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

figure of this Ecclesia-Sponsa. On the other hand, the Church as Bride concretely exists
only in the individual souls from whom she is composed, those souls who seek God in
love. As Yves Congar has shown, Bernard reconciles these two dimensions of the one
Sponsa Christi by envisioning the Church as a congregation of holy souls united with one
another and with their Bridegroom in the bonds of divine charity. 309 Thus in SC 61,
Bernard writes: “When you think of these lovers, you must not think of a man and a
woman, but of the Word and the soul. And if I say Christ and the Church, it is the same
thing, except that the Church is not one soul, but a unity, or better, a unanimity of
many.” 310
Bernard’s doctrine of the Sponsa Christi in both her ecclesial and anthropological
dimensions is, of course, not without significance for this theology of self-knowledge.
Simply put, if the Anima-Sponsa’s self-awareness is constituted by her relation to the
Verbum-Sponsus, it is simultaneously constituted by her relationship with each of the
many souls with whom she forms Christ’s one Bride, the Ecclesia-Sponsa. Her gift of
her entire self to her Bridegroom will necessarily entail her complementary gift of herself
to all the members of Christ’s Church for the sake of Christ. Bernard makes this
implication explicit in one of his earliest works, the Apologia to abbot William when he
speaks of Christ the Second Joseph’s multicolored, but seamless robe, his wedding gift to
his Bride. This robe is many-colored on account of the diverse souls and Orders that
compose the Church, but still seamless on account of the “indivisible unity of undivided
309 Yves Congar, “L’Ecclésiologie de S. Bernard”, Saint Bernard Théologien, Analecta Sacri
Ordinis Cisterciensis 9 (1953): 141-146.
310 SC 61.2 (II, 149): “Cum ipsos cogitatis amantes, non virum et feminam, sed Verbum et
animam sentiatis oportet. Et si Christum et Ecclesiam dixero, idem est, nisi quod Ecclesiae nomine non
una anima, sed multarum unitas vel potius unanimitas designatur.”
196