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

conjectured. These negative judgments about his brothers coupled with his lack of honest
self-scrutiny serve to feed his nascent self-love: the monk sees himself as holy, holier
than his brothers, holier than everyone else.
Mindful of this tendency, and doubtless well familiar with it through his long
experience as an abbot, Bernard sternly warns his sons:
I do not want you to compare yourself, O man, to others - to your
superiors, to your inferiors, to some, or even to one. For how do
you know, O man, whether this one whom you perhaps judge the
vilest and most wretched of all, whose life you scorn and spurn as
more sinful and wicked not only than your own, for you believe
that you are a just and holy man, but even more sinful and wicked
than that of all other sinful men; how do you know, I ask, whether
he will not in the future, by the work of the Most High, become
greater than both you and others if he is not already so before
God? 120
Sense perceptions are a precarious basis for evaluation of the spiritual lives of others and,
by diverting attention from oneself, they tend only to confirm the pleasant thought of
one’s moral superiority. Far better, the abbot suggests, to follow the counsel of Christ,
who teaches his sons and daughters not to take the places of honor at table lest they be
demoted to a lower place, but to take the lowest place of all, preferring themselves to no
one, that they may in time be called to take up a more prominent place (Lk 14:10).
Bernard’s invocation of Christ’s parable is not without rhetorical effect. Though
he does not mention it, his monastic readers will immediately recall how this parable
ends, with Christ’s words, “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever
120 SC 37.7 (II, 13): “Quamobrem noli te, homo, comparare maioribus, noli minoribus, noli
aliquibus, noli uni. Quid scis enim, o homo, si unus ille, quem forte omnium vilissimum atque miserrimum
reputas, cuius vitam sceleratissimam atque foedissimam singulariter horres et propterea illum putas
spernendum, non modo prae te, quod forte sobrie et iuste et pie vivere te confidis, sed etiam prae ceteris
omnibus sceleratis tamquam omnium sceleratissimum; quid scis, inquam, si melior et te et illis mutatione
dexterae Excelsi in se quidem futurus sit, in Deo vero iam sit?”
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