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

From the anthropological perspective, moreover, reason’s new words to his
spouse are effective because they are spoken in the will’s own language, not with clever
arguments proper to the intellect, but with a sweetness that draws the will from its former
desires to the desire for righteousness. Reason has heard the divine Voice promise
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied” (Mt
5:6) and reason speaks this promise to the will, arousing her desire for the satisfaction
reason has glimpsed in the Bride’s peaceful rest. The will’s new desire for the sweetness
of this rest drives from her heart her former sinful desires, Bernard explains, “as one nail
drives out another.” 294 Moved inwardly by the Word to desire above all else the happy
rest of the Bride, the will ceases to deliver her body over to the service of her former
desires, and immediately hands her body over to reason, urging it to serve righteousness
for the sake of holiness (Rom 6:19).
Once he has described the illumination of reason and the conversion of the will,
Bernard devotes the fourth and final act of his drama to purification of the memory, an
essential element of the soul’s entry into the new self-awareness of the Bride glimpsed in
the monastic garden. Though the soul has now passed from the life of sin to the life of
grace, the memory of its past sins remains and continues to cause the soul shame,
anguish, and guilt. Yet how, Bernard asks, will the book of memory be cleansed of these
painful recollections? If the soul’s sins are written indelibly on the memory like ink upon
a parchment, what pen-knife, Bernard wonders, will be subtle enough to efface these
marks without destroying the memory itself? The answer, he suggests, is once more the
extundi.”
294 Conv 27 (IV, 102): “Sic nimirum fortem armatum fortior superat, sic clavus clavo solet
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