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

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Christ as the Model of Self-Knowledge in the Sermones per annum In his one hundred and twenty-five Sermones per annum, or Sermons on the Liturgical Year, abbot Bernard has left us a carefully edited collection of polished homiletic meditations on the major feasts of the temporal and sanctoral cycles. These include sermons on each of the major feasts celebrating the mysteries of Christ’s life: The First Sunday of Advent, Christmas, the Circumcision, Epiphany, Holy Week, Easter, the Ascension, and Pentecost. Taken together, then, these festal sermons offer us an invaluable witness to Bernard’s teaching concerning the saving work of the Incarnate Word’s ascent and descent, and how the Church ponders and participates in the Incarnate Word’s saving mysteries as she annually celebrates the feasts that commemorate them. 342 For this reason, Bernard McGinn has suggested that Bernard’s Sermones per annum, together with his Sermons on the Song of Songs, “count as the most important part of his teaching.” 343 In an important article on Bernard’s Christology entitled “Resurrection and Ascension in the Christology of the Earlier Cistercians,” McGinn makes frequent references to these Sermones per annum in order to show how we must not overstress the role of devotion to Christ in his sacred humanity, and especially in his Passion, in Bernard’s thought. While he acknowledges, with G.L. Prestige and R.W. Southern, that such devotion to Christ in his Passion supplies an essential element of Bernard’s spirituality, he argues that preoccupation with this theme leaves us with a one-sided, or 342 For a recent study of the collection and editing of the Sermones per annum, see Wim Verbaal’s introductory essay, “The Sermon Collection: Its Creation and Edition,” in Sermons for the Advent and Christmas Season, trans. Irene Edmonds, Wendy Mary Beckett, and Conrad Greenia, ed. John Leinenweber, Cistercian Fathers 51 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 2007), vii-lix. 343 McGinn, “Bernard of Clairvaux: ‘That Contemplative’ (Quel Contemplante),” 165. 227
worse, misguided view of the abbot’s Christological spirituality. Following J.-M. Déchanet, who produced one of the most significant early studies of Bernard’s Christology, McGinn argues that, for the twelfth-century Cistercians, “monastic piety finds its fulfillment in Christ known according to the Spirit and not Christ known according to the flesh.” 344 To demonstrate this claim, McGinn reminds us of the predominant position the feast of Christ’s Ascension assumes in Bernard’s account of Christ and Christian spirituality. As Jean Leclercq first observed, it was the Ascension and not the Passion on which Bernard left the largest number of sermons. And, as Leclercq also observed, in 1151, the abbot also instituted a special liturgical procession in honor of Christ’s Ascension that re-enacts the risen Christ’s ascent through the choirs of angels to the throne of God where he sends his Spirit to strengthen his followers on earth. 345 Through his study of these sermons and their place within Bernard’s broader spiritual teaching, McGinn convincingly shows that, for Bernard, “the risen and ascended Christ, sitting at the right hand of the Father, is the goal of the religious life.” 346 One of the many merits of McGinn’s study is that it serves to remind us of the broader scope of Bernard’s vision of the Incarnate Word’s saving work. Without denying the special salvific efficacy of the Passion in Bernard’s soteriology, McGinn’s attention to the role of the Resurrection and Ascension in the abbot’s doctrine underscores that, for 344 McGinn, “Resurrection and Ascension in the Christology of the Early Cistercians,” 6. See J.- M. Déchanet, “La christologie de saint Bernard,” Saint Bernard Théologien, Analecta Sacri Ordinis Cisterciensis 9 (1953): 78-91. 345 Jean Leclercq, “La mystère de l’Ascension sur dans les sermons de Saint Bernard,” Collectanea Ordinis Cisterciensium Reformatorum 15 (1953): 83. 346 McGinn, “Resurrection and Ascension in the Christology of the Early Cistercians,” 6. 228
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MY BELOVED IS MINE AND I AM HIS: SE
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MY BELOVED IS MINE AND I AM HIS: SE
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To my Father, James U. DeFrancis, S
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Christ as the Model of Self-Knowled
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esearch: John Cavadini, Cyril O’R
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self-knowledge is the indispensible
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For Bernard, then, humble self-know
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likeness of charity. Within the Cis
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When Gilson asserted that by self-k
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Bernard, Sommerfeldt continues, hum
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a “false image” of himself. 26
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some newfound and joyous moment of
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ecognize that same sinfulness in hi
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foundations of man’s return to Go
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the descent of humility begins the
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saving work of Jesus Christ in the
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the humility, obedience, and love C
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Of particular importance to Bernard
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and second, “what it is like in i
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In his ground-breaking study of med
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direct links between the two. 52 It
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swells in one’s heart that it mov
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pride as “the desire for a perver
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The knowledge of self and God in th
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mercy until you renew all that is i
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CHAPTER 1: THE SCOPE OF BERNARD’S
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Prior to its first conversion, Bern
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Origen, Bernard here and elsewhere
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of God, they will grow ever more un
