St. Bernard of Clairvaux: On the Pilgrim, Dead and Crucified

 Introduction

St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) needs little introduction.  Famous for his zeal for the Cistercian reform and his mystical writings, particularly those on Mary, as well as his long series of homilies on the Song of Songs, and perhaps a little more infamous for his fervent preaching of the Crusades, he has often been given the title "Last of the Fathers."  He is also known by the more extravagant title of Doctor Mellifluus, "Honey-Flowing Doctor."  The sermon translated below is the last in a series of Lenten sermons.

Lenten Sermons VII

On the Pilgrim, Dead and Crucified

 

1. Happy are those who show themselves as worthless strangers and pilgrims to the present world, keeping themselves unspotted by it! For we do not have an enduring city here, but we look to a future one (Heb 13:14). Therefore, let us abstain from carnal desires, which fight against the soul, as strangers and pilgrims. A pilgrim, indeed, walks along the royal way; he does not turn to the right nor to the left. If, perhaps, he sees men quarreling, he does not attend to them; if getting married, or leading dances, or doing anything else whatsoever, he nevertheless passes by, since he is a pilgrim, and such things do not pertain to him. He sighs after the fatherland, he tends towards the fatherland; having clothing and food, he doesn’t want to be burdened with anything else. Clearly blessed is he who thus knows his own, thus deplores a dwelling, saying to the Lord: For I have come before You as a pilgrim, like all my fathers (Ps 39:12). Great is this indeed, but perhaps another grade is higher. For the pilgrim, even if he doesn’t mingle with the townspeople, yet sometimes delights to see what is there, or to listen to others, or to himself tell what he has seen; and, by these things and in this way, even if he is not wholly held back, yet he is detained and slowed, as long as the desire for lesser things, and less the memory of the fatherland, drives him on. For he can also delight in these things so strongly that he is now not only detained, and comes less quickly, but he even stays completely still, not even arriving late.

2. Therefore, who is a greater stranger to the deeds of the world than the pilgrim? Certainly the Apostle said to them: For you are dead, and your life is hidden with Christ in God (Col 3:3). A pilgrim can, through an excessively easy time on the way, more than behooves, be both detained by wanting and burdened by carrying; the dead, even if he leaves his own tomb, does not feel it. He hears insults like praises, adulations like detractions—or, rather, he does not hear them, since he is dead. In every way, death is happy, since it thus preserves him immaculate; rather, it makes him wholly a stranger to this world. But it is necessary that, for him who does not live in himself, Christ lives in him. For this is what the Apostle says: But I live, not now I, but Christ lives in me (Gal 2:20). As if he said: “To everything else I am indeed dead, I do not feel, I do not attend, I do not care; but, if they are Christ’s things, they find me alive and ready. For, if I can do nothing else, I feel a leap; it pleases me to see what is done in His honor: things done otherwise displease me.” Truly, this is a great grade.

3. Yet perhaps something higher than this can be found. In whom, then, do we find it? In whom do you think, except in him of whom we are now speaking, who was rapt up to the third heaven? For who would stop by saying “third heaven,” if you could find some grade higher than these? Therefore, I heard him, not boasting in himself in regards to such a height, but saying: Yet far it be from me to boast except in the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world is crucified to me, and I to the world (Gal 6:14). He not only says “dead to the world,” but even crucified, which is the most ignominious kind of death. I to it, and likewise it to me. Everything that the world loves is a cross to me: delight of the flesh, honors, riches, the vain praises of men. Those things, then, which the world considers a cross, I am affixed to them, I adhere to them, I embrace them with full feeling. Isn’t this greater than the second and first grades? The pilgrim, if he is prudent, also does not forget his pilgrimage, although he pass through it with labor, and he is not in any way implicated in worldly things. The dead man equally spurns the sweetness of this world and its bitterness. He who is truly rapt up to the third heaven, everything that sticks the world to him is a cross to him, and he sticks to those things which the world sees to be a cross. Furthermore, in these words of the Apostle, it can also be understood, not incongruously, that the world is crucified to him through reputation, and he is crucified to the world through compassion. For he saw the world crucified by the obligations of vices, and he was crucified to it through the affection of compassion.

4. Now let us each think of which grade we are in, and let us be eager to advance from day to day, since “from strength to strength the God of gods will be seen in Sion” (Ps 84:7). And especially in this holy time, I beseech you, let us be eager to live in all purity, where, too, a certain and brief number of days is set down, lest human fragility despair. For if it is said to us, “Be solicitous at every time, in every way, to protect the purity of your way of life,” who would not despair? But now we are admonished to, for a brief number of days, amend the negligences of all other times, so that we might thus taste the sweetness of perfect purity and, at every time henceforth, let the clear footsteps of this holy Lent shine forth in our way of life. Therefore, let us strive, brothers, to receive this holy time with all devotion, and now better recover the spiritual arms. For now the Savior, with His general army from all the world, heads to battle against the devil; the blessed who are under such a leader will strenuously fight. Indeed, all year long, the king’s household family wages war and is assiduous in the girding for battles; but, all at once, and at a certain time, the general army of the whole empire gathers together. Happy are you who have merited to be householders, to whom the Apostle says: Now you are not guests and visitors, but you are citizens of the saints and householders of God (Eph 2:19). Therefore, what will they who take up the task of fighting all year long do, when even those who are rude and formerly idle take up spiritual arms? Certainly, it is even more customary to take up the task of the customary fight, so that a certain great victory for our king would lead us to glory, to salvation.

Source: PL 183:183C-186A.

Translation ©2023 Brandon P. Otto.  Licensed via CC BY-NC.  Feel free to redistribute non-commercially, as long as credit is given to the translator.