Sermon 30 on the Song of Songs — Bernard of Clairvaux
How the faithful people or the elect souls are signified by vineyards, of which the Church is called the keeper; and on the prudence of the flesh, which is death.
1. "They set me as keeper in the vineyards" (Song 1:5). Who? Those very assailants of yours whom you just mentioned? Listen and understand, whether she does not confess herself to have been promoted by those very ones from whom she also suffered. Nor is it a wonder, however, if indeed the intention of correcting was the cause of the fighting. For who does not know that many have been many times assailed in a friendly and useful manner? How many do we daily experience advancing to better things, being promoted to higher things, by the pious assaults of their superiors? Therefore let us rather demonstrate, if we can, in what manner war was waged against the Church by the sons of her mother, both with hostile intent and with useful harm. For this is more delightful, when those who intend to harm are beneficial even against their will. Both senses, indeed, the foregoing interpretation holds: since there were not lacking those who emulated her both well and badly, fighting with different intention; but both were profitable to her. In the end she glories to have profited so much from those things which she suffered from her rivals, that in place of one vineyard, which they seemed to have taken from her, she rejoices that she has been set over many. This, she says, they accomplished for me by fighting against me and against my vineyard, who say: "Raze it, raze it, even to the foundation thereof" (Ps 136:7), so that I exchanged one for many. For this is what she adds, "My own vineyard I have not kept": as though appending the reason whence it befell her, that she was set as keeper no longer in one, but in many. And the letter indeed stands thus.
2. But if we follow it simply, content with that alone which it seems to sound on the surface, we shall think ourselves to be reading in Holy Scripture about those bodily and earthly vineyards which we daily see receiving from the dew of heaven and the fatness of the earth, whence they pour forth wine, in which is wantonness: and so we shall seem to have brought forth nothing, I do not say worthy of the Lord's bride, but not even anything fitting for any of the rest, from so holy and divine a Scripture. For what agreement is there between brides and the keeping of vineyards? But even if it be thought fitting, whence shall we show that the Church was ever assigned to such an office? "Does God care about vineyards?" But if in a spiritual sense we interpret vineyards as Churches, that is, faithful peoples, according to the meaning of the prophet who says, "The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel" (Isa 5:7), it will begin perhaps to become clear to us how it is by no means unworthy of the bride to be made keeper in the vineyards.
3. I think that no small prerogative moreover will appear even in this very thing, if anyone more diligently takes care to observe how much she has everywhere throughout the world extended her borders into vineyards of this kind from that day when she was assaulted and driven out from Jerusalem by the sons of her mother, together with that first new plantation of hers; I mean the multitude of believers, of whom it is read that they were "of one heart and one soul" (Acts 4:32). And this is the one which she now confesses she has by no means kept, but not unto foolishness to herself. For she was not so uprooted from there in the persecution that she was not planted elsewhere, and let out to other farmers who would render its fruits in their seasons. Not at all, it did not perish, but migrated; it even grew and was enlarged, as one whom the Lord blessed. Finally, lift up your eyes, and see if "the mountains are not covered with its shadow, and its branches the cedars of God; if it has not stretched forth its branches unto the sea, and its shoots unto the river" (Ps 79:11-12). Nor is it a wonder, for "it is God's building, it is God's field" (1 Cor 3:9). He himself makes it fruitful, he himself propagates it, he himself prunes and cleanses it, that it may bring forth more fruit. For when would he forsake with his care or his labor that which his right hand has planted? Surely it is not to be considered neglected, in which the apostles are the branches, the Lord is the vine, and his Father is the farmer (Jn 15:2, 5, 1). Planted in faith, it sends forth roots in love, dug about with the hoe of discipline, fertilized with the tears of penitents, watered with the words of preachers: and so indeed abounding with wine in which is gladness, but not wantonness; wine of all sweetness, of no lust. This wine certainly gladdens the heart of man; this even the angels are known to drink with gladness. For they rejoice at the conversion and repentance of sinners, thirsting for the salvation of men. The tears of penitents are their wine, because in them is the odor of life, the savor of grace, the taste of pardon, the joy of reconciliation, the soundness of returning innocence, the sweetness of a serene conscience.
