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

yet incapable of gazing on the inaccessible brightness of her Spouse. So her Bridegroom
“recalls her to herself, reveals her ignorance, and reproves her presumption.” 90 His words
to his Beloved are indeed terrifying, but they are not spoken in anger. Rather, the
Bridegroom’s purpose is to purify his Bride’s heart by holy fear that she might become
worthy of that vision of God reserved for the pure of heart (Mt 5:8).
In the conclusion to SC 38, Bernard reprises his doctrine of likeness and vision,
now describing the Bride’s likeness to her Bridegroom as her pulchritudo or “beauty.”
When in his rebuke the Bridegroom calls his Bride “most beautiful among women,” the
qualification “among women” suggests that her beauty is not yet complete and is
intended to help his Spouse “know what is lacking to her” (Ps 38:5). The Bride is indeed
beautiful inasmuch as she leads the spiritual life, inasmuch as she “walks according to the
Spirit and not according to the flesh” (Rom 8:1). Yet, in this life, she remains beautiful
only in part, only among, or by comparison with, worldly and carnal souls who have not
yet embraced life in the Spirit. Beautiful among the carnal and the worldly, she is not yet
beautiful among the blessed angels in glory on account of her still mortal and perishing
body. As long as she falls short of the “perfection of beauty” the angels now enjoy, she
must know herself still unworthy of the perfect vision of her Bridegroom for which she
longs.
Assuming the Bridegroom’s voice, Bernard amplifies his rebuke of his Bride.
The Bride must know that she cannot gaze on perfect Beauty until she is perfectly
conformed to his own beauty:
90 SC 38.3 (II, 16): “Ergo ad seipsam protinus revocatur, et ignorantia convincitur, et insolentia
castigatur SI IGNORAS TE, inquit, EGREDERE.”
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