Sermon 77 on the Song of Songs — Bernard of Clairvaux
On the Evil Pastors of the Church; Likewise How the Blessed in Heaven Together with the Angels Are a Help to the Elect Still on Pilgrimage.
1. Come now, we are free! We said in yesterday's sermon what sort of guides we would wish to have on this way in which we walk, not what sort we have. We find them far dissimilar. Not all are friends of the bridegroom whom you see today standing on this side and that beside the bride, and who, as the common saying goes, seem to escort her, as it were. Very few there are who do not seek the things that are their own, out of all her dear ones. They love gifts, and cannot at the same time love Christ; because they have given their hand to mammon. Behold how they go about sleek and adorned, clothed round about with variety, as a bride coming forth from her chamber. Would you not, if you should suddenly catch sight of one of them coming from afar, think it was the bride rather than the bride's guardian? But whence do you think this overflowing abundance of possessions, this splendor of garments, this luxury of tables, this heaping up of silver and golden vessels flows to them, if not from the goods of the bride? Hence it is that she is left poor, and destitute, and naked, with a countenance pitiable, unkempt, rough, and bloodless. On this account it is not in this time to adorn the bride, but to despoil her; not to guard her, but to destroy her; not to defend her, but to expose her; not to instruct her, but to prostitute her; not to feed the flock, but to slaughter and devour it, the Lord saying of them: "Who devour my people as the food of bread" (Ps 13:4; 52:5); and: "Because they have eaten up Jacob and laid waste his place" (Ps 78:7); and in another prophet: "They shall eat the sins of my people" (Hos 4:8); as if he were to say: They exact the wages of sins, and do not expend upon sinners the solicitude that is owed. Which one will you give me from among the number of prelates, who does not watch over emptying the purses of his subjects more than over extirpating their vices? Where is he who by praying bends the wrath; who preaches the acceptable year of the Lord? We speak of lighter matters; a more grievous judgment awaits the more grievous.
2. Without cause, however, do we linger over either these or those, because they do not hear us. But even if these things which we say should perchance be committed to writing, they will disdain to read them; or if by chance they do read them, they will be indignant at me, although more rightly they should do this to themselves. Therefore let us leave these men, not finders of the bride but sellers; and let us rather seek out those by whom the bride says she was found. And indeed these men of ours have obtained the place of those men's ministry, but not the zeal. All desire to be successors, few to be imitators. O would that they were found as vigilant for the care as they run eagerly to the chair! They would indeed be vigilant, carefully keeping her who was found by those men and entrusted to themselves. Nay rather, they would be watchful for their own sakes, and would not suffer it to be said of them: "My friends and my neighbors drew near against me and stood" (Ps 37:12). A just complaint altogether, and one to be applied to no age more justly than to our own. It is a small thing for our watchmen that they do not guard us, unless they also destroy us. For sunk in a deep sleep of forgetfulness, at no thunder of the Lord's threatening do they awake, so as to tremble even at their own danger. Hence it is that they do not spare their own, who do not spare themselves, destroying and perishing alike.
3. But indeed who are those watchmen by whom the bride declares herself to have been found? The apostles, surely, and apostolic men. Truly these are they who guard the city, that is, the very Church which they found, and the more vigilantly, because they now perceive her to be in more grievous danger at this time, from an evil that is indeed domestic and intestine, as it is written: "And the enemies of a man are those of his own household" (Mic 7:6). For they do not leave destitute of their patronage her for whom they resisted even unto blood, but they protect and guard her day and night, that is, in their life and in their death. And if precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints (Ps 115:15), I do not doubt that in death they accomplish this even so much the more powerfully, as in death itself their principality has been the more strengthened (Ps 138:17).
4. You assert these things, says someone, as if you had seen them with your own eyes; but they are hidden from human sight. To whom I say: If you consider the testimony of your own eyes to be trustworthy, the testimony of God is greater. For he says: "Upon your walls, O Jerusalem, I have appointed watchmen: all the day and all the night, they shall never be silent" (Isa 62:6). But of angels, you say, that was spoken. I do not deny it: they are all ministering spirits (Heb 1:14). But who forbids me to think the same also of these men, who in power are now by no means unequal to the very angels, but in affection and mercy are perhaps more closely akin to us, inasmuch as they are more closely joined to us by nature? Add also the endurance of those same sufferings and miseries in which we for the present time still live. Will it work nothing more of compassion or solicitude for us in the minds of the saints, that they without doubt remember having themselves passed through these things? Is not that their very voice: "We have passed through fire and water, and you have brought us out into a place of refreshment" (Ps 65:12)? What? They themselves have passed through, and will they abandon us in the midst of fires and floods, and not deign even to extend a hand to their children in peril? It is not so. It goes well with you, O mother Church, it goes well with you in the place of your pilgrimage: from heaven and from earth comes help to you. Those who guard you neither slumber nor sleep. Your guardians are the holy angels, your watchmen are the spirits and souls of the just. Those who have perceived you to be found by both kinds of spirits are not mistaken, and that you are equally guarded by both. And there is for each its own reason for this solicitude: for these indeed, because without you they are not made perfect; for those, because except from you they are in no way restored to their own fullness. For who does not know that when Satan fell from heaven along with his accomplices, the number of the heavenly multitude was diminished by no small part? From you, therefore, all await their completion, some of their number, others of their desire. Acknowledge accordingly the voice in the psalm: "The just wait for me, until you reward me" (Ps 141:8).
5. And it should be noted that it is not she who is said to have found them, but rather they who found her, and as I suspect, appointed to this very task by design. For how shall they preach unless they are sent? And so you have him speaking in the Gospels: "Go, behold I send you" (Lk 10:3); and: "Go, preach the Gospel to every creature" (Mk 16:15). So it is. She was seeking the bridegroom, and it did not escape the bridegroom. For he it was who to this very end had roused her to seek him, and had given her a heart for his precepts, and the law of life and discipline, provided there should be someone to instruct and teach the way of prudence. And he sent to meet her planters and waterers, who would nourish her and confirm her in all certainty of truth, that is, who would declare to her and make certain to her concerning the beloved; because truth is what she seeks, and what the soul of her truly loves. And indeed what is a faithful and true love of the soul, if not assuredly that by which truth is loved? I am possessed of reason, I am capable of truth; but would that I were not, if the love of the true be wanting. For of these branches this is the fruit, and I am the root. I am not safe from the axe, if I am found without it. In that gift of nature, without doubt, that notable mark of the divine image shines forth, by which the soul excels above all other living creatures. Hence it is that my soul dares to rise up to the sweet and chaste embraces of truth, and so to rest in the love of it with all security and sweetness, if only she finds grace in the eyes of so great a bridegroom, that he may deem her worthy to attain to this glory; nay rather, that he himself may present her to himself not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing. How great a peril do you think it is, and what punishment is it worthy of, to hold so great a gift of God idle? But of this at another time.
6. Now, however, the bride by no means found him whom she was seeking; and those whom she was not seeking, by them she was found. Let those hear this, who do not fear to enter upon the ways of life without a guide and teacher; being to themselves in the spiritual art both disciples and masters at the same time. This is not enough: they even heap up disciples for themselves, blind guides of the blind. How many have been discovered to have strayed most perilously from the right path on account of this! Assuredly, being ignorant of the wiles of Satan and his designs, it has come to pass that those who had begun in the spirit were completed in the flesh, led away shamefully, fallen damnably. Let those therefore who are of such a kind see to it how carefully they walk, and take their example from the bride, who was in no way able to arrive at him whom she desired, before there came to meet her those whose instruction she would use for knowing about the beloved, or at least for learning the fear of the Lord. He gives his hand to the seducer, who refuses to give it to a teacher. And he who sends his sheep into the pasture without a guardian is a shepherd not of sheep, but of wolves.
7. Now let us see about the bride, how she says she was found. For it seems to me that she has used the word of finding quite unusually. For she says this as if the Church came from one place. But she comes from the East and the West, according to the word of the Lord (Mt 8:11), and from all the ends of the earth. Nor was she ever gathered together in one place, where she would be found by the apostles or by the angels, to be led or directed to him whom her soul loves. Was she found before she was gathered? No; because she did not yet exist. Wherefore, if she had said that she was gathered, or congregated, or certainly, what better suits the term "Church," convoked by the preachers, I would have passed over it simply, in no way hesitating. For they are fellow workers of God, whom they also heard speaking: "He who does not gather with me, scatters" (Mt 12:30). But neither will this seem to me beside the point, if someone should say she was founded or built by them. For they did this together with him who speaks in the Gospels: "And upon this rock I will build my Church" (Mt 16:18); and: "Because it was founded upon a firm rock" (Mt 7:25). But now, saying none of these things, but declaring beyond her custom that she was found, she makes us hesitate somewhat, and brings us into the suspicion that something lies hidden in this place which should be more diligently examined.
8. I wished, I confess, to pass over this and to withdraw myself from this scrutiny, for which I did not feel myself sufficient. But remembering in how many equally doubtful and obscure matters, while you indeed lifted your hearts on high, I have felt myself aided even beyond my hope, I am ashamed of my diffidence: and rebuking my fear, I undertake, not indeed rashly, what I was timidly fleeing from. The accustomed help will be at hand, as I trust: and if it should be less, yet among well-disposed hearers what I have willed shall not be without profit. But this the following sermon will have as its beginning; for the present one we close here. And may he himself grant you not only to hold in memory what has been said, but also to love it ardently, and to fulfill it effectually: the bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ, our Lord, who is God blessed above all things forever. Amen.
Translated from the Latin by AI. Source: Migne, Patrologia Latina 183.