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

At the same time, since this self-knowledge also reveals his powerlessness to
accomplish this journey, it likewise opens his eyes to the truth of that holiness for which
he has always yearned. True holiness, he now sees, will be found not in exalting himself
over his brothers, but in humbling himself to recognize his weakness and thereby learn
compassion for them. True freedom, he now understands, will consist not in exalting his
own will over the will of God, but in humbly opening his mind and heart to the gracious,
transformative missions of Word and Spirit. In condescending to acknowledge his own
brokenness, then, the monk has come to know both the true meaning of wholeness and
the true way to its discovery.
The way to wholeness and Truth, Bernard continues, is to be found in the way of
Christ’s Beatitudes. As was noted in the previous chapter, the abbot has already
discerned his three steps of Truth in the second, fifth, and sixth beatitudes respectively:
the meek will become the merciful, and the merciful the pure of heart. Now he employs
the third and fourth beatitudes to round out his schema of the soul’s ascent to Truth.
Elegantly amplifying the Matthean pericope with a subtlety difficult to capture in
translation, he explains that the monk who has come to know himself in Truth will
“vehemently mourn” the truth of his self-imposed misery, but nevertheless find his one
“consolation” in judging himself severely. Out of love for the Truth, he will “hunger and
thirst for justice,” and find his “satisfaction” in making satisfaction for his past life. Yet
when he finds that he is powerless to offer the satisfaction he desires, he will “fly from
justice to mercy,” learning mercy for his brothers in their common misery that he might
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