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

For Bernard, the lesson to be drawn from the Bridegroom’s salutary rebuke is that
the only way to the beatific vision of Christ is Christ’s own way of humility: “The one
who strives towards the heights must have a humble knowledge of himself. Otherwise,
when he is raised above himself, he will fall beneath himself, unless he is firmly
grounded in himself by true humility.” 94 The Bridegroom himself teaches just this when
he says in the Gospel, “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles
himself will be exalted” (Lk 14:11). In Christ’s words, Bernard discerns the most
elemental dynamics of the spiritual life: paradoxically, those who would ascend to the
heavenly heights of likeness, vision, and a share in the divine life must first descend by
voluntary self-humbling in accord with the divine will. Conversely, those who contrary
to the divine will presumptuously aspire to the heavenly heights will descend beneath
themselves into a region of unlikeness, blindness, and spiritual death.
Essential to these spiritual dynamics is the question of self-knowledge. If the
Bride should know herself, she will rightly judge herself as yet unworthy of the heavenly
heights and therefore embrace the descending way of voluntary self-humbling that
ascends to glory and life. If, however, the Bride should fail to know herself, she will
falsely judge herself already worthy of these heavenly heights and therefore embrace the
ascending way of willful self-exaltation that descends to ruin and death. In the
subsequent sermon, SC 35, Bernard will identify Christ and Adam as the respective
exemplary figures of these opposed and inverted patterns of ascent and descent.
94 SC 34.1 (I, 246): “Oportet namque humiliter sentire de se nitentem ad altiora: ne, dum supra se
attollitur, cadat a se, nisi in se firmiter per veram humilitatem fuerit solidatus.”
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