4. Therefore from that one vineyard, which the tempest of savage persecution seemed to have destroyed, how many have been propagated throughout all the earth and have flourished again? And in all these the bride has been set as keeper, so that she should not be saddened that she did not keep the first vineyard. Be consoled, daughter of Zion: if blindness in part has befallen Israel, what do you lose? Marvel at the mystery, and do not lament the loss: enlarge your bosom, and gather in the fullness of the Gentiles. Say to the cities of Judah: "It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken to you first; but since you have rejected it and judged yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold we turn to the Gentiles" (Acts 13:46). To Moses indeed it was offered by God, if he wished to dismiss the transgressing people and expose them to divine vengeance, that he himself could be made into a great nation: but he refused (Ex 32:9-13). Why? On account, surely, of the exceeding love by which he was strongly bound to that people; and because he was not seeking the things that were his own, but the honor of God, and not what would be useful to himself, but to many. And he indeed thus.
5. But I think by a more secret counsel this gift was divinely reserved, on account of its greatness, for the bride, so that she herself rather, and not Moses, should be sent unto a great nation. For it was not fitting that the friend of the bridegroom should snatch beforehand the bride's blessing; and therefore not indeed Moses, but the new bride, to whom it is said: "Go into all the world, preach the Gospel to every creature" (Mk 16:15); she, I say, was utterly sent unto a great nation. Could she have been sent to a greater one than to the whole world? And the whole world easily yielded to one bearing peace, offering grace. But the grace is not as the law. With how dissimilar a countenance do the sweetness of the one and the severity of the other present themselves to every conscience! Who indeed looks equally upon one who condemns and one who consoles, one who demands and one who pardons, one who strikes and one who embraces? Not with equal desire surely will shadow and light, wrath and peace, judgment and mercy, figure and truth, rod and inheritance, bridle and kiss be received. Heavy indeed were the hands of Moses, as Aaron and Hur witness (Ex 17:12); heavy was the yoke of the Law, as the apostles themselves witness, who cry out that it was unbearable both for themselves and for their fathers (Acts 15:10); a heavy yoke, and a cheap reward: for the promise is of land. For such things Moses was not sent unto a great nation. But you, Mother Church, having the promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come, easily in a twofold grace obtain from all that you be received, both on account of the sweet yoke and on account of the sublime kingdom. Driven from the city, you are received by the whole world, since what you promise so entices that what you impose does not terrify. Why do you still lament the loss of one vineyard, when it has been compensated to you with such great interest? "Because you were forsaken, and hated, and there was none who passed through you: I will make you," he says, "an everlasting pride, a joy from generation to generation; and you shall suck the milk of the Gentiles, and you shall be nursed at the breast of kings; and you shall know that I am the Lord who saves you, and your redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob" (Isa 60:15-16). In such a manner, therefore, the bride says she was set as keeper in the vineyards, and that she did not keep her own vineyard.
6. I, on the occasion of this passage, am accustomed to reproach myself, because I have undertaken the care of souls who was not sufficient to keep my own; interpreting vineyards as souls. And if you too approve this interpretation of ours, see also consequently whether we rightly say as well: faith is the vine; the virtues, the branches; the cluster, the work; the devotion, the wine. Since indeed neither is a branch anything without the vine, nor a virtue anything without faith. For "without faith it is impossible to please God" (Heb 11:6); and perhaps it will even be necessary to displease him. In the end, "everything that is not from faith is sin" (Rom 14:23). This therefore those who set me as keeper in the vineyards ought to have considered, namely whether I had kept my own. But for how long a time it lay uncultivated and desolate, reduced to a wilderness! Wine had utterly failed from it, the branches of the virtues having withered because of the barrenness of faith. There was faith, but it was dead. For how was it not dead without works? And this indeed in secular life. But having been converted to the Lord, I began, I confess, to keep it somewhat better; yet not as was fitting. And who indeed is sufficient for this? Not even the holy Prophet, who says: "Unless the Lord guard the city, he watches in vain who guards it" (Ps 126:1). How many ambushes I remember being exposed to even then from him who "shoots in secret at the blameless"! How much was stolen from us, O my vineyard, by furtive machinations in that very time when we began more vigilantly to attend to the care and custody of ourselves! How many and what quality of clusters of pious works did either anger choke, or boasting carry off, or empty glory defile! How much did we endure from the enticement of gluttony, how much from the spirit of sloth, how much from "faintheartedness of spirit and tempest"! So I was: and nevertheless they set me as keeper in the vineyards, not considering what I was doing or had done with my own, nor heeding the master who reproves and says: "If anyone does not know how to govern his own house, how shall he take care of the Church of God?" (1 Tim 3:5).
