Sermon 58 on the Song of Songs — Bernard of Clairvaux
How the Bridegroom Exhorts the Bride, That Is, Perfect Men, to the Government of the Imperfect. Likewise on the Pruning of Vices to Be Done in Them, That Virtues May Grow Up.
1. "Arise, make haste, my friend, my dove, my beautiful one, and come" (Song 2:10). Who says this? Without doubt the Bridegroom. And is he not the one who a little before was so earnestly forbidding the beloved to be awakened? By what agreement then does he now command not only that she arise, but also that she hasten? Something similar from the Gospel comes to mind. For on that very night in which the Lord was betrayed, when he had at last commanded the disciples who were with him, fatigued by the prolonged vigils, to sleep and to rest, in that very hour he said: "Arise, let us go; behold, he who will betray me has drawn near" (Mt 26:46). Now likewise in almost one and the same moment he both forbids the bride to be awakened and awakens her, saying: "Arise and come." What then does so sudden a change of will or counsel mean? Do we suppose that the Bridegroom acted from levity, and willed something before which he shortly after did not will? Not at all. But recognize those alternations which I commended to you above, if you remember, and not once only, alternations namely of holy repose and necessary action; and that in this life there is no abundance of contemplating nor length of leisure, where the more pressing and more urgent usefulness of duty and work presses upon us. After his custom, therefore, when the Bridegroom perceives that the beloved has rested a little in his own bosom, he does not delay to draw her again to those things which seemed more useful. Not however as though she were unwilling: for what he forbade to be done, he himself would by no means do. But for the bride to be drawn by the Bridegroom is to receive from him the desire by which she is drawn, the desire for good works, the desire to bear fruit for the Bridegroom; since for her to live is the Bridegroom, and to die is gain.
2. And this is a vehement desire, which urges her not only to arise but also to arise hastily: for thus you have it: "Arise, make haste, and come." And it comforts her not a little that she hears "come" and not "go": understanding by this that she is not so much sent as led, and that the Bridegroom would come equally with her. For what would she reckon difficult with him as companion? "Set me," she says, "beside you, and let the hand of whomever fight against me" (Job 17:3); likewise: "If I shall walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will not fear evils, for you are with me" (Ps 22:4). She is therefore not awakened against her will, since it is first brought about that she wills: which is nothing other than an infused eagerness for holy gain. She is also animated toward the enjoined work, and is rendered more eager by the opportunity of the time. "It is the time for doing," he says, "O bride, because the winter has passed, when no one could work. The rain also, which having made a flood covered the earth, impeded cultivation, and either destroyed what had been sown or prevented sowing; this rain, I say, has run off, has departed and receded; flowers have appeared in our land, signifying indeed that the springtime mildness is at hand, the convenience for working, the nearness of crops and fruits." Then he adds where and what must first be worked: "The time of pruning has arrived" (Song 2:11-12). She is led therefore to cultivating the vineyards: which, in order that they may repay the vine-dressers with more abundant fruits, it is above all necessary that the sterile branches be cast off, the noxious ones cut down, the superfluous ones pruned. These things according to the letter.
3. Now let us see what is spiritually to be understood by us from this quasi-historical figure. That the vineyards are souls or Churches, and at the same time what the reason for this is, I have already told you, and you have heard, nor do you need to hear it again. To revisiting these, then, to correcting, instructing, and saving them, the more perfect soul is invited, one who has received that ministry not by her own ambition but called by God, as was Aaron. Furthermore, what is this invitation itself, if not a certain inward stirring of charity piously urging us to be zealous for the salvation of our brothers, zealous for the beauty of the house of the Lord, for the increase of his gains, the increase of the fruits of his righteousness, the praise and glory of his name? Whenever, therefore, he who has the charge of governing souls, or who by office must devote himself to the study of preaching, perceives his inner man to be moved by such devout affections toward God, let him understand for certain that the Bridegroom is present, that he is being invited by him to the vineyards. For what purpose, unless to uproot and to destroy, and to build and to plant?
