Sermon 63 on the Song of Songs — Bernard of Clairvaux
On the Vineyard of the Pious and Wise Man, That Is, Each One's Own Life, or Mind and Conscience, to Be Seriously Cultivated; and on the Two Kinds of Foxes, Namely Flatterers and Detractors; and on the Temptations of Novice Monks.
1. "Catch us the little foxes that destroy the vineyards: for our vineyard has flourished" (Song 2:15). It is clear that the visit to the vineyards was not made in vain, since foxes were found there destroying them. This indeed is according to the letter. But what does the Spirit say? Before all things, certainly, let us thoroughly reject from this explanation the common and customary sense of the letter, as being inept and tasteless, and plainly unworthy to be received in Scripture so holy, so authoritative. Unless perhaps someone is so senseless and dull of mind that he considers it a great thing to have learned from it, after the manner of the children of this age, to take care of earthly possessions, to guard and defend vineyards from the incursions of beasts, lest perchance the fruit of wine, in which is excess, should happen to be lost; and at the same time the labor and expense should perish. A great loss indeed, that we should therefore read the holy book with such zeal and such great veneration, because we are taught in it to guard vineyards from foxes, lest in cultivating them our purses be emptied in vain, if we have been lazy in guarding them! You are not so unlearned, nor so devoid of spiritual grace, as to think so carnally. Therefore let us seek these things in the spirit. There indeed we find, with a sound understanding and a sense no less worthy, both flourishing vineyards and destroying foxes, in capturing or removing which we labor both more honorably and more fruitfully. Or do you doubt that we must attend far more vigilantly to keeping our minds than to keeping our crops; that we must watch far more carefully against spiritual wickednesses on account of the former, than against cunning little foxes on account of the latter?
2. But now these spiritual vines, as well as foxes, must be shown by me. It will be your concern, sons, for each one to look after his own vineyard, when from my discussion he shall have perceived in what things and from what things he must especially be on guard. To the wise man his own life is a vineyard, his own mind, his own conscience. For a wise man will leave nothing in himself uncultivated or deserted. Not so the fool. You will find everything neglected in him, everything lying prostrate, everything uncultivated and squalid. There is no vineyard for the fool. How can there be a vineyard, where nothing planted, nothing worked upon anywhere is to be seen? The whole life of the fool grows wild with thorns and thistles: and is it a vineyard? Even if it was one, it is no longer, having been reduced indeed to a wasteland. Where is the vine of virtue? Where is the cluster of good work? Where is the wine of spiritual joy? "I passed by the field of the lazy man," he says, "and by the vineyard of the foolish man: and behold, nettles had filled the whole of it, and thorns had covered its surface, and the stone wall was broken down" (Prov 24:30-31). You hear the wise man mocking the fool, because the goods of nature and the gifts of grace, which he had perhaps received through the washing of regeneration, as though that first vineyard of his, which God and not man had planted, he reduced by negligence into a non-vineyard. Finally, there cannot be a vineyard where there is no life. For that the fool lives, I would judge to be death rather than life. How can there be life with barrenness? A tree that is dry and turned to barrenness, is it not judged to be dead? And dead branches they are. "And he killed," it says, "their vines with hail" (Ps 77:47); showing that those which were condemned to barrenness were deprived of life. So the fool, by the very fact that he lives uselessly, is living yet dead.
3. To the wise man alone, therefore, does it belong to have, or rather to be, a vineyard, who has life. He is a fruit-bearing tree in the house of God, and therefore a living tree. Since indeed wisdom itself, by which he is called and is wise, is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her (Prov 3:18). Why should not he who lays hold of her live? He lives, but by faith. For the wise man is certainly just, and the just lives by faith (Heb 10:38). And if the soul of the just is the seat of wisdom, as it is; then assuredly he is wise who is just. He therefore, whether you call him just or wise, will never live without a vineyard, because he will never not live. For the vineyard is the same to him as life. And good is the vineyard of the just man, indeed good is the vineyard that the just man is, for whom virtue is the vine, action is the branch, wine is the testimony of conscience, and the tongue is the press of expression. Finally: "Our glory is this," he says, "the testimony of our conscience" (2 Cor 1:12). Do you see that nothing is idle in the wise man? Speech, thought, conduct, and whatever else comes from him, why is not the whole of it God's agriculture, God's building, and the vineyard of the Lord of hosts? What indeed can perish of his own, when even his leaf shall not fall away?
4. But for such a vineyard, infestations and ambushes will never be wanting. For where there are many riches, many also are those who consume them (Eccl 5:10). The wise man will be solicitous to guard his vineyard no less than to cultivate it, and will not allow it to be devoured by foxes. A most wicked fox is the secret detractor, but no less wicked is the smooth flatterer. The wise man will beware of these. He will take pains, indeed as much as is in him, to catch those who do such things; but to catch them with benefits and services, with salutary admonitions, and with prayers to God on their behalf. He will not cease to heap such coals of fire upon the head of the slanderer (Rom 12:20), and likewise upon the head of the flatterer, until, if it can be done, he removes envy from the heart of the one and pretense from the heart of the other, carrying out the command of the Bridegroom who says: "Catch us the little foxes that destroy the vineyards." Does not that man seem to you to be caught, who, his face suffused with blushes, blushing indeed at his own judgment, is himself the witness of his own confusion and repentance; either because he hated a man most worthy of love, or because he loved only in word and tongue the one by whom he has discovered, even if late, that he is loved in deed and in truth? Caught plainly, and caught for the Lord, according to what he himself expressly said: "Catch," he says, "for us." Would that I could so catch all who oppose me without cause, that I might either restore them or gain them for Christ! So, so let those who seek my soul be confounded and put to shame; let those who wish me evil be turned back and blush: so that I too may be found obedient to the Bridegroom, that I too may catch the foxes, not for myself, but for him. But let the discourse be turned back to its beginning, so that the sequence of the explanation may proceed in its order.
