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

graciously condescending to assume the human condition, Christ has, in effect,
compelled fallen human beings to ponder their own need for his redemption. Presenting
himself as a humble infant laid in a manger, he has compelled fallen souls to figure
themselves as beasts before his crib. Bernard writes:
Alas, what a sad and sorrowful change, that man, an inhabitant of
Paradise, lord of the earth, a citizen of heaven, a member of the
household of the Lord of hosts, a brother of the blessed spirits and
a co-heir with the heavenly powers, should find himself by a
sudden conversion lying helpless in a stable on account of his own
weakness, in need of grass on account of his beastly likeness, and
bound to a manger on account of his untamed
savageness….Acknowledge, O ox, your owner, and you, ass, your
Lord’s manger….Acknowledge as a beast him whom you did not
acknowledge as a man; adore in a stable him whom you fled in
Paradise; honor the manger of him whose rule you scorned; eat as
grass him for whom as bread, the bread of angels, you lost all
taste. 114
By his gracious condescension, Bernard suggests, the Word-made-flesh simultaneously
instructs his fallen creatures in both the true knowledge of themselves and the true
knowledge of their Creator. Humbling himself before the very creatures who have
ignored and despised him, the Word exposes the deception of human pride with the
humbling truth of proud humanity’s fallen human condition: human beings are not, as
they suppose, autonomous gods capable of ruling themselves apart from their Creator, but
beasts enslaved to their own fleshly desires, subject to eternal death, and helpless to
deliver themselves from this their own, self-imposed misery by their own power. Yet, by
114 SC 35.5 (I, 252): “Heu! tristis et lacrimosa mutatio, ut homo, paradisi accola, terrae dominus,
caeli civis, domesticus Domini Sabaoth, frater beatorum Spirituum et caelestium coheres Virtutum,
repentina se conversione invenerit et propter infirmitatem iacentem in stabulo, et propter pecorinam
similitudinem indigentem feno, et propter indomitam feritatem alligatum praesepio….Agnosce tamen, o
bos, possessorem tuum, et tu, asine, praesepe Domini tui….Cognosce, pecus, quem non cognovisti homo;
adora in stabulo quem fugiebas in paradiso; honora praesepium cuius contempsisti imperium; comede
fenum quem panem, et panem angelicum, fastidisti.”
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