4. But since for this work, as also for every thing under heaven, not every time is available and fit, he who invites adds that the time of pruning has arrived. He who said this knew it was at hand: "Behold, now is the acceptable time, behold, now is the day of salvation; giving no offense to anyone, that our ministry may not be blamed" (2 Cor 6:2-3). Without doubt he was admonishing them to prune and cut away the vicious and superfluous, and indeed everything that could give offense and impede the fruit of salvation, knowing that the time of pruning had arrived. Therefore he also said to a certain faithful cultivator of vineyards: "Rebuke, reprove, exhort" (2 Tim 4:2); enjoining in the first and second of these pruning or uprooting, and in the last, planting. And these things the Bridegroom spoke through the mouth of Paul concerning the time for working. But hear what he spoke through his own mouth concerning the consideration of times, under indeed a different figure and name of things, when the bride was new. "Do you not say," he says, "that there are yet four months and the harvest comes? Behold, I say to you: Lift up your eyes and see the regions, for they are already white for the harvest" (Jn 4:35); likewise: "The harvest indeed is great, but the laborers are few: pray the Lord of the harvest to send laborers into his harvest" (Mt 9:37-38). Just as there, therefore, he was showing that the time for reaping the harvests of souls was at hand, so also here he announces that the time for pruning the equally intelligible vineyards, that is, souls or Churches, has arrived; wishing perhaps that this distinction be made between the two things by the diversity of terms, that by harvests we understand the peoples, and by vineyards the congregations of saints dwelling together.
5. Furthermore, the winter time, which he signifies has passed, seems to me to designate that period when the Lord Jesus no longer walked openly among the Jews, because they had conspired against him, wishing to kill him. Whence also he said to certain ones: "My time has not yet come; but your time is always ready"; and again: "Go up yourselves to this feast; I am not going up" (Jn 7:1-10). Yet he went up afterward himself also, not openly, but as it were in secret. From that time, then, and thenceforth until the coming of the Holy Spirit, by which the sluggish hearts of the faithful grew warm again, as by fire, which the Lord sent upon the earth for this very purpose (Lk 12:49), it was winter. Will you deny that it was winter then, when Peter sat at the coals, his heart no less frozen than his body? Finally: "It was cold," it says (Jn 18:18). A great cold indeed had gripped the heart of the one denying. Nor is it surprising, since the fire had been taken from him. For a little before he was burning with no small zeal, being as yet close to the fire, who, with sword drawn, lest he lose the fire, cut off the ear of the servant. But it was not the time of pruning: and therefore he hears: "Put your sword back in its place." For it was the hour and the power of darkness: and if any of the disciples then raised the sword either of iron or of the word, he was either to be cut down by iron and would gain no one, nor bring forth any fruit; or certainly he was to be compelled by the sword of fear to deny, and so rather he himself would perish, according to the word of the Lord which he added immediately, saying thus: "All who take the sword will perish by the sword" (Mt 26:51-52). For who among the rest would stand undaunted before the dreadful image of death, when the chief himself was trembling and yielding, he who had been fortified by the encouraging voice of his commander, and forewarned to strengthen the others? (Lk 22:32.)
6. But neither he nor they had yet clothed themselves with power from on high; and on this account it was not safe for them to go out into the vineyards, to wield the hoe of the tongue, and to prune the vines with the sword of the Spirit, to cleanse the branches, that they might bear more fruit. Finally, the Lord himself was silent in the Passion, and when questioned on many things did not answer (Mt 27:12), having become, according to the Prophet, "like a man not hearing, and not having reproofs in his mouth" (Ps 37:15). But he said: "If I shall tell you, you will not believe me; and if I shall also question you, you will not answer me" (Lk 22:67-68): knowing that the time of pruning had not yet arrived, and that his vineyard would in no way respond to the labors expended, that is, would bring back no fruit of faith or of good works. Why? Because it was winter in the hearts of the faithless, and certain wintry rains of malice had occupied the earth, readier to smother than to foster the seeds of the word that had been cast; but also to frustrate all the labor that should be equally expended on the cultivation of the vineyards.
