The Steps of Humility and Pride X:28 57: The First Step Of Pride: Curiosity
The Steps of Humility and Pride X:28
THE FIRST STEP OF PRIDE: CURIOSITY
X. 28. The first step of pride is curiosity.239 How does it show itself? You see one who up to this time had every appearance of being an excellent monk. Now you begin to notice that wherever he is, standing, walking or sitting, his eyes are wandering, his glance darts right and left, his ears are cocked.
Some change has taken place in him; every movement shows it. "The perverse man winks with his eye, nudges with his foot, points with his finger."240 These symptoms show his soul has caught some disease. He used to watch over his own conduct; now all his watchfulness is for others. "He does not know himself so he must go forth to pasture his goats."241 Goats are a symbol of sin and I am applying the word to his eyes and ears. They are the windows through which death creeps into the soul,242 as death came into the world by sin.243 These are the flocks the curious man tends, while he lets his soul starve. My man! if you gave yourself the attention you ought, I do not think you would have much time to look after others. Listen, busybody, to Solomon, listen to the words of the Wise Man for a fool:
"Guard your heart with all care."244 Your senses will have quite enough to do to guard the source of life. You wander away from yourself? Whom have you left in charge? Your eyes sweep the heavens.245 How do you dare, you who have sinned against heaven? Look over the earth, that you might know yourself.246 It speaks to you of yourself because, "Dust you are and unto dust you shall return."247
240. Prov 6:12f.
241. Song 1:7.
242. Jer 9:21. Cf. Conv 10; OB 4:83; CF 43.
243. Rom 5:1Z 244. Prov 4:23.
245. In contrast to the publican, I,k 18:13. Bernard places this in contrast to the twelfth step of humility in the Rule of St Benedict: ". . . that is to say that whether he is at the work of God, in the oratory, in the monastery, in the garden, on the road, in the fields or anywhere else and whether sitting, walking or standing he should always have his head bowed and his eyes toward the ground . . . "
- R B 7:63.
246. Ut cognascas iei>si/m~ Bernard might possibly have been familiar with the Delphic Oracle, however, it is probable that he is rather influenced by the passage from the Song of Songs which he so frequently quotes. Cf. SC 36:7; OB 2:8CF 7.
247. Gen 3:19.
The Steps of Humility and Pride X: 29-30 29. Are the eyes never to be raised at all? Yes, but only for two reasons: to look for help, or to help others. David raised his eyes to the mountains to see if help would come to him.248
Our Lord looked out over the crowd to see if they needed his help.249 One raised his eyes in misery, the other in mercy—two excellent reasons. If, when time, place and circumstances call for it, you raise your eyes for your own need or your brother's,
I certainly will not blame you; I will think all the better of you. Misery is a good excuse; mercy is a very commendable reason. If it is for some motive other than these two that you raise your eyes I am afraid you imitate neither the Prophet nor our Lord but Dinah, Eve, or Satan himself. Dinah was leading her goats to pasture when she was snatched away from her father and despoiled of her virginity.250 Ah! Dinah! you were anxious to see the foreign woman?251 What need was there for that? What good did it do you? Was it just idle curiosity? Yes, you were idle, but someone who saw you did not stay idle. You were looking about curiously, but someone eyed you still more curiously. Who would have then believed that your curious idleness or idle curiosity would be fruitful.
But it did bear terrible fruit for you and for your family and for your enemies, too.252
30. What about you, Eve? You were in Paradise, charged along with your husband to tend it and care for it.253 If you had kept the command given you, you would have gone in due time to a better place where there is no labor and no care. You were permitted to eat the fruit of every tree except the tree of knowledge of good and evil.254 The other trees were good and their fruit tasted well.255 Why did you want the fruit that tasted evil as well? "Be not wiser than it behoves one to be
248. Ps 120:1.
249. Jn 6:5.
250. Song 1:7.
251. Gen 34:1.
252. Gen 34:25ff. Dinah was raped, her brothers acted treacherously, and her lover and all his people were slain or enslaved.
253. Gen 2:15.
254. Gen 2:16.
255. Gen 2:9.
The Steps of Humility and Pride X:30
wise."256 To be wise in evil is not wisdom but foolishness.
