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

as Incarnate has assumed, the abbot is consistently guided by the biblical witness
concerning the Savior. Thus, though the capacity to suffer and die are not, strictly
speaking, essential to being human, the Word as Incarnate has, as the Gospel accounts
attest, assumed these capacities. By contrast, the Word has not assumed human
sinfulness. For, as Bernard’s exposition in On Grace and Free Will suggests, to sin is not
essential to being human and indeed Christ’s sinlessness is affirmed by Scripture, as in
the Letter to the Hebrews: “[Christ] was tempted in every way that we are, without sin”
(Heb 4:15). 319
Across his diverse meditations on Christ’s Person and saving work, Bernard
repeatedly reminds his readers that the Word has taken flesh not for his own sake, but for
the sake of those fallen human beings he has willed to save. His Incarnation and his
words and deeds in the flesh are fittingly adapted to the specific needs of fallen human
beings, and are undertaken so as both to effect their salvation and to model for them, in a
genuinely human manner, that way of humility and love by which those who follow him
in faith may return to God. By the mysteries of his incarnate, crucified, and glorified life,
the Word Incarnate has become both the source and the model of the fallen human
beings’ ascent to their Creator. As Bernard puts it in his Steps, Christ is, as he himself
says, the Way, the Truth, and the Life (Jn 14:6): as the Way, he models that journey of
humility and love by which his disciples will return to God; as the Truth, he is the very
God to whom they will return; and, as the Life, he is the very viaticum which sustains and
strengthens them on their journey back to him according to the way he has revealed. 320
319 See Gra 21-23 (III, 181-183).
320 See Hum 1 (III, 16-17).
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