7. What rains do you now think I mean? These which we see the turbulent clouds running through the air scattering upon the earth? It is not so. But those which men of turbulent spirit carry upward from the earth into the air, setting their mouth against heaven, and their tongue passing over the earth, as a most bitter rain, makes the earth itself marshy and barren, and useless both for plants and for sowings -- not indeed those visible and corporeal ones given for our bodily uses, of which plainly, as neither of oxen, God has no care. But which ones? Assuredly those which the hand of God, and not of man, sowed and planted; which could either sprout or take root in faith and charity, and bring forth fruits of salvation, if they were watered by good and timely rains. Souls, in short, they are, for which Christ died. Woe to the clouds raining such rains upon them, which make mud and bring forth no fruit! For just as there are both good and bad trees, each bearing fruits differing according to their unlikeness, good ones good and bad ones bad: so also I think there are both good clouds, which rain good rains, and bad ones, which rain bad. And see whether perhaps he who said this did not hint to us at this difference of clouds and rains: "I will command my clouds not to rain upon it" (beyond doubt upon the vineyard) "rain" (Is 5:6). Why do you think he pointedly added "my," unless because there are also bad clouds which are not his? "Away, away with him," they say, "crucify him" (Jn 19:15). O violent and turbulent clouds! O stormy rain! O torrent of iniquity, fit to overthrow rather than to make fruitful! Nor was that rain which followed any less bad or less bitter, though bursting forth with lesser force: "He saved others, he cannot save himself. Let Christ the King of Israel come down now from the cross, and we will believe him" (Mt 27:42). The windy loquacity of the philosophers is not a good rain, which brought barrenness to the lands rather than fertility. Much more are the perverse dogmas of the heretics bad rains, which produce thorns and thistles instead of fruits. Bad rains also are the traditions of the Pharisees, which the Savior rebuked, and they themselves are bad clouds. And unless you think I am doing an injustice to Moses -- for that cloud is a good one -- yet I will say that not everything which even it rained was good, lest I contradict him who says: "I gave them," that is, the Jews, "precepts that were not good" (without doubt through Moses) "and ordinances in which they would not live in them" (Ezek 20:25). That literal observance, for example, of the Sabbath, sounding of rest but not granting it; the prescribed rite of sacrifices; the prohibited eating of pork and of certain similar things which are judged unclean by Moses -- all this is rain descending from that cloud, but I do not want it ever to descend upon my field or my garden. It may well have been good in its own time; after its time, if it comes, I no longer judge it good. Even every gentle rain and gently descending, if it is untimely, is troublesome.
8. As long, therefore, as pestilent waters of this kind had occupied the earth and prevailed upon it, the vineyards did not have their time, nor was there cause for the bride to be invited to prune the vineyards. But when those had run off, the dry land appeared, and flowers appeared in it, signifying that the time of pruning was at hand. You ask when this was? When do you think, if not when the flesh of Christ reflowered in the resurrection? And this is the first and greatest flower that appeared in our land. For "the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep is Christ" (1 Cor 15:20). He himself, I say, "the flower of the field and the lily of the valleys," Jesus (Song 2:1), as he was supposed the son of Joseph, from Nazareth (Lk 3:23), which is interpreted "flower." This flower therefore appeared first, not alone. For "many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep also arose together," who, like certain most brilliant flowers, appeared at the same time in our land. Finally, "they came into the holy city, and appeared to many" (Mt 27:52-53). Flowers also were those who first believed from among the people, the firstfruits of the saints. Their miracles were flowers, producing fruit of faith after the manner of flowers. For after that rain of unbelief had somewhat, or in part, departed and receded, there followed immediately a willing rain, which God set apart for his inheritance, and flowers began to appear. "The Lord gave his bounty, and our land gave its flowers," so that in one day three thousand, and in another five thousand from the people believed (Acts 2:41; 4:4): to such a degree in a short time the number of flowers, that is, the multitude of believers, increased. And the frost of malice could not prevail against the flowers that were appearing, nor snatch away, as it is wont to do, the fruit of life which they promised.
9. For when all who had believed were clothed with power from on high, there arose from among them men who despised the threats of men, strong in faith. They suffered indeed very many contradictors; but they did not yield, nor did they shrink from both doing and proclaiming the works of God. For according to that in the psalm, spiritually indeed: "And they sowed fields, and planted vineyards, and made the fruit of their produce" (Ps 106:37). In the course of time the storm was calmed, and with peace restored to the lands, the vineyards grew, and were propagated, and extended, and multiplied beyond number. And then at last the bride is invited to the vineyards, not indeed to plant, but to prune what had already been planted. Opportunely indeed: for that work required a time of peace. For when in a time of persecution would this be permitted? Otherwise, to take in hand two-edged swords, to execute vengeance upon the nations, rebukes upon the peoples; to bind their kings in fetters, and their nobles in chains of iron; and to execute upon them the judgment that was written (Ps 149:6-9) -- for this is to prune the vineyards -- these things, I say, are scarcely carried out even in a time of peace peaceably. And enough of these things.
10. The sermon could also have been ended, if first I had admonished each one of you, according to my custom, about his own vineyard. For who has so precisely cut away from himself all superfluous things that he thinks he has nothing worthy of pruning? Believe me, even what has been pruned sprouts again, and what has been driven off returns, and what has been extinguished is rekindled, and what has been lulled to sleep is once more stirred up. It is therefore too little to have pruned once; one must prune often -- indeed, if it could be, always -- because always, if you do not dissemble, you find what ought to be pruned. However far you may have advanced while remaining in this body, you err if you think your vices are dead and not rather suppressed. Whether you will or not, the Jebusite dwells within your borders (Judg 1:21); he can be subjugated, but not exterminated. "I know," he says, "that good does not dwell in me." It is not enough unless he also confesses that evil is present in him. For he says: "Not what I will, this I do; but what I hate, that I do. But if what I hate, that I do, it is no longer I who work it, but sin which dwells in me" (Rom 7:18-20). Either therefore, if you dare, prefer yourself to the Apostle -- for this is his own voice -- or confess with him that you too are not free from vices. Virtue indeed holds the middle ground among vices; and therefore you need not only diligent pruning, but also circumcision. Otherwise it is to be feared that, while the vices lick at it all around, or rather gnaw at it, virtue, while you are unaware, may little by little grow feeble; or, if they have grown over it, may be suffocated. In so great a peril, the one counsel is to observe diligently, and as soon as the heads of the regrowing ones appear, to cut them down with ready severity. Virtue cannot grow equally alongside vices. Therefore, that it may flourish, let these not be allowed to increase. Take away the superfluous, and wholesome things arise. Whatever you subtract from cupidity accrues to usefulness. Let us devote ourselves to pruning. Let cupidity be pruned, that virtue may be strengthened.
11. For us, brothers, it is always the time of pruning, just as it is always the work to be done. For I trust that for us the winter has now passed. You know what winter I mean? That fear which is not in charity, which although it initiates all to wisdom, perfects no one; because charity coming upon it drives it out, as summer does winter. For charity is summer: and if it has now come -- indeed, because it has come, as it is right for me to think of you -- it has necessarily dried up every wintry rain, every tear of anxiety, namely, which the bitter recollection of sin and the fear of judgment formerly wrung from us. And so -- which I say without doubt, even if not of all of you, certainly of very many -- this rain has now departed and receded: for flowers too appear, tokens of a sweeter rain. Summer has its own rains too, sweet and plentiful. What is sweeter than the tears of charity? For charity weeps, but from love, not from sorrow; it weeps from desire, it weeps with those who weep. With such rain I do not doubt that the acts of your obedience are more abundantly watered, which I look upon with gladness -- not gloomy with murmuring, not dimmed with sadness, but pleasant and blooming with a certain spiritual joy. They are as if you always bore flowers in your hands.
12. If therefore the winter has passed, the rain has departed and receded; if indeed flowers have appeared in our land, and thereupon a certain springtime mildness of spiritual grace announces the time of pruning: what remains except that henceforth we devote ourselves entirely to this work so holy, so necessary? Let us search, according to the prophet, our ways (Lam 3:40) and our pursuits, and in this let each one judge himself to have profited, not when he finds nothing to reprove, but when he reproves what he has found. Then you have not searched yourself in vain, if you have noticed that there is again need for searching: and so many times your inquiry has not deceived you, as many times as you have thought it must be repeated. But if you always do this when there is need, you always do it. Let it always be remembered therefore that you are in need of heavenly aid, and of the mercy 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.