Keep what is entrusted to you; wait for what is promised to you. Avoid what is forbidden or you will lose what you already have. Why are you so ready to look on death? What do those glances mean? You are forbidden to eat that fruit, why do you look at it? "Oh!" you answer, "I am only looking. I have not so much as put a hand to it. My eyes are under no restriction; I was forbidden only to eat. What did God give me eyes for if I cannot look at whatever I want? " Have you never read; "All things are lawful for me but not all expedient?"257 The look may not have been a sin itself but there was a sin somewhere in the background. You cannot have been watching very carefully over yourself or you would not have had time for this curiosity. It may not itself be a sin but it is leading you on to sin. You are already guilty of some fault in the matter and more will follow. While your attention was taken up with this the serpent quietly slipped into your heart and his soft words are being spoken, gentle persuasive words, lies to lull fear to sleep. "No, you will not die," he says.258
He strengthens your attention, he rouses your appetite, he whets your curiosity, he stirs up your greed. While he presents you with a forbidden fruit he steals the gift you have been given. He gave you an apple and stole Paradise. You drink the poison. You will die and be the mother of the dying. Before the first child was born salvation was gone. We are born and we die. We are born dying men, for the doom of death is laid upon us before ever we are born. This is the heavy burden you have laid upon all your sons even to this day.
BERNARD'S OWN OPINION CONCERNING THE APOSTATE SERAPH
31. And you, Satan! made in the likeness of God, placed not in Eden but in the delights of the Paradise of God,259 what
256. Rom 12:3.
257. 1 Cor 6:12.
258. Gen 3:4.
259. Ezek 28:12. In its literal sense the text has reference to the King of Tyre but the Fathers commonly found in him a type of Satan, e.g., Origen, Horn XIII in Ezecfuelem
2; PG 13:760.
The Steps of Humility and Pride X:31 more did you want? Full of wisdom and perfect in beauty
"seek not what is too high for you, peer not into what is too mighty."260 Stay in your own place lest you fall if you walk in great and wonderful things above you.261 Why are you casting those glances towards the North? I see you musing very earnestly on something. I do not know what it is but it is something beyond your reach. You say: "I will place my throne in the North."262 All else in heaven's courts are standing: you alone presume to sit. You disturb the concord of your brethren, the peace of the heavenly country, and if it were possible, even the peace of the Blessed Trinity. Wretch! to this your curiosity has led you. With reckless insolence you shock your fellow-citizens and insult your King. "Thousands of thousands minister to him, ten times a hundred thousand stand before him."263 In that court none has a right to sit save him who sits above the Cherubim,264 waited on by all.
In an unheard-of way you would distinguish yourself from others, you pry with insatiable curiosity, push yourself forward without respect, and would place your throne in heaven and make yourself the equal of the Most High.265 What strength are you depending on? On what course are you embarking? You fool! Will you think of the measure of your strength and think of the goal to which you are rushing and how you are going to get there. Answer plainly: does the Most High know what you are planning or does he not; and is he willing to let you do it, or not? His knowledge is unclouded,265 his will is perfect in goodness: do you think he can be ignorant of your evil plots, or that he can approve of them? Or do you think he knows and opposes them but cannot stop them? I can hardly
26a Sir 3:22.
261. Ps 130:1.
262. Is 14:13 (Old Latin or Italic version). Bernard uses this same version below, no. 36, p. 64 and also in I Nov 2:5; OB 5:310; CF 34. However he was aware of the Vulgate version for he used it in QH 11:4; OB 4.451; CF 43.
263. Dan 7:10.
264. Ps 79:2.
265." Is 14:4. Cf. Gregory the Great, Morals on the Book of Job 29:18; tr.
