Sermon 6 on the Song of Songs — Bernard of Clairvaux
On the Supreme and Uncircumscribed Spirit, Who Is God: and in What Way Mercy and Judgment Are Called the Feet of the Lord
1. That the following sermon may cohere with the preceding one, do you retain what was given above, that the supreme and uncircumscribed Spirit alone does not need the instrument or service of a body for everything that he wishes to do or to have done? Let us therefore securely grant to God alone, as true immortality, so also true incorporeality: that he alone among spirits so far transcends every corporeal nature that he needs no body whatsoever for any work whatsoever, content with a spiritual nod alone, when he wills, for whatever things he wills to accomplish. Therefore that majesty alone is the one which needs the work of no corporeal instrument, neither on account of itself nor on account of another, at whose omnipotent decree every work is unhesitatingly at hand, every lofty thing bows down, every adversity yields, every creature complies, even with no bodily or spiritual aid intervening or assisting. He teaches and admonishes without a tongue; he gives and holds without hands; without feet he runs and comes to the aid of those who perish.
2. He was doing these things also with the fathers in earlier ages; men were experiencing his diligent benefits, but the benefactor was hidden from them. He indeed was reaching from end to end mightily; but disposing all things sweetly, he was not perceived by men. And they rejoiced in the good things of the Lord; and the Lord of Sabaoth, because he judged all things with tranquility, they utterly did not know. They were from him, but not with him; through him they lived, but not for him; from him they had wisdom, but not of him—alienated, ungrateful, senseless. Hence at length it came about that what they were, what they lived, what they understood, they did not attribute to the Author, but ascribed to nature, or certainly, what was more foolish, to fortune; many also arrogated many things to their own industry and virtue. How much did seducing spirits usurp for themselves! How much was given to the sun and the moon! How much was attributed to lands and waters! How much even was assigned to the manufactured and wrought works of mortals! To herbs, shrubs, and the most minute and worthless seeds worship was offered as to divinities.
3. Alas! Thus men lost and exchanged their glory for the likeness of a calf that eats hay (Ps 105:20). God, having pity on their errors, graciously going forth from the shady and thick mountain, set his tabernacle in the sun (Ps 18:6). He offered flesh to those wise in the flesh, through which they might learn to understand the spirit as well. For while in the flesh and through the flesh he does works not of the flesh but of God, indeed commanding nature and overcoming fortune, making foolish the wisdom of men, and conquering the tyranny of demons, he manifestly shows himself to be the one through whom the same things were also done before, when they were done. In the flesh, I say, and through the flesh, powerfully and openly working wonders, speaking salutary words, suffering indignities, he evidently shows that he himself is the one who powerfully, but invisibly, had founded the ages, wisely governed them, and kindly protected them. Finally, while he preaches the gospel to the ungrateful, gives signs to the unbelieving, and prays for his own crucifiers, does he not clearly declare himself to be the one who with his Father daily makes his sun to rise upon the good and the evil, and sends rain upon the just and the unjust? (Mt 5:45) For this is what he himself was saying: If I do not do the works of my Father, do not believe (Jn 10:37).
4. Behold, he opens the mouth of his flesh, teaching the disciples on the mountain, who in silence teaches the angels in the heavens. Behold, at the touch of his bodily hand leprosy is healed, blindness is driven away, hearing is restored, the mute tongue is loosed, the disciple nearly drowned is raised up; and he is recognized without doubt as the one to whom David had said long before: You open your hand, and fill every living thing with blessing (Ps 144:16); and again: When you open your hand, all things shall be filled with goodness (Ps 103:28). Behold, lying at his bodily feet and repenting, the sinful woman hears: Your sins are forgiven you (Lk 7:48), and she recognizes him of whom she had read written from many ages past: The devil shall go forth before his feet (Hab 3:5). For where sin is forgiven, there without doubt the devil is expelled from the heart of the sinner. Hence he says universally of all the penitent: Now is the judgment of this world, now shall the prince of this world be cast out (Jn 12:31): namely, that God forgives the sin of the one who humbly confesses; and the devil loses the dominion which he had invaded in the heart of man.
5. Finally, he walks upon the waves with his bodily feet (Mt 14:25), he to whom, not yet clothed in flesh, the Psalmist had already sung: Your way is in the sea, and your paths in many waters; which is to say: You trample the swelling hearts of the proud, and you restrain the unstable desires of the carnal, justifying the ungodly and humbling the proud. Yet because this is done invisibly, the carnal man does not perceive by whom it is done. Whence he also adds: And your footsteps shall not be known (Ps 76:20). Hence again the Father says to the Son: Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet (Ps 109:1); that is: Until I subject all who despise you to your will, whether unwilling and wretched, or willing and blessed. And so, because the flesh did not perceive this work of the Spirit (for the natural man does not perceive those things which are of the Spirit of God (1 Cor 2:14)), it was necessary that, bodily falling at his bodily feet and bodily kissing those same feet with bodily lips, the sinful woman should receive the forgiveness of sins; and thus that change of the right hand of the Most High (Ps 76:11), by which he wonderfully but invisibly justifies the ungodly, should become known even to the carnal.
