with God and
a practical approach to the life of faith.
In Spring 2021, the College’s sponsoring congregation, the Dominican Sisters of Peace,
made a generous gift to seed funding for the new Center. The Center and its programs
launched that fall, with a formal dedication in June 2022. Since then, the Center
has hosted dozens of public events and several major initiatives, including the College’s
Laudato Si’ Action Team and the design and construction of a contemplative garden
on campus. More information about our community initiatives.
One must not always think so much about what one should do, but rather what one should be. Our works do not ennoble us, but we must ennoble our work.
Meister Eckhart
Aims of the Center
- To reflect our Catholic identity through engagement with the Catholic intellectual tradition and Catholic social teaching.
- To bring to life the Dominican pillars of study, prayer, community, and service.
- To promote the preaching of truth and justice through contemplation, word, and action.
- To promote care for the Earth, our common home, and to advance the theological understanding of the interconnectedness of all creation.
- To facilitate the encounter of our tradition with the contemporary world through scholarly reflection and the Dominican practice of disputatio.
- To promote Dominican scholarship and the integration of faith and reason.
- To celebrate the diverse richness of the global Catholic tradition.
- To partner with neighboring institutions and organizations, in pursuit of the common good.
About Meister Eckhart
Meister Eckhart (1260-1328) was a Dominican theologian, philosopher, and mystic. He
was a student of St. Albert the Great and was influenced by St. Thomas Aquinas. He
served as a prior provincial, magister at the University of Paris, and spiritual director
to many Dominican friars, sisters, and lay movements. He was best known for his preaching,
in which he provided theological and practical wisdom for living a life grounded in
contemplation and witnessed through action.
God asks only that you get out of God’s way and let God be God in you.
Meister Eckhart