5. "Catch us the little foxes that destroy the vineyards." This is a moral passage; and according to the discipline of morals we have already shown that these spiritual vineyards are none other than spiritual men, whose whole interior is cultivated, and everything germinating, everything bearing fruit and bringing forth the spirit of salvation, just as it is said of the kingdom of God; so of these vineyards of the Lord of hosts we can equally say that they are within us (Lk 17:21). Finally, in the Gospel we read that the kingdom of God shall be given to a nation bringing forth its fruits (Mt 21:43). These are what Paul enumerates, saying: "But the fruit of the Spirit is charity, joy, peace, patience, long-suffering, goodness, kindness, meekness, faith, modesty, continence, chastity" (Gal 5:22-23). These fruits are our progress. These are acceptable to the Bridegroom, because he himself has care for us. Does God care about trees? It is men, not trees, that God-made-Man loves, and he reckons our progress as his own fruits. He diligently observes the time of these, he smiles upon them as they appear, and anxiously busies himself lest they perish to us, when they have appeared; or rather lest they perish to him: for he reckons himself as it were as us. And therefore, foreseeing, he commands that the foxes lying in ambush be caught for him, lest they snatch away the new fruits. "Catch," he says, "us the little foxes that destroy the vineyards." And as if someone should say: You fear prematurely, the time of fruits has not yet come: "It is not so," he says, "for our vineyard has flourished." After the flowers there is no delay of fruits; while the former are still falling, the latter burst forth at once, at once they begin to appear.
6. This parable is of the present time. Do you see these novices? They have come recently, they have been recently converted. We cannot say of them that our vineyard has flourished: for it is flourishing. Meanwhile, what you see appearing in them is a flower: the time of fruits has not yet arrived. The flower is their new conversion, the flower is the fresh form of an amended life. They have put on a disciplined countenance and a good composure of the whole body. I confess that the outward appearances are pleasing: a more negligent style of dress is what shows outwardly in their bodies and garments, speech is rarer, the face more cheerful, the look more modest, the gait more measured. But since these things have been recently begun, by their very newness they are to be reckoned as flowers, and hopes of fruits rather than fruits. For you, little children, we do not fear from the fraud of foxes, which are known to envy fruits rather than flowers. Your danger is from another quarter. I certainly fear burning for the flowers; not a stealing away, but a burning from the cold. The north wind is suspect to me, and the morning frosts, which are accustomed to destroy untimely flowers and to snatch away fruits before they come. Indeed from the north your evil is disclosed. "Before his cold, who shall stand?" (Ps 147:17). If this cold should once pervade the soul (and indeed, as is usual, the soul is heedless while the spirit sleeps), and if then, with no one checking it, which God forbid, it should reach its interior parts, should descend into the depths of the heart and the bosom of the mind, should shake the affections, should occupy the paths of counsel, should disturb the light of judgment, should bind the freedom of the spirit: then soon, as is accustomed to happen in the body of those who have fever, a certain rigidity of soul follows, and vigor grows slack, a languor of strength is feigned, horror of austerity is heightened, fear of poverty agitates, the spirit contracts, grace withdraws, the length of life stretches out before one, reason is lulled to sleep, the spirit is extinguished, the novice fervor cools, a tedious lukewarmness grows heavy, fraternal charity grows cold, pleasure flatters, false security deceives, old habit calls one back. What more? The law is ignored, justice is renounced [or, as an alternate reading, justice is adjudicated], right is proscribed, the fear of the Lord is abandoned. Finally the hands are surrendered to shamelessness; that reckless, that shameful, that most disgraceful leap is presumed, full of ignominy and confusion, from the heights into the abyss, from the pavement into the dunghill, from the throne into the sewer, from heaven into the mire, from the cloister into the world, from paradise into hell. The beginning and origin of this plague, and by what skill it may be avoided or by what virtue it may be overcome, it is not the time to demonstrate now: that will be for another occasion; for now let us pursue what we have begun.
7. The discourse must be turned back to the more advanced and the stronger, to the vineyard that has already flourished, which indeed, even if it has nothing to fear for its flowers from the cold, yet its fruits are not safe from the foxes. It must be stated more openly what these foxes are spiritually, why they are called little, why they are commanded especially to be caught and not driven away or killed: also the diverse kinds of these beasts must be introduced for the greater knowledge and caution of the hearers; not indeed in this sermon, that we may take thought for weariness, and that the readiness of our devotion may be perpetuated in the grace and confession of the glory of the great Bridegroom of the Church, our Lord Jesus Christ, who is God over all things, blessed forever. Amen.
Translated from the Latin by AI. Source: Migne, Patrologia Latina 183.