Sermon 85 on the Song of Songs — Bernard of Clairvaux
On the Seven Necessities on Account of Which the Soul Seeks the Word: Which Soul, at Last Reformed, Approaches to Contemplate and Enjoy His Sweetness.
1. "In my bed I sought him whom my soul loves" (Song 3:1). To what end? It has been said, and to repeat it would be superfluous: yet on account of certain ones who were not present when it was treated, I say something briefly, and what perhaps not even those who were present will be wearied to hear. For not everything could be said then. The soul seeks the Word, to whom it may consent for correction, by whom it may be illuminated for knowledge, upon whom it may lean for virtue, by whom it may be reformed to wisdom, to whom it may be conformed for beauty, to whom it may be married for fruitfulness, whom it may enjoy for delight. On account of all these causes the soul seeks the Word. I do not doubt that there are also very many others: but these occur to me in the meantime. Anyone, if it be to his heart, will be able easily to notice others and yet others in himself. For many are our turnings away, and many and infinite are the necessities of the soul, and of its anxieties there is no number. But the Word more richly and more fully superabounds in good things, inasmuch as it is Wisdom conquering malice, conquering evils with good things. And now receive the explanation of these which I have set forth. And first, what is first: see how the soul consents to correction. We read the Word speaking in the Gospels: "Be consenting," he says, "to your adversary while you are with him on the way, lest perchance he hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the torturer" (Mt 5:25). What could be more prudent? It is the counsel of the Word, unless I am mistaken, declaring itself an adversary, because it is opposed to our carnal desires, when it says: "Always they err in heart" (Ps 94:10). You therefore who hear these things, if trembling you begin to wish to flee from the wrath to come, I believe you will be anxious how you may consent to this adversary, who seems to threaten that wrath against you so terribly. But this is impossible unless you dissent from yourself, unless you oppose yourself, unless in grave and vigilant struggle you yourself fight against yourself indefatigably; lastly, unless you bid farewell to ingrained habit and inborn inclination. This indeed is hard. If you attempt it by your own powers, it will be as if you try to stop the rush of a torrent with one of your fingers, or to turn the Jordan itself back again. What will you do? Seek the Word to whom you may consent, with the Word itself causing you to consent. Flee to him who is your adversary, through whom you may become such that he is no longer your adversary, so that he who was threatening may become gentle, and infused grace may be more effective for changing you than intense wrath.
2. This is the first necessity, as I think, on account of which the soul begins to seek the Word. But if you do not know what he wills to whom you already consent in will, will it not also be said of you that you have zeal for God, but not according to knowledge? (Rom 10:2). And lest you think this a light matter, remember that it is written: "He who is ignorant will be ignored" (1 Cor 14:38). Do you wish to know what I advise also in this necessity? What I advised in the first. By my counsel you will go now also to the Word, and it will teach you its ways, lest not indeed by willing, but by being ignorant of the good, while you run, it happen that you run off course and wander in the pathless waste, and not on the way. For the Word is light. Indeed "the declaration of words gives light and gives understanding to the little ones." Blessed are you, if you too say: "Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my paths" (Ps 118:130, 105). Not a little has your soul progressed, whose will has been changed, whose reason has been illuminated, so that it both wills the good and knows it. In the one it received life, in the other sight. For by willing evil it was dead, and by being ignorant of the good it was blind.
3. Now it lives, now it sees, now it stands in the good, but by the help and the work of the Word. It stands, raised up by the hand of the Word, as if upon two feet: devotion and recognition. It stands, I say, but let it think it was told: "Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall" (1 Cor 10:12). Do you think it can stand by itself, when it could not rise by itself? I think not. For what? "By the Word of the Lord the heavens were established" (Ps 32:6), and shall the earth stand without the Word? Why then, if it could stand by itself, was a man of earth praying: "Confirm me," he said, "in your words"? (Ps 118:28). Indeed he had also proved it. That very voice was his: "I was pushed and overturned so as to fall, and the Lord sustained me" (Ps 117:13). You ask who that pusher is? There is not just one. The devil is a pusher, the world is a pusher, man is a pusher. Who this man is, you ask? Each one of himself. Do not marvel. To such a degree is man a pusher of himself, and his own hurler-down, that there is nothing you need fear from another pusher, if you yourself restrain your own hands from yourself. "For who," he says, "will be able to harm you, if you are zealous emulators of the good?" (1 Pet 3:13). Your hand is your consent. If, when the devil suggests or the world persuades what is not fitting, you hold back your assent, and do not give your members as weapons of iniquity, nor permit sin to reign in your mortal body, you have proved yourself a good emulator, whom malice has utterly not harmed: see whether it has not rather profited you. For it is written: "Do good, and you will have praise from it" (Rom 13:3). "Confounded are those who sought your soul," but you will sing: "If my own have not had dominion over me, then I shall be undefiled" (Ps 18:14). You have given a plainly good sign of a zealous emulator, if by the counsel of the Wise Man you have mercy on your soul (Sir 30:24), if with all watchfulness you keep your heart (Prov 4:23), if according to the Apostle you keep yourself pure (1 Tim 5:22). Otherwise, even if you gain the whole world, but suffer the loss of your soul, we do not at all consider you a good emulator, since neither does the Savior (Mt 16:26).
4. Since therefore there are three things threatening one who stands, of these the devil pushes by the spite of malice, the world by the wind of vanity, man pushes himself by the weight of his own corruption. The devil pushes, but does not overthrow, provided you deny him your help and your assent. Indeed you have: "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you" (Jas 4:7). This is he who, envious, pushed those standing in paradise and overthrew them, but those consenting, not those resisting. This is he who, proud, hurled himself from heaven with no one pushing: so that you may know that man far more threatens his own fall, whom the weight of his own substance weighs down. The world too is a pusher, because it is set in wickedness. It pushes all, but overthrows only its friends, that is, those who agree with it. I do not wish to be a friend of the world, lest I fall. For "whoever wishes to be a friend of this world is made an enemy of God" (Jas 4:7), than which assuredly there is no more grave fall. From all of which it is sufficiently clear how man is the chief pusher of himself, who can fall by his own push without another's, but cannot fall by another's push without his own. Which of these must chiefly be resisted? Surely this one, who is the more troublesome as he is the more interior, and alone suffices to cast down, since without him the others can do nothing. Not without reason did the Wise Man prefer to the conqueror of cities the man who rules his own spirit (Prov 16:32). This matters greatly to you: you have need of virtue, and not just any virtue, but one with which you may be clothed from on high. For this virtue, if it be perfect, easily makes the spirit a conqueror of itself, and thus renders it unconquered against all things. For it is a vigor of spirit that knows not how to yield in defending reason. Or, if you prefer: a vigor of spirit standing immovably with reason or for the sake of reason. Or thus: a vigor of spirit compelling or directing all things, so far as is in itself, toward reason.
5. "Who shall ascend the mountain of the Lord?" To the summit of this mountain, that is, to the perfection of virtue, whoever undertakes to strive [or, to climb], will know indeed how arduous the ascent is, and how vain the effort without the help of the Word. Happy the soul which, with the angels beholding, furnished both joy and wonder at itself, so that it might hear them speaking of it: "Who is this who ascends from the desert, abounding in delights, leaning upon her beloved?" (Song 8:5). Otherwise one strives in vain, if one does not lean upon him. Indeed even leaning against herself she will grow strong, and made stronger than herself she will compel all things for the sake of reason: anger, fear, desire, and joy, as if a certain chariot of the soul, the good charioteer will govern; and will bring into captivity every carnal affection and carnal sense, at the nod of reason, into the obedience of virtue. Why should not all things be possible for one who leans upon him who can do all things? How confident is the voice: "I can do all things in him who strengthens me!" (Phil 4:13). Nothing makes the omnipotence of the Word more clear than this, that it makes all who hope in it omnipotent. Indeed "all things are possible for the one who believes" (Mk 9:22). Is not the one to whom all things are possible omnipotent? So the soul, if it does not presume of itself, but is strengthened by the Word, will be able indeed to have dominion over itself, so that no injustice may have dominion over it. So, I say, leaning upon the Word, and clothed with virtue from on high, no force, no fraud, no allurement will any longer be able either to cast down the one who stands or to subjugate the one who rules.
6. Do you wish not to fear the pusher? "Let not the foot of pride come upon you, and the hand of the one who pushes will not move you. There they fell, those who work iniquity" (Ps 35:13). There the devil and his angels fell, who, although not pushed from without, were nevertheless expelled and could not stand. Indeed "he did not stand in the truth" who did not lean upon the Word, who trusted in his own virtue. And therefore perhaps he wished to sit, because he was not able to stand. For he was saying: "I will sit upon the mountain of the covenant" (Isa 14:13). But, with God judging otherwise, he neither stood nor sat, but fell, the Lord saying: "I saw Satan falling from heaven like lightning" (Lk 10:18). Therefore let him who stands, if he does not wish to fall, not trust in himself, but lean upon the Word. The Word speaks: "Without me you can do nothing" (Jn 15:5). So it is: neither to rise to the good nor to stand in the good can we do without the Word. You therefore who stand, give glory to the Word [or, to God], and say: "He set my feet upon a rock, and directed my steps" (Ps 39:3). By whose hand you are raised up, by his virtue you must needs be held. This I say in support of what I said, that we have need of the Word, upon whom we may lean for virtue.
7. Now we must consider what I also mentioned, namely that we are no less reformed to wisdom through the Word. The Word is virtue, the Word is wisdom. Let the soul therefore take virtue from virtue, and wisdom from wisdom, and ascribe both gifts to the one Word. Otherwise, if it should claim either both or one of the two from some other source for itself, let it deny also that a stream comes from a spring, or wine from a vine, or light arises from light. It is a faithful saying: "If anyone," it says, "lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all abundantly and does not reproach; and it shall be given to him" (Jas 1:5). So says he. But I would think no differently about virtue. Virtue is akin to wisdom. Virtue is a gift of God, to be reckoned among the best gifts [or, things given], descending also itself from above, from the Father of the Word. And if anyone should think that it is in every respect the same as wisdom, I do not deny it, but in the Word, not in the soul. For those things which in the Word, on account of its singular simplicity of divine nature, are one, do not have one effect in the soul, but accommodate themselves to be participated in, as it were diverse, for its various and different necessities. According to which reckoning, indeed, it is one thing for the soul to be driven by virtue, and another to be governed by wisdom; one thing to have dominion in virtue, and another to take delight in sweetness. For although wisdom is powerful and virtue is sweet, yet so that we may render to each its proper signification by its proper terms: vigor demonstrates virtue, and a placidity of soul with a certain spiritual sweetness demonstrates wisdom. I think this was designated by the Apostle, where after many exhortations pertaining to virtue, he added what belongs to wisdom: "In sweetness, in the Holy Spirit" (2 Cor 6:6). Therefore to stand, to resist, to repel force with force, which are indeed reckoned in the domain of virtue, are indeed an honor, but also a labor. For it is not the same thing to defend your honor laboriously and to possess it in quiet. It is not the same to be driven by virtue and to enjoy virtue. Whatever virtue elaborates, wisdom enjoys; and what wisdom orders, deliberates, and moderates, virtue carries out.
8. "Write wisdom in leisure," says the Wise Man (Sir 38:25). Therefore the leisure hours of wisdom are its business, and the more at leisure wisdom is, the more active it is in its own kind. On the other hand, virtue exercised is more illustrious, and the more proven, the more active in duty. And if someone should define wisdom as the love of virtue, he does not seem to me to deviate from the truth. But where there is love, there is no labor, but savor. And perhaps wisdom is named from savor, because, approaching virtue, it renders savory, as if by a certain seasoning, what by itself was in a certain way felt to be insipid and harsh. Nor would I think one should be blamed who defines wisdom as the savor of good. We lost this savor from almost the very beginning of our race. From the moment the poison of the ancient serpent infected the palate of the heart, with the sense of the flesh prevailing, the good began not to be savory to the soul, and a noxious savor to steal in. Indeed "the senses and thoughts of man are prone to evil from youth" (Gen 8:21), that is, from the folly of the first woman. So the folly of the woman excluded the savor of good, because the malice of the serpent circumvented the folly of the woman. But from where malice was seen to have conquered for a time, from there it grieves to have been conquered for eternity. For behold, wisdom has again filled the heart and body of a woman, so that we who were deformed into folly through a woman might be reformed to wisdom through a woman. And now wisdom continually conquers malice in the minds into which it has entered, exterminating the savor of evil which malice introduced with a better savor. Wisdom, entering in, while it makes foolish the sense of the flesh, purifies the understanding, heals and repairs the palate of the heart. With the palate healed, the good is now savory, wisdom itself is savory, than which among good things there is nothing better.
9. How many good things are done which are not savory to those who do them! Since they are driven to them not by a savor of good, but either by reason, or by some chance, or by necessity: and on the other hand, many evil things which people do are not savory as evil to them, but they are led to these either by fear or by desire for some thing rather than by a savor of evil. But those who have passed over into the affection of the heart are either wise, and are delighted by the very savor of good; or they are wicked, and take pleasure in malice itself, even when no hope of another advantage flatters them. But what is malice except the savor of evil? Blessed the mind which the savor of good has wholly claimed for itself, together with the hatred of evil. This is to be reformed to wisdom, this is to experience happily the victory of wisdom. For in what is wisdom more clearly proved to conquer malice than when, with the savor of evil excluded — which is nothing other than malice itself — a certain intimate savor of good is felt to occupy the inmost parts of the mind with all sweetness? And so it belongs to virtue to endure tribulations bravely: to wisdom, to rejoice in tribulations. "Strengthen your heart, and wait for the Lord" is of virtue; "taste and see that the Lord is sweet" is of wisdom. And that the good of each may become clearer from the good of its own proper nature: modesty of soul proves the wise, constancy shows the man of virtue. And well does wisdom come after virtue, because virtue is, as it were, a certain stable foundation upon which wisdom builds its house for itself. But it was necessary that knowledge of the good precede, because there is no fellowship between the light of wisdom and the darkness of ignorance. It was also necessary that there be a good will, because "into a malevolent soul wisdom will not enter" (Wis 1:4).
10. Now, if in the change of will the life of the soul was recognized as restored, in instruction its health, in virtue its stability, and in wisdom at last its maturity, it remains that we find beauty for it, without which it cannot please him who is "beautiful in form beyond the sons of men." Indeed it hears: "The king will desire your beauty" (Ps 44:3, 12). How many good things of the soul we have enumerated — gifts of the Word — good will, knowledge, virtue, wisdom, and the Word, the King, is not read to desire any of these, but only: "The king will desire," it says, "your beauty." The Prophet says: "The Lord has reigned, he has clothed himself with beauty" (Ps 92:1). Why should he not desire a similar garment for his image and likewise his bride? All the more dear to him will she be, the more similar she will be to him. In what, then, does the beauty of the soul consist? Is it perhaps in what is called "the honorable"? Let us hold this for the time being, if nothing better occurs. But concerning the honorable, let outward conduct be questioned: not that the honorable proceeds from it, but through it. For in the conscience is both its dwelling and its origin. Since indeed its brightness is "the testimony of the conscience." Nothing is brighter than this light, nothing more glorious than this testimony, when truth shines in the mind and the mind sees itself in the truth. But sees itself as what? Pure, modest, fearful, circumspect, admitting absolutely nothing that would empty the glory of the attesting conscience: conscious of nothing in itself at which it would blush at the presence of truth, at which it would be forced to turn away its face as if confused and repelled by the light of God. This plainly, this is that beauty which above all the good things of the soul delights the divine gaze; and we name it and define it as "the honorable."
11. But when the love of this beauty has more abundantly filled the inmost parts of the heart, it must come forth outward, like a lamp hidden under a bushel, or rather a light shining in the darkness, that knows not how to be hidden. Thereupon the body receives the image of the mind, shining forth and bursting out as if with certain rays of its own, and diffuses it through the limbs and senses, so that every action thence shines back: speech, gaze, gait, laughter (if indeed laughter), mixed with gravity and full of the honorable. When the movements, gestures, and uses of these and other members and senses appear serious, pure, modest, wholly free from insolence and wantonness, alien both to levity and to sloth, but suited to equity and dutiful to piety: then the beauty of the soul will be manifest, if only there be no guile in its spirit. For it can happen that all these things are feigned, and not moved thus from the abundance of the heart. And that this beauty of the soul may appear more clearly, let us define, if you please, the honorable itself, in which we have judged this beauty should be located: an ingenuousness of mind, careful to preserve the integrity of its reputation together with a good conscience. Or, according to the Apostle: "To provide for good things, not only before God, but also before men" (2 Cor 8:21). Blessed the mind which has clothed itself in this beauty of purity, and in a certain white garment, as it were, of heavenly innocence, by which it may claim for itself a glorious conformity, not to the world, but to the Word, of whom we read that he is "the brightness of eternal life" (Wis 7:26), "the splendor and figure of the substance of God" (Heb 1:3).
12. From this step now, the soul that is of this kind dares to think of marriage. Why should it not dare, seeing itself marriageable inasmuch as similar? The loftiness does not terrify her whom likeness unites, love reconciles, and profession weds. The form of the profession is this: "I have sworn and resolved to keep the judgments of your justice" (Ps 118:106). Following this, the apostles were saying: "Behold, we have left all things and followed you" (Mt 19:27). Similar is that which, said indeed of carnal marriage, signified the spiritual marriage of Christ and the Church: "For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall be two in one flesh" (Eph 5:31-32); and with the Prophet, the glorying of the married one: "But for me, to cleave to God is good, to place in the Lord God my hope" (Ps 72:28). Therefore when you see a soul that, having left all things, cleaves to the Word with all its vows, lives by the Word, governs itself by the Word, conceives from the Word what it may bring forth to the Word; which can say: "For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain" (Phil 1:21): consider her a spouse, and married to the Word. "The heart of her husband trusts in her," knowing her to be faithful, who has despised all things in comparison with him, and "counts all things as dung, that she may gain him for herself." He knew such a one, of whom he was saying: "This man is to me a vessel of election" (Acts 9:15). Truly a devoted mother and faithful to her husband was the soul of Paul, when he said: "My little children, whom I bring forth again in labor, until Christ be formed in you" (Gal 4:19).
13. But observe that in spiritual marriage there are two kinds of bringing forth, and from this also diverse offspring, but not contrary: when holy mothers bring forth either souls by preaching, or spiritual understandings by meditating. In this last kind one sometimes goes out of oneself, and withdraws even from bodily senses, so that she who perceives the Word does not perceive herself. This happens when the mind, enticed by the ineffable sweetness of the Word, in a certain way steals itself from itself, or rather is snatched and slips away from itself, so that it may enjoy the Word. Surely the mind is affected one way when bearing fruit for the Word, and another way when enjoying the Word. In the former, the necessity of the neighbor urges; in the latter, the sweetness of the Word invites. And indeed a mother is joyful in her offspring; but a bride is more joyful in her embraces. Dear are the pledges of children; but kisses delight more. It is good to save many; but to go out of oneself and to be with the Word is far more delightful. But when does this happen, or for how long? Sweet commerce, but a brief moment, and a rare experience. This is what I remember having said above among other things, that the soul seeks the Word in order that it may enjoy him for delight.
14. Someone may perhaps go on to ask me also what it is to enjoy the Word. I answer: let him rather find someone who has experienced it, from whom to ask this. Or if it were given even to me to experience it, do you think I could express what is ineffable? Hear one who has experienced it: "Whether," he says, "we are out of our mind, it is for God; or whether we are sober, it is for you" (2 Cor 5:13). That is: one thing is mine with God, with God alone as witness; another thing is mine with you. That was permitted to be experienced, but by no means to be spoken: so this I condescend to you in such a way that both I may be able to say it and you to grasp it. O whoever you are who are curious to know what this is, to enjoy the Word: prepare for it not an ear, but a mind. This is not taught by the tongue, but taught by grace. It is hidden from the wise and the prudent, and revealed to little ones. Great, brothers, great and sublime is the virtue of humility, which merits what is not taught, which is worthy to attain what it is not able to learn, worthy to conceive from the Word and about the Word what it cannot explain in its own words. Why is this? Not because such is the merit, but because such is the good pleasure before the Father of the Word, the Bridegroom of the soul, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is God blessed above all things forever. Amen.
Translated from the Latin by AI. Source: Migne, Patrologia Latina 183.