The Steps of Humility and Pride IX: 24 53
The Steps of Humility and Pride IX: 24
Son beckoned to the first heaven by his humiliation, the Spirit brought to the second by charity and the Father raised to the third in contemplation. First they are humiliated in truth and say: "In your truth you have humbled me.'"96
Then they rejoice in the truth, singing: "How good and how pleasant it is, brothers dwelling in unity;"197 for we read that "charity . . . rejoices in truth.'"98 Finally, they are carried up to the hidden home of truth itself199 and there they say:
"My secret to myself, my secret to myself! "20° IX. 24. What business has a poor wretch like me to do prowling about the two higher heavens, and that not in spirit but only with a flow of empty talk? I have quite work enough for my hands and feet beneath the lowest heaven. Thanks to the help of him who called me I have built a ladder to take me to it. This is my road to God's salvation.201 Already I see
God, resting on the top of the ladder;202 already I have the joy of hearing the voice of Truth. He calls to me and I reply to him: "Stretch out your right hand to the work of your hands."203 You have numbered my steps, O Lord,204 but I am a slow climber, a weary traveller, and I need a resting place.
Woe is me if the darkness should overtake me,20s or if my flight should be in winter or on the Sabbath206 seeing that now, in an acceptable time, on the day of salvation,207 1 can hardly grope my way to the light. Why am I so slow? O, if any is to me a son, a brother in the Lord, a comrade, one who shares my journey, let him pray for me! Let him pray to the Almighty that he may strengthen the weary foot and not let the foot of pride come nigh to me.208 The weary foot is a poor help in climbing to the truth, but the other cannot even stand on the place it has gained: "They are cast out, they cannot stand."209
196. Ps 118:75.
197. Ps 132:1.
198. 1 Cor 13:6.
199. 2 Cor 12:4.
200. Is 24:16.
201. Ps 49:23.
202. Gen 28:12-13.
203. Job 14:15.
204. Job 14:15.
205. Jn 12:35.
206. Mt 24:20.
207. 2 Cor 6:2.
208. Ps 35:12.
209. Ps 35:13.
The Steps of Humility and Pride IX: 25
25. This is said about any of the proud. What is said about their Head, the "King of all the sons of pride"?210 "He stood not in the truth;"211 and "I saw Satan falling from heaven."212
He fell through nothing but pride. What will be my fate if he perceives haughtiness from afar,213 sees me to be proud? A terrible voice will sound for me: "You were a son of the Most
High but like a man you shall die and like one of the princes fall."214 Who would not shudder at the thunder of that voice?215 Jacob was better off when at the stroke of the Angel the sinew of his thigh shrunk216 than if under the influence of the angel of pride it swelled, collapsed and fell.
I wish the Angel would strike my sinew and make it shrink that by this affliction I might begin to advance217 instead of letting my own strength hurry me on to inevitable ruin. "The weakness of God is stronger than men."218 The Apostle's sinew was struck by an angel, not of the Lord but of Satan.
When he complained the answer was: "My grace is sufficient for you, for virtue219 is made perfect in infirmity." What virtue? He tells us: "Gladly will I glory in my infirmities that the virtue of Christ may dwell in me."220 But Christ possesses all virtues; which is he speaking of in particular here? Of all his virtues, and he possessed them all, Christ specially commends one to us, humility. "Learn of me for I am meek and humble of heart."221
26. How glad I too should be, Lord Jesus, to glory, if I could, in my infirmity, in the shrinking of my sinew, that your virtue, your humility, might be made perfect in me.
210. Job 41:25.
211. Jn 8:44.
212. Lk 10:18.
213. Ps 137:6.
214. Ps 81:6f.
215. Ps 103:7.
216. Gen 32:25; cf. 2 Cor 12:9; see also SC 29:7; OB 1:208; CF 7.
217. 2 Cor 12:9.
218. 1 Cor 1:25.
219. The virtus of the Vulgate should be more properly translated "power" to be true to the thought of St Paul. However, as is evident from the following sentences
St Bernard takes it to mean "virtue."
220. 2 Cor 12:7ff.
221. Mt 11:29.
The Steps of Humility and Pride IX: 27
Your grace is sufficient for me when my own virtue fails.
With the foot of grace firmly planted on the ladder of humility, painfully dragging the foot of my own weakness behind me, I should safely mount upward, until, holding fast to the truth, I attained the broad plain of charity. There I shall sing my song of thanksgiving: "You have set my feet on a broad plain."222 Thus I warily enter on the narrow way,223 step by step safely ascend the steep ladder, and by a kind of miracle climb to the truth, behind the time perhaps, and limping, but still with confidence. "Woe is me that my exile is prolonged! 224
0 that I had wings like a dove, that I might fly away" to truth "and be at rest" in charity! 225 But since I have no wings, "lead me in your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth"226 and the truth will make me free.227 Why did
1 ever desert the truth! If I had not been so lightheaded and stupid as to come down from truth I would not now be faced with this slow and hard climb back to it. Did I say, "come down"? "Crash down" would be more like it; though in a certain sense the milder expression is more suitable because one does not plunge to the depths of evil in one sudden fall, no more than one springs to the heights of virtue at one bound, but has to climb step by step. So the descent too is spread out little by little,228 according to the picture given to us: "The wicked man is proud all the days of his life;"229 and, "There are ways that seem to a man right, but their end leads to evil."230
27. You see now there is a way down and a way up, a way to evil and a way to good. Avoid evil and do good. If you are not able to do it by your own power—pray! Say with the Prophet: "Put false ways far from me."231 How is that to be done? "Show me the mercy of your law."232 This law is the law given to direct those who have wandered from the road,233 strayed from the truth. I am among them; I have fallen from 222. Ps 30:9.
228. Sir 19:1.
223. Mt 7:14.
229. Job 15:20.
224. Ps 119:5.
23ft Prov 14:12; 16:25.
225. Ps 54:7.
231. Ps 118:29.
226. Ps 85:11.
232. Ibid.
227. Jn 8:3Z 233. Ps 24:8. See above no. 2, p. 30.
The Steps of Humility and Pride X:28 the truth. But "if a man falls will he not rise again? "234 Yes, and it is in that hope that I have chosen the path of truth,235 to climb by it, now that I am humbled, to the place from which I fell in my pride. Yes, I will climb back and I will sing: "It is good for me, Lord, that you have humbled me; the law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of silver and gold pieces."236 David seems to speak of two ways.237 In fact, there is only one, but there is a distinction and a reason for the two names. The same ladder is for those who come down, the way of iniquity, for those who go up, the way of truth. By the same steps one goes up to the throne and one comes down from it; by the same road one goes to the city and one departs from it; by the same gate one enters and one leaves the house. Indeed, it was by the one same ladder that Jacob saw the angels ascending and descending.238
What is the bearing of all this? It is that when you wish to return to the truth there is no need to seek an unknown road; it is the same as that by which you came down. On your ascent you will be able to follow the track of the footprints you made in your descent. Now that you are humbled you will climb by the self same steps you trod on as you came down in your pride. The twelfth and lowest step to which your pride brought you is the first step upward of humility and so on in due order: the eleventh is the second; the tenth the third; the ninth the fourth; the eighth the fifth; the seventh the sixth; the sixth the seventh; the fifth the eighth; the fourth the ninth; the third the tenth; the second the eleventh; the first the twelfth. If your conscience has noted these steps of your pride you will recognize them and will have no trouble in finding the way of humility.
234. Jer 8:4; Amos 5:1.
235. Ps 118:3a 236. Ps 118:71f.
237. Ps 1:1,6.
238. Gen 28:12.
239. In classical literature curiosity (curiositas) is not taken as a vice. However, the one time it is found in the Vulgate, Num 4:20, it does refer to an inordinate tendency. It is in this biblical sense that Bernard always takes it. See Div 14:2; OB
6-1:135; CF 46; QH 8:5; OB 4:429; CF 43. This would be common among the Fathers also, see e.g., Tertulian, On Prescription Against Heretics, 14, tr. C. Dodgson in Apologetic and Practical Treatises, 2 ed. (Oxford: Parker, 1854) pp. 463-5.