7. I marvel at the audacity of many, whom we see gathering nothing from their own vineyards but thorns and thistles, yet not fearing to thrust themselves even upon the Lord's vineyards. They are thieves and robbers, not keepers, nor cultivators. This to them. But woe to me even now from the peril of my vineyard! Nay, rather more now, when being occupied with many things, I am compelled to become less diligent and less solicitous about the one. It is not permitted to surround it with a hedge, nor to dig a winepress in it. Alas! "Its wall is broken down, and all who pass by the way plunder it" (Ps 79:13). It lies open, exposed to sadness, a pathway for anger and impatience. Certain busy little foxes of pressing necessities tear it down; from every side anxieties, suspicions, and cares break in; crowds of quarrelers, troublesome cases are rarely absent for an hour. There is no ability to prohibit, no possibility of escaping, not even space for praying. With what shower of tears shall I suffice to drench the barrenness of my soul? (Ps 34:12.) I meant to say "of my vineyard," but it fell out so from the psalm because of habit, and the meaning is the same; nor does the error displease me which reminds me of the likeness, because the sermon is not about a vineyard but about a soul. Therefore let the soul be understood when a vineyard is read; since under its appearance and name the barrenness of the soul is bewailed. With what tears, then, shall I water the barrenness of my vineyard? All its branches have withered for want; they lie without fruit, because they have no moisture. O good Jesus! What bundles of vine-branches from them does the burning of my contrite heart, with you as witness, daily consume in your sacrifice? Let it be, I beseech you, a sacrifice to you, "a troubled spirit; a contrite and humbled heart, O God, do not despise" (Ps 50:19).
8. And I indeed thus, on account of my imperfection, draw the present passage to myself. But everyone who is perfect will be able to say otherwise: "My own vineyard I have not kept"; in that sense, indeed, in which the Savior speaks in the Gospel, "Whoever loses his soul for my sake will find it" (Mt 10:39). Fit indeed and worthy to be set as keeper in the vineyards is he whom the care of his own vineyard does not impede or delay from the diligence and solicitude of those committed to him; while he does not seek the things that are his own, nor what is useful to himself, but what is useful to many. For this reason indeed that care was entrusted to Peter in so many vineyards which were of the circumcision, because the man was prepared to go both "to prison and to death" (Lk 22:33), to such a degree was he not held back by love of his own vineyard, that is, of his own soul, from attending to the care of those entrusted to him. Deservedly also to Paul among the Gentiles was entrusted so vast a forest of vineyards, because he too was found to be by no means anxious in the custody of his own vineyard; so that he was prepared not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem "for the name of the Lord Jesus Christ" (Acts 21:13). Finally: "I fear none of these things," he says, "nor do I make my soul more precious than myself" (Acts 20:24). An excellent appraiser of things, who judges that nothing of his own should be preferred to himself.
9. How many have preferred a small and worthless sum of money to their own salvation! Paul did not even prefer his soul. "I do not," he says, "make it more precious than myself." Therefore you make a distinction between yourself and your soul? Prudently indeed you are of more worth to yourself than anything that is yours. But how is your soul not you? I judge that because Paul already at that time walked in the spirit, and in his mind consented to the law of God because it is good (Rom 7:16); for this reason he deemed this very mind of his, as a certain principal and supreme part of himself, worthy to be designated rather by the name of himself than of any possession of his; but the remainder, which is established to be of an inferior nature and therefore to cling to the inferior and cheaper essence, which is the body; not only by the office of vivifying and giving sensation, but also by the desire of nourishing and cherishing: this, I say, being sensual and carnal, the spiritual man, judging it unworthy of the appellation of himself, reckoned it should rather be counted among his possessions than that he should be personally expressed through it. "When I say 'me,'" he says, "understand that which is more excellent in me, in which I also stand by the grace of God, that is, the mind and reason. When I speak of 'my soul,' take it in the lower sense, that which you see accommodated to animating the flesh, and even joined to it in concupiscence. That I was this, but now am no longer, I acknowledge, because I no longer walk according to the flesh, but according to the spirit" (Rom 8:4). "I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me" (Gal 2:20). According to the mind, I; according to the flesh, not I. For what if the soul even now desires carnally? "It is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells in me" (Rom 7:17). And therefore I would call what in me savors carnally not indeed myself, but nevertheless mine, and that nothing other than the soul itself. For truly the carnal affection of the soul is a portion of it, and the life which it administers to the body. This soul, therefore, Paul despised in comparison with himself, prepared for the Lord's sake not only to be bound but also to die in Jerusalem, and so to lose his soul according to the Lord's counsel.
10. You also, if you forsake your own will, if you perfectly renounce the pleasures of the body, if you crucify your flesh with its vices and concupiscences, and also mortify your members which are upon the earth: you will prove yourself an imitator of Paul, in that you do not make your soul more precious than yourself; you will prove yourself also a disciple of Christ, even by losing it in a salutary way. And indeed more prudently do you lose it in order to keep it, than keep it in order to lose it. "For whoever would save his soul, shall lose it" (Mt 16:25). What do you say here, you observers of foods, neglecters of character? Hippocrates and his followers teach to save souls in this world; Christ and his disciples, to lose them. Which of the two do you choose to follow as master? But he makes himself obvious who argues thus: this harms the eyes, this harms the head, and that harms the chest or the stomach. Certainly each one brings forth into the open what he has learned from his own master. Have you read these distinctions in the Gospel, or in the prophets, or in the letters of the apostles? "Flesh and blood have surely revealed this wisdom to you, not the Spirit of the Father"; for this is "the wisdom of the flesh." But hear what our physicians think of it. "The wisdom of the flesh," they say, "is death"; likewise: "The wisdom of the flesh is hostile to God" (Rom 8:6-7). Ought I to have set before you the opinion of Hippocrates or Galen, or surely from the school of Epicurus? I am a disciple of Christ; I speak to disciples of Christ: if I introduce a foreign doctrine, I myself have sinned. Epicurus and Hippocrates, the one puts forward the pleasure of the body, the other good physical condition; my Master preaches contempt for both. The life of the soul in the body, which the one with utmost zeal inquires whence to sustain, the other whence even to delight, and teaches others to inquire, the Savior counsels even to lose.
11. For what else sounded to you from the lecture hall of Christ, when just a little while ago it was proclaimed: "He who loves his soul shall lose it"? (Jn 12:25.) "He shall lose it," he said, whether by laying it down as a martyr, or by afflicting it as a penitent. Although it is a kind of martyrdom to mortify the deeds of the flesh by the spirit; milder indeed in horror than that in which the limbs are cut by the sword, but more troublesome by reason of its duration. Do you see that by this judgment of my Master the wisdom of the flesh is condemned, through which either one flows away into the excess of pleasure, or even a good state of bodily health is desired beyond what is fitting? Indeed, that true wisdom does not flow out into pleasures, you have heard from the Wise Man, that it is "not even to be found in the land of those who live pleasantly" (Job 23:13). But he who found it says: "Beyond health and all beauty I loved wisdom" (Wis 7:10). If beyond health and beauty, how much more beyond pleasure and baseness? But what does it profit to abstain from pleasures and to spend daily care investigating the diversities of bodily constitutions and inquiring into varieties of foods? "Legumes," he says, "are gaseous, cheese burdens the stomach, milk harms the head, the chest cannot endure a drink of water, cabbages nourish melancholy, leeks inflame choler, fish from a pond or from muddy water are entirely unsuited to my constitution." What is this, that in all the rivers, fields, gardens, and cellars there can hardly be found something for you to eat?
12. Consider yourself, I beg, to be a monk, not a physician; and judgment is to be made not from your bodily constitution but from your profession. Spare, I beseech you, first indeed your own tranquility, spare then the labor of those who serve, spare the burden on the house, spare conscience. Conscience, I say, not yours, but another's; namely of him who sits near you, and eating what is set before him, murmurs about your singular fasting. For it is a scandal to him either your hateful superstition, or the harshness which he perhaps attributes to the one who is supposed to provide for you. He is scandalized, I say, in your singularity, the brother judging you superstitious, as one seeking superfluous things; or surely blaming me as harsh, who do not seek out the necessities for your diet. In vain do certain ones flatter themselves with the example of Paul, who urged his disciple not to drink water but to use a little wine on account of his stomach and his frequent infirmities (1 Tim 5:23). They ought to attend first indeed that the Apostle by no means urged a thing of this kind upon himself, nor did the disciple equally demand it for himself. Then that this was intimated not to a monk, but to a bishop, whose life was absolutely necessary to the still tender and newborn Church. This was Timothy. Give me another Timothy; and I will feed him, if you wish, even with gold, and give him balsam to drink. But you dispense to yourself, having pity on yourself. Your own dispensation toward yourself is suspect to me, I confess; and I fear that you are being deceived under the cover and name of discretion by the prudence of the flesh. I want you at least to be advised of this, that if the authority of the Apostle so pleases you regarding drinking wine, do not omit the "little" which he added. And enough about this. But let us return to the bride, and let us learn from her to beneficially not keep our own vineyards, especially we who seem to be appointed keepers in the vineyards of the Bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is over all things God blessed forever. Amen.
Translated from the Latin by AI. Source: Migne, Patrologia Latina 183.