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

charity: “Peace is reborn, misery becomes supportable, and now that she has re-become
herself, she is able to delight in the sight of her own countenance.” 233
Gilson’s reference to this second moment of self-knowledge the soul acquires in
the restoration of its lost divine likeness has, unfortunately, received far less attention in
subsequent studies of the abbot’s spiritual theology. Occasionally, students of Bernard’s
work have reiterated Gilson’s point. For example, Roch Kereszty has observed that, in
Bernard’s vision of the soul’s progress in the spiritual life, the peaceful self-awareness it
experiences at the end of its spiritual ascent is a kind of “counterpoint” to the bitter and
painful self-awareness it suffered at the beginning of its conversion. 234
Gilson and Kereszty’s identification of this second, and quite different, moment
of self-awareness in Bernard’s itinerary of the spiritual ascent is significant because it
shows that, for Bernard, the soul’s self-knowledge is never static, but rather develops and
changes as the soul is itself changed by its progressive restoration in the divine likeness.
As the soul is gradually likened to Christ the divine Bridegroom, the soul comes to see
within itself more and more each day the beautiful figure of Christ’s beloved Bride,
radiant with Christ’s own beauty. The soul’s spiritual journey, then, is at the same time a
journey of developing self-awareness. If the soul’s descent into pride entailed its
simultaneous descent into ever more perverse forms self-deception, the soul’s ascent to
God by way of humility and love will likewise entail its ascending self-understanding as
ever more the Bride of Christ.
233 Gilson, The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard, 116.
234 Roch Kereszty, “Relationship between Anthropology and Christology. St. Bernard, a Teacher
for Our Age,” 292.
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