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

mercy until you renew all that is imperfect in me and perfect me in your peace.” 73 In the
end, recognizing how far he still remains from God, Augustine can only cling to Christ,
the humble and loving Mediator between himself and God, and feed on his Eucharistic
flesh and blood, that he might be gradually healed by Christ and conformed to him,
imperfectly in this life, but perfectly in eternity. 74
In the chapters that follow, we will find that Bernard has made these themes from
the tenth book of Augustine’s Confessions the very foundation of his teaching concerning
the role of self-knowledge in the spiritual life. For Bernard, if the soul is to return to the
God from whom it has wandered by sin, it must first be recalled to itself by God himself,
and then compelled to know itself in the humbling truth of its own sinfulness, to see it
itself through the undeceived and undeceiving eyes of Truth himself. Humbling though
this self-judgment will be, it is the beginning of the soul’s return to God because it moves
the soul to expose its former, proud self-deception as false, to see itself in the full
measure of its weakness and vanity, and to seek God’s merciful healing. Passing from
the true knowledge of self to the true knowledge of God, the soul which seeks God’s
mercy finds it revealed in Christ, and recognizes God at work within it, conforming it to
Christ’s own humility and love. When the soul undertakes this way of restoration in the
lost divine likeness, it must not abandon the pursuit of true self-knowledge, but continue
to examine itself according to the threefold temptation of 1 John 2:16 that structures
Bernard’s thought as much as Augustine’s. The soul must consider itself continually,
73 Confessions X.38.63 (CCSL 27): “egenus et pauper ego sum et melior in occulto gemitu
displicens mihi et quaerens misericordiam tuam, donec reficiatur defectus meus et perficiatur usque in
pacem.”
74 See Confessions X.42.67-43.70 (CCSL 27).
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