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

You see, therefore, that Christ is indeed one Person in two natures,
one in which he has always existed and another in which he began
to be. According to his eternal [divine] nature, he always knows
all things, but according to his temporal [human] nature, he began
experienced many things in time. Why, then, do you doubt that as
he began to be in time, in the flesh, so he began to know the
miseries of the flesh by that mode of knowledge which the
weakness of the flesh teaches? 338
When human beings through curiosity, pride, and self-deception fell into misery, the
Word of God followed the work of his hands, humbly willed to experience human
misery, “not out of similar curiosity, but out of his marvelous charity.” 339 On account of
that eternal mercy he has known from all eternity according to his divine nature, the
Word who knew no misery willingly took upon himself the miseries of his fallen
creatures that he might first experience that misery within his own, human heart, and
then, through this experience, begin to discern and learn true, human misercordia for the
sufferings he likewise saw and continues to see in his human brothers and sisters. Christ
descended that he might ascend the first two steps of Truth.
Yet, Christ, Bernard continues, has not taken up human misery that he and his
human creatures might remain in misery, but so that he might learn mercy and so liberate
the miserable. The abbot writes: “If that [divine] mercy, which knows no misery, had not
come first, he would not have approached that mercy whose mother is misery. If he had
338 Hum 12 (III, 25): “Cum igitur videas Christum in una quidem persona duas habere naturas,
unam qua semper fuit, alteram qua esse coepit, et secundum sempiternum quidem suum esse, semper
omnia nosse, secundum temporale vero, multa temporaliter expertum fuisse, cur fateri dubitas, ut esse ex
tempore coepit in carne, sic carnis quoque miserias scire coepisse, illo dumtaxat modo cognitionis, quem
docet defectio carnis?”
339 Hum 12 (III, 25): “Voluit experiri in se, quod illi faciendo contra se merito paterentur, non
simili quidem curiositate, sed mirabili caritate: non ut miser cum miseris remaneret, sed ut misericors factus
miseros liberaret.”
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