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and love as she is loved, and the B
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In the interim or “meanwhile” o
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Why do you judge yourself worthy to
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For Bernard, the lesson to be drawn
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warning and why should it compel he
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worldly things her flesh and senses
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aspired to seize a kind of parody o
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thousands of evils upon our entire
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edemptive work is suitably adapted
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emains forever, this grass too rema
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graciously condescending to assume
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Thus the abbot resolves his spiritu
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of self-knowledge enabled self-dece
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humbles himself will be exalted”
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Church, enabling scholars to instru
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Through this unflinching self-exami
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soon tempers my bitter vision of my
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edeem him, sanctify him, and offer
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As observed above, in the second ha
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modeled and effected by the Word-ma
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Ignorance of self breeds pride when
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consideration of others and their a
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consideration of his treatise as a
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symmetry between these two parts an
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Though this discrepancy at first ap
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self, God, and neighbor. Since it i
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estored in this divine likeness as
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eturn to his suffering brothers and
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much more should the monk not exalt
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for your brother’s misery and not
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sinful weakness and nothing of thei
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Finally, we should note that Bernar
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journey to which the monk will comm
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and judge others or to see how they
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condemned. Lifting his eyes in humi
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will contrary to both the law of Go
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in him by her obedience to his will
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contempt not only for herself and h
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his rule over the reprobate he woul
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in misery rather than to be subject
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descending these early steps of pri
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pleases them and avoid what makes t
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knows.” 201 Should the topic of c
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Here abbot Bernard figures the prou
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ut believe in his inmost heart that
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Asserting Self-Will Against Superio
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As so often in his narrative of the
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who he is, everyone judges him, and
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monk’s descent into this deepest
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God in heaven. He will acknowledge
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Consumed by this self-centered love
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their hearts. Hence Bernard’s fre
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done…by whoever would walk in the
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In recognizing the two distinct mom
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experience, lamenting how he has ma
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inward movement in the soul. In any
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share with them in that divine merc
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Operating inwardly within this judg
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the Truth in his own nature? Matter
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arguing from both allusions in text
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upon the “stage” of the soul an
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(Is 46:8). For Bernard, this first
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desperate need for the healing grac
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Page 207 and 208: Conclusion Having considered three
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Page 219 and 220: The foregoing elements of Bernard
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Page 231 and 232: To resolve this question, Bernard r
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Page 251 and 252: as essential elements of the Word I
Page 253 and 254: led astray. Their amor carnalis Chr
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Page 261 and 262: sins,” “justification,” and
Page 263 and 264: these life-giving virtues, we must
Page 265 and 266: precisely through, a careful approp
Page 267 and 268: perhaps she means, “My Beloved in
Page 269 and 270: To such a soul, the abbot continues
Page 271 and 272: gradually assuming the figure of Ch
Page 273 and 274: to judge themselves in Truth, and s
Page 275 and 276: ejoice with those who rejoice and w
Page 277 and 278: love of himself in the glory of div
Page 279 and 280: I. Works of Bernard of Clairvaux BI
Page 281 and 282: ------. Sermo 29A. Edited by C. Lam
Page 283 and 284: Courcelle, Pierre. Connais-toi toi-
Page 285 and 286: ------. “Le premier traité authe
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