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

their hearts. Hence Bernard’s frequent quotation of Isaiah 46:8, a verse dear to
Augustine, “Return, O sinners, to your heart.” 229
Yet, this return to heart will not be easy for, as Bernard has already indicated, it
will require an honest, unflinching recognition and judgment of one’s own sin and
weakness. In this bitter, humbling encounter with the reality of one’s own fallen
condition, the temptation to seek solace in pleasant delusions will never be stronger. For
this reason, Bernard insists, the return to the heart must be effected and guided by the
Word who illumines the sinner’s heart by his grace and models the sinner’s way by the
humility of his Incarnation. Anticipating, effecting, and guiding the sinner’s return to the
heart, the Incarnate Word moves his fallen creatures to know themselves in the full and
bitter truth of their misery that they may through this self-knowledge embark upon the
path of humility and love that culminates in their newfound knowledge of themselves as
his own Bride. The stages of this journey of self-knowledge and the work of Christ in
modeling and effecting this journey will be the focus of the next two chapters.
229 Bernard quotes some form of Is 46:8, redite praevaricatores ad cor, in Ep 243.5 (VIII, 133); 3
Sent 88 (VI.2, 131); Conv 3 (IV, 72); Rog 1 (V, 121); Div 115 (V, 121); Pasc 1.17 (V, 93). Augustine uses
the same in, among other places, Confessionum libri tridecim 4.12 (CCSL 27); In Iohannis evangelium
tractatus 18.10 (CCSL 36); Enarrationes in Psalmos 57.1 (CCSL 39).
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