MY BELOVED IS MINE AND I AM HIS: SELF-KNOWLEDGE IN THE ...

spiritual life of the monastic community, but only as competitors, rival claimants to the
title of superior holiness he now so covets for himself alone.
Bernard’s teaching on this instability of mind is best understood in light of his
doctrine of the three steps of Truth presented earlier in his treatise. As was noted above,
for Bernard, the monk who has come to recognize and accept the bitter truth of his own
miseria by humble self-judgment will swiftly recognize that same miseria in his brothers
and so learn to love them with genuine compassion. Observing Paul’s command to
“rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep” (Rom 12:15), he will
rejoice in his brother’s spiritual growth and weep over his brother’s spiritual struggles as
if these were likewise his own. When this monk raises his eyes to contemplate his
brothers, his true knowledge of his own sinful weakness will afford him that empathetic
access to his brother’s heart which will enable him first to commiserate with and then
mercifully to help his brother monk. He will be able, in other words, to regard his brother
not as a rival or a competitor, but as a true brother in the common joys and sorrows of the
spiritual life. In the case of the monk subject to curiosity, however, this affective
identification is sadly inverted. Devoid of that true self-knowledge which might enable
him to commiserate with his brother, and able only to see his brother only in terms of his
own desire for moral and spiritual superiority, he instead rejoices when he sees his
brother struggle and weeps when he sees his brother succeed. His brother’s loss is his
gain, his brother’s gain his loss.
The monk who has descended so far as levitas animae will, Bernard continues,
natually seek some reflief from his vicissitudes of joyous vanity and embittered envy
which attend his restless curiosity. Yet the proud, the abbot explains, “always seek what
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