6. But those spiritual feet of God, which the penitent must first kiss spiritually, I ought not to pass over. I know your curiosity, which allows nothing to pass by altogether uninvestigated of its own accord. Nor indeed should it be held in contempt to know with what feet Scripture so frequently commemorates that God now stands, as there: We will worship in the place where his feet have stood (Ps 131:7); now walks, as there: And I will dwell in them, and I will walk among them (Lev 26:12; 2 Cor 6:16); now even runs, according to that: He exulted as a giant to run his course (Ps 18:6). If the Apostle rightly judged it fitting to refer the head of Christ to the Divinity (1 Cor 2:3), I think it may also not unfittingly seem to us that the feet pertain to the humanity; of which let us name the one mercy, and the other judgment. These two words are known to you; and from many places of Scripture both together, if you reflect, come to mind. That God indeed took up the foot of mercy in the flesh to which he united himself, the Epistle to the Hebrews teaches, declaring that Christ was tempted in all things according to our likeness without sin, that he might become merciful (Heb 4:15). What of that other one, which has been called judgment? Does not God the man himself openly signify that it too pertains equally to the humanity he assumed, where he declares that power to execute judgment has been given to him by the Father, because he is the Son of Man? (Jn 5:27)
7. With these two feet, then, fittingly coming together under the one head of the divinity, born of a woman, made under the law, the invisible Emmanuel was seen on earth and conversed with men (Bar 3:38). With these certainly he passes through even now, doing good and healing all who are oppressed by the devil, but spiritually, but invisibly. With these feet, I say, he walks through devout minds, unceasingly examining and searching the hearts and inward parts of the faithful. But see whether perhaps these are those legs of the Bridegroom which the Bride so magnificently commends in what follows, comparing them, if I am not mistaken, to marble columns set upon bases of gold (Song 5:15). Most beautifully indeed; since in the incarnate Wisdom of God, which is designated by gold, mercy and truth have met together (Ps 84:11); for all the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth (Ps 24:10).
8. Happy the mind into which the Lord Jesus has once fixed both feet! By two signs recognize the mind which is of this kind, which necessarily bears with it the impressions of the divine footsteps. These are fear and hope; the one representing the image of judgment, the other of mercy. Rightly is God well-pleased with those who fear him, and with those who hope in his mercy (Ps 146:11): since fear is the beginning of wisdom (Prov 1:7), and hope is its progress; for love claims for itself the consummation. Since these things are so, the fruit is not small in this first kiss, which is received at the feet; only take care that you be deprived of neither of them. For indeed, if you are now pierced by sorrow for sin and by the fear of judgment, you have pressed your lips to the footstep of truth and judgment. But if you temper your fear and sorrow by consideration of the divine goodness and by the hope of obtaining pardon, know that you also embrace the foot of mercy. Otherwise it is not expedient to kiss the one without the other; for the remembrance of judgment alone casts one headlong into the abyss of despair, and the deceitful flattery of mercy alone engenders the worst security.
9. It has been given even to me, a wretch, sometimes to sit beside the feet of the Lord Jesus, and to embrace now this one, now that one, with all devotion, insofar as his goodness deigned to admit me. But whenever, forgetful of his compassion, with my conscience goading me, I clung to the foot of judgment a little too long, at once, cast down by incredible fear and wretched confusion, and enveloped in dark horror, I could only cry out trembling from the depths: Who knows the power of your wrath, and for fear of you can reckon your anger? (Ps 89:11-12) But if, leaving that foot behind, it happened that I held the foot of mercy too much, on the contrary I was dissolved into so great a carelessness and negligence that at once both prayer grew more tepid, and action more sluggish, and laughter more ready, and speech more incautious, and in short the whole state of both the inner and outer man appeared more inconstant. Therefore, instructed by experience as my teacher, I will no longer sing of judgment alone, or of mercy alone; but of mercy together with judgment will I sing to you, O Lord (Ps 100:1). Forever I will not forget these justifications; both together shall be my song in the place of my pilgrimage, until, mercy having been exalted above judgment, misery falls silent, and my glory alone sings to you hereafter, and I am pierced no more.
Translated from the Latin by AI. Source: Migne, Patrologia Latina 183.