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

eason already conformed to Christ’s humility by his honest self-judgment, he now
experiences his will as being gradually liberated from sin and conformed to Christ’s own
charity by Christ’s gift of the Spirit. Humbling himself before the humble Incarnate
Word and responding with love to the Incarnate Word who first loved him, the monk
comes to know himself anew as a living likeness to the humble and loving Christ and, by
the principle of knowledge through resemblance, comes to know Christ in knowing
himself. If Bernard’s theology of self-knowledge begins prior to conversion with a
consideration of the self-deception intrinsic to the region of unlikeness, it likewise
extends beyond conversion to embrace the soul’s newfound knowledge of itself as an
image being renewed in the lost divine likeness.
In SC 37, Bernard takes a closer look at the soul’s journey of renewal in the
divine likeness through its deepening knowledge of itself and God. Here, the basic
counters of this spiritual life are indicated by the prophet Hosea in his injunction, “Sow
for yourselves righteousness, and reap the hope of eternal life” (Hos 10:12). 135 When at
his conversion the monk is compelled to face the bitter truth of his being a disfigured
image of God, he will sow the seeds of righteousness by humbling himself to embrace the
monastic disciplines of contrition, penance, good works, and ceaseless prayer. Though
he sows these seeds in sorrow in this life, he will reap their fruits in joy in the next as he
carries home the precious sheaves of his forgiveness, sanctification, and eternal life with
God. In the beatific vision of the Word as he is, the monk’s bitter knowledge of himself
at conversion will give way to the joyous knowledge of the God who has willed to
135 In associating Hos 10:12 with Sg 1:7, Bernard likely follows Origen. See Origen’s
Commentarium in Cantica Canticorum, II.5.19 (SCh 375:364).
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