Sermon 16 on the Song of Songs — Bernard of Clairvaux
On the Contrition of Heart, and on the Three Kinds of True Confession
1. What then does this number seven mean? For I do not think anyone among us is so simple as to suppose these alternations are idle, and this number accidental. Nor do I consider it without purpose that the prophet, leaning over the dead boy, contracted himself to the measure of the child's body, and joined his mouth to that boy's mouth, and his eyes to his eyes, and his hands to his hands (2 Kgs 4:34). The Holy Spirit caused all things to be done thus, and to be written thus, for the instruction without doubt of those spirits whom the treacherous fellowship of a corrupt body encompasses, and whom the foolish wisdom of the world has taught to be unwise. For the body which is corrupted weighs down the soul; and the earthly habitation depresses the mind that thinks upon many things (Wis 9:15). Therefore let no one wonder or take it amiss if I am curious in searching these things, as though they were certain storehouses of the Holy Spirit, since I know that by such things one lives, and in them is the life of my spirit. Yet I say to those who, flying ahead in their understanding, in every sermon demand the end almost before they grasp the beginning, that I am a debtor also to the slower, and especially so; and that my zeal is not so much to expound words as to imbue hearts. I must both draw and serve the drink: which is not done by running through things swiftly, but by treating them diligently, and exhorting frequently. Although indeed beyond my own expectation the discussion of the mysteries has detained us long. I thought, I confess, that one sermon would suffice for this, and that we would quickly pass through this shadowy and hidden forest of allegories, and arrive at the plain of moral meanings by, as it were, a single day's journey: but it happened otherwise. For we have now spent two days on it, and still the way remains. A glance of the eye from afar swept over the tops of branches and the summits of mountains; but the vast depth of the valleys below and the thickness of the thickets frustrated the gaze. Could I, for example, have foreseen the miracle of Elisha, that it would thus suddenly leap into our midst while we were discoursing about the calling of the Gentiles and the rejection of the Jews? And now since we have come upon it, let us not be reluctant to linger a little, intending to return afterward to what we have set aside, since this too is no less food for souls. For it often happens to hounds and huntsmen that they leave off the beast they had pursued, and follow another that has unexpectedly appeared before them.
2. It gives me no small strength of confidence that that great man the prophet, mighty in deed and in word, descending from the high mountain of the heavens, deigned to visit me, who am ashes and dust; to have mercy on one dead, to bend down to one lying prostrate, to contract himself and make himself equal to a small one, to share with one blind the light of his own eyes, and to loose a mute mouth by the kiss of his own mouth, and to strengthen feeble hands by the touch of his own hands. Sweetly I ruminate on these things, and my innermost parts are filled, and my inward parts are fattened, and all my bones put forth praise. This he conferred once upon all mankind; this we each daily perceive being accomplished in ourselves, namely that the light of understanding is granted to the heart, and the word of edification to the mouth, and the work of justice to the hands. He gives us to perceive faithfully, he gives us to speak forth profitably, he gives us to fulfill effectively. And it is a threefold cord, which is not easily broken, for drawing souls out of the prison of the devil, and drawing them after him to the heavenly kingdom, if you perceive rightly, if you speak worthily, if by living you confirm it. With his eyes he touched mine, adorning the brow of the inner man with bright lights, namely faith and understanding. To my mouth he joined his own, and upon one dead he impressed the sign of peace; because while we were still sinners, he reconciled us to God, us who were dead to righteousness. He applied mouth to mouth, breathing again into my face the breath of life, but of a holier life than the first. For first indeed he created me as a living soul; second, he reformed me into a life-giving spirit. He laid his hands upon mine, offering an example of good works, a pattern of obedience. Or certainly he put his hands to mighty things, that he might teach my hands for battle and my fingers for war.
3. And the child yawned seven times, it says (2 Kgs 4:35). It would have sufficed for the glory of manifesting the miracle to have yawned once; but the multiplicity and the remarkable number warn us of a mystery. If you consider that first great lifeless body of the whole human race, you see the Church everywhere, from the time she received life by the prophet leaning over her, as it were yawning seven times; because she is accustomed to say praise seven times a day. If you consider yourself, you will know yourself to live this spiritual life, and to fulfill this mystical number, if you subject the fivefold nature of your senses to the twofold nature of charity, and exhibit, according to the Apostle, your members as servants of righteousness unto sanctification, which you formerly exhibited as servants of iniquity unto iniquity (Rom 6:19); or certainly if, bestowing that same fivefold nature upon the salvation of your neighbors, you add these two things to complete the number seven: namely to sing mercy and judgment to God.
4. I have also another set of seven yawnings, namely seven experiences, without which the true and certain salvation of the revived spirit by no means holds firm: four pertaining to the sense of compunction, three pertaining to the voice of confession. If you live, if there is voice, if there is sense, you too recognize these same things in yourself. Moreover, know that you have fully recovered your senses if you feel your conscience bitten by a fourfold compunction: by a double shame and a double fear; for a threefold kind of confession attests to the life needed to complete the number seven, concerning which we shall see afterward. Does not holy Jeremiah also observe this number in his lamentation? You therefore also, in your lamentation for yourself, having the prophetic model, think of God as your Maker, think of him also as your Benefactor, think of him as Father, think of him as Lord. To all of these you are guilty; lament for each one. To the first and last let your fear respond, to the two middle ones let shame respond. A father indeed is not feared, since he is a father. For it belongs to a father always to pity and to spare. And if he strikes, he strikes with a rod, not with a club; and when he has struck, he heals. It is a paternal voice: I will strike and I will heal (Deut 32:39). There is therefore no reason to be afraid of a father, who even if he sometimes smites to correct, never does so to take vengeance. But indeed when thinking that I have offended a father, there is certainly cause for shame, even if not for terror. He begot me voluntarily by the word of truth, not driven by the sting of carnal desire, as was the begetter of my flesh. Moreover, he did not spare even his Only-Begotten for one so begotten. Thus he indeed showed himself a father to me, but I did not in turn show myself a son to him. With what face do I now lift up my eyes to the countenance of so good a father, being so bad a son? I am ashamed to have done things unworthy of my birth, ashamed to have lived as a degenerate of so great a father. Bring forth streams of water, O my eyes; let confusion cover my face, let shame suffuse my countenance, and let darkness seize upon it. Let my life be consumed in sorrow, and my years in groaning. O shame! What fruit did I have in those things of which I am now ashamed? If I sowed in the flesh, from the flesh I shall reap nothing but corruption (Gal 6:8); if in the world, it too passes away, and its concupiscence (1 Jn 2:17). What? Things falling, vain, and almost nothing, and whose end is death -- these, wretched and mad, I was not ashamed to prefer to the love and honor of the eternal Father. I am confounded, I am confounded to hear: If I am a father, where is my honor? (Mal 1:6.)
5. But even if he were not a Father, he would overwhelm me with benefits. He marshals witnesses against me -- to say nothing of innumerable others -- the sustenance of this body, and the use of this present time, and above all the blood of his beloved Son crying out from the earth. I am ashamed of my ingratitude, although to the full measure of my confusion, I shall also be convicted of having returned evil for good, and hatred for love. Indeed I have nothing to fear from a benefactor, just as neither from a father. For he is a true benefactor, giving abundantly and not reproaching (Jas 1:5). He does not reproach with his gifts, because they are gifts; and his benefits he gave me, he did not sell them. Finally, his gifts are without repentance. But the more generously I think of him, the more unworthily am I forced to think of myself. Blush and grieve nonetheless, O my soul; because even if it befits him not to reclaim and not to reproach, it is altogether unbefitting for us to have been ungrateful and forgetful. Alas! What shall I even now at last render to the Lord for all the things he has rendered to me?
6. But if shame is perhaps too sluggish in performing its part, let fear be roused to help. Let it be roused, so that it may rouse. Set aside for a moment the tender names of benefactor and father, and turn to sterner ones. For he who is read as the Father of mercies and God of all consolation (2 Cor 1:3), is read no less as the Lord God of vengeance (Ps 93:1); he is read as God the just and strong judge (Ps 7:12); he is read as Terrible in his counsels over the sons of men (Ps 65:5); he is read as a jealous God (Ex 20:5). That he is father, that he is beneficent, is for your sake; that he is Lord and Creator, is for his own; for he made all things for his own sake, as Scripture attests (Prov 16:4). He therefore who defends and preserves for you what is yours: do you think he will not at some point also be jealous for himself? Do you think he will not demand the honor of his own sovereignty? Because of this the ungodly man provoked God, because he said in his heart: He will not demand it (Ps 9:13). And what is it to say in one's heart, He will not demand it, except not to fear that he will demand it? But he will demand it down to the last penny: he will demand and he will abundantly repay those who act in pride (Ps 30:24). He will demand service from the one he redeemed, honor and glory from the one he fashioned.
7. Grant that the father may overlook it, and the benefactor forgive; but not the Lord and Creator; and he who spares a son will not spare his creature, will not spare the wicked servant. Consider what a thing of dread and horror it is to have despised the Maker of yourself and of all, to have offended the Lord of majesty. It belongs to majesty to be feared, it belongs to the Lord to be feared, and especially this majesty and this Lord. For if it is established by human laws that one guilty of offending royal majesty, though it be human, is to be punished by death; what end will there be for those who despise the divine omnipotence? He touches the mountains and they smoke (Ps 143:5); and so tremendous a majesty does a vile speck of dust dare to provoke, soon to be scattered by one light breath and never to be gathered again? He, he is to be feared, who after he has killed the body, has power to cast into hell also (Lk 12:5). I dread hell, I dread the face of the Judge, which is terrible even to the angelic powers themselves. I tremble at the wrath of the Mighty One, at the face of his fury, at the crash of the falling world, at the conflagration of the elements, at the violent tempest, at the voice of the archangel, and at the harsh word. I tremble at the teeth of the infernal beast, at the belly of hell, at those roaring ones prepared for food. I shudder at the gnawing worm and the burning fire, the smoke and the vapor and the brimstone and the spirit of storms; I shudder at the outer darkness. Who will give water to my head, and a fountain of tears to my eyes (Jer 9:1), that I may forestall with weeping that weeping and gnashing of teeth, and the harsh bonds of hands and feet, and the weight of chains pressing, binding, burning, yet not consuming? Woe is me, my mother! Why did you bear me, a son of sorrow, a son of bitterness, of indignation and eternal lamentation? Why was I received upon knees, why nursed at breasts, born for burning and fuel for fire?
8. He who is thus affected has without doubt recovered his senses, and in this double fear, and equally in that double shame, he has the four yawnings. The three that remain he will add from the voice of confession, and it will by no means be said of him any longer that there is neither voice nor sense, if indeed that confession proceeds from a humble, simple, and faithful heart. Therefore confess humbly, purely, and faithfully everything that gnaws at your conscience; and you will have fulfilled these alternations. There are those who glory when they have done evil, and exult in the worst things (Prov 2:14); of whom the prophet notes: They have proclaimed their sins like Sodom, he says (Isa 3:9). But these I set aside from this discussion as worldly; for what concern is it of ours about those who are outside?
9. Although even among those who wear the religious habit and have professed the religious life, we have sometimes heard some who most shamelessly recall and boast of their past evils; which they did, for example, either bravely in some gladiatorial or cleverly in some literary contest, or some other thing that was indeed commendable according to the vanity of the world, but according to the salvation of the soul was harmful, pernicious, and damaging. This is still an indication of a worldly spirit; and the humble habit worn by such persons is not the merit of a holy newness but a covering for the old state. Some recall such things as if grieving and repenting; but seeking glory by their intention, they do not wash away their sins but delude themselves: for God is not mocked (Gal 6:7). They have not put off the old man but cloak him with the new. The old leaven is not brought forth or cast out by such confession; rather it is established, according to that word: My bones grew old while I cried out all the day (Ps 31:3). I am ashamed to recall the effrontery of some who are not ashamed, with a lamentable exultation, to boast that even after taking the holy habit they cunningly tripped someone up and defrauded a brother in business; or that they boldly returned retaliation for insult or cursing, that is, evil for evil, or cursing for cursing.
10. But there is a confession more dangerously harmful in proportion as it is more subtly vain, when we do not shrink from revealing even dishonorable and shameful things about ourselves, not because we are humble but so that we may be thought to be. But to seek praise from humility is not the virtue of humility but its subversion. The truly humble man wishes to be considered worthless, not to be proclaimed humble. He rejoices in contempt of himself, proud in this alone, that he despises praises. What is more perverse, what more unworthy, than that confession, the guardian of humility, should serve pride, and that you should wish to seem better from that by which you appear worse? A wondrous kind of boasting, that you cannot be thought holy unless you appear wicked. But such a confession, having the appearance of humility but not the power, not only does not merit pardon but even provokes wrath. Did it profit Saul that he confessed he had sinned at Samuel's rebuke? (1 Sam 15:30.) That confession was without doubt blameworthy, which did not wash away the fault. For when would the master of humility have despised a humble confession, he to whom it is surely innate to give grace to the humble? He could not possibly have failed to be appeased, if the humility that sounded on the lips had shone also in the heart. See now why I said that confession ought to be humble.
11. But it must also be simple. Let it not delight you to excuse your intention (perhaps because it is hidden from men), if it is guilty; nor to smooth over a fault that is grave; nor to shade it with another's persuasion, since no one compelled an unwilling man. The first of these is not confession but defense; it does not appease but provokes. The second shows ingratitude; and the less the fault is reckoned, the more the glory of the one who pardons is diminished. But indeed a benefit is given less willingly when it is perceived as coming less gratefully or less necessarily. He therefore denies pardon to himself who diminishes the gift of the one who bestows it: which indeed everyone who tries to lighten his guilt with words does. And from the last, let the example of the first man dissuade, who indeed did not deny his fault and yet did not obtain pardon, doubtless because of his mixing in the blame of the woman (Gen 3:12). It is a kind of excuse, when you are accused, to incriminate another. Moreover, how not merely fruitless but also pernicious it is to wish to excuse yourself when corrected, ask holy David. For he calls them words of malice, excuses in sins, praying and beseeching that his heart not incline to them (Ps 140:4). And rightly indeed. For he who excuses himself sins against his own soul, thereby repelling from himself the medicine of pardon, and so closing off life from himself by his own mouth. And what greater malice than to be armed against your own salvation, and to pierce yourself through with the sword of your own tongue? Finally, he who is evil to himself, to whom will he be good? (Sir 14:5.)
12. But let confession also be faithful, so that you confess in hope, not at all despairing of pardon, lest by your own mouth you not so much justify as condemn yourself. Judas, certainly, the betrayer of the Lord, and Cain the fratricide, confessed, and yet they despaired: the one said, I have sinned in betraying innocent blood (Mt 27:4); the other, My iniquity is greater than that I should deserve pardon (Gen 4:13); and though each spoke truly, an unfaithful confession profited them nothing. These three observances of confession therefore, joined to the four preceding ones of compunction, complete the number seven.
13. And now, thus compunct and thus confessed, and therefore assured of your own life, you are also assured, I think, that it is by no means with an empty name that Jesus is called, he who was able and willing to work such things in you, and that he did not follow in vain after the staff he had sent ahead. He did not come emptily, because he did not come empty. For how could he be empty, in whom the fullness dwelt? For the Spirit was not given to him by measure. And so he came in the fullness of time (Gal 4:4), thereby indicating that he came full. Rightly full, whom the Father anointed with the oil of gladness above his companions (Ps 44:8); he anointed him and sent him full of grace and truth (Jn 1:14). He anointed that he might anoint. All have been anointed by him who merited to receive from his fullness. Therefore he says: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me; he has sent me to announce good tidings to the meek, to heal the contrite of heart, to proclaim release to the captives and opening to the imprisoned, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord (Isa 61:1-2). He was coming, as you hear, to anoint our bruises and soothe our pains; and therefore he came anointed, he came meek and mild, and of great mercy to all who call upon him. He knew he was descending to the sick, and he presented himself as was fitting. And since the infirmities were many, the provident physician took care to bring many medicines also. He brought the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and fortitude, the spirit of knowledge and piety, and the spirit of the fear of the Lord.
14. You see how many vials full of heavenly fragrances the physician has prepared for healing the wounds of that wretched man who fell among robbers? They are seven in number, perhaps suited to arousing those seven yawnings spoken of before. For the spirit of life was in the vials. From these indeed he poured oil into my wounds; he poured wine also, but less than oil. For so it was fitting for my infirmities, that he should exalt mercy above judgment, just as oil floats above wine when poured in. He brought therefore five measures of oil, but only two of wine. For wine was only fear and fortitude; the remaining five designate oil by their proper sweetness. In the spirit of fortitude indeed, like a mighty man flushed with wine (Ps 77:65), he descended to the underworld, shattered the gates of bronze, and broke the bars of iron; he bound the strong man and seized the vessels of captivity. He descended also in the spirit of fear, but as one to be feared, not as one afraid.
15. O Wisdom! With what great art of healing you restore the health of my soul with wine and oil, strongly sweet, and sweetly strong! Strong for me, and sweet to me. For you reach from end to end mightily, and you order all things sweetly, repelling the enemy and cherishing the weak. Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; I will sing psalms and confess your name, and I will say: Your name is oil poured out (Song 1:2). Not wine poured out (for I do not wish you to enter into judgment with your servant), but oil, because you crown me with mercy and compassions (Ps 102:4). Oil indeed, which, since it floats above all liquids with which it is mixed, clearly designates that name which is above every name. O name most sweet and most delightful! O name most glorious, most chosen and most exalted, and superexalted forever! This is truly the oil that makes glad the face of man, that anoints the head of the one who fasts, so that he does not feel the oil of the sinner. This is the new name that the mouth of the Lord has named (Isa 62:2). Which was also spoken by the angel before he was conceived in the womb (Lk 2:21). By this name not only the Jew, but whoever shall call upon it shall be saved (Joel 2:32); so far and wide has it been poured out. This the Father gave to the Son, the Bridegroom of the Church, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.
Translated from the Latin by AI. Source: Migne, Patrologia Latina 183.