J. Newman, Library of the Fathers, vol. 3, part 1 (London: Parker, 1847), p. 314.
266. Job 36:4.
267. Mt 20:15.
The Steps of Humility and Pride X:32
believe that even you could doubt the infinite knowledge, power and perfection of your Creator; unless, indeed, you think you needed no Creator. But indeed you did; you came from nothingness and exist entirely by his power. Such as you are he knew you and such as you are he made you. How then can you expect God to consent to what he does not want done and can easily prevent? I wonder have we in you an instance of the common proverb: "Familiarity breeds contempt"? Perhaps indeed it was you who began it, for your like continue. Is your eye evil because he is good? 2 6 7 If you draw your confidence from his very goodness, try to remember before whose eyes you flaunt your impudence, before whose might you display your rashness.
32. I expect these are the lines on which your thoughts are running, the evil you plan on your bed:268 "There is no fear the Creator will destroy the work of his hands. I know that nothing I think is hidden from God, else he would not be God.
I know that what I plan does not please him, else he would not be good. I know that if in fact he wills, I cannot escape his hand because he is mighty. But still I have nothing to fear.
My designs cannot please him because he is good and I am acting badly. I admit that. But, tell me, would he be willing to act badly himself? I am wrong in going against his will; he would do wrong if he were vindictive. No matter how bad my crime he cannot punish it because he does not wish to lose nor can he lose his quality of goodness." You deceive yourself, you wretch, you deceive yourself, not God.269 Yes, I repeat you deceive yourself; iniquity deceives itself, not God.
You are acting deceitfully, but right before his eyes;270 and deceiving yourself, not God. You are using his very kindness as an excuse for sinning the more, and thereby making your sin the more hateful.271 What could be more vile than to turn to the contempt of your Creator the very thing that should make you love him more? Could a worse sin be imagined? You know without any doubt the power of God to destroy you as easily as he created you, and yet trusting in his great kindness
268. Ps 35:5.
269. Ps 26:12.
27a Ps 35:3.
271. ¡bid.
The Steps of Humility and Pride X:33-34 you hope to escape punishment! This is surely returning evil for good, hatred for love.272
33. Your sin deserves, not one swift stroke of punishment, but an eternal reprobation. He is your kindest and most exalted
Lord. Yet you want and hope to force yourself on him as an equal, to afflict him constantly with your hateful sight, to have you as an unwanted companion, not destroying you even when he could. He would rather suffer himself than let you perish; he could destroy you if he wished, but, because of his kindness, you think he could not want it. Certainly, if this is what you believe, you are even more evil if you do not love him. If he lets himself suffer rather than have you suffer, how evil it is that you do not spare him who does not spare himself to spare you. But this is nonsense! The divine perfection does not require that kindness hinder justice, as if God could not be both kind and just at the same time.273 In fact, it is a greater kindness when it is accompanied by justice; kindness too weak to enforce justice would not be a virtue at all. God, in the goodness and freedom of his will made you, and you return no thanks for it; he has spared you the chastisements of his justice and your only return is to cast aside fear and sin more bodly, presuming on continued impunity.
You pay lip-service to the goodness of God; you have yet to feel his justice. You will be entangled in the very coils you placed to trip your Maker. Your cleverness argues that while you planned harm for him and he could avoid it if he wished, you think he will not so wish, for fear he should lose goodness, which you allow him only because you have never seen him inflicting punishment. The grief will come back on your own head. God is infinitely just and so he cannot, must not, allow an offence against his goodness to go unpunished. Still, his goodness tempers your doom. He will not refuse pardon if you are willing to repent. But the hardness of your impenitent heart will not let you repent.274 You must suffer.
34. Where has Satan gone wrong? God says: "Heaven is my throne, earth my footstool."275 He does not say "the"
272. Ps 108:5.
273. Ps 24: & 274. Rom 2:5. Cf. Gra 29; CF 19.
275. Is 66:1; Acts 7:49.
The Steps of Humility and Pride X:35
east or "the" west or any other particular region of heaven, but "the whole heaven is my footstool." Therefore, Satan, you cannot enthrone yourself in the heavens276 for God claims all.
Neither have you a place on earth; for that is his footstool.277
Indeed it is on the firm earth where the Church sits, founded on solid rock.278 What will you do? You are thrown out of heaven and there is no place for you on earth. Only the air remains for you, to hover there, not to sit.279 You tried to unsettle the stability of eternity and your doom is an eternal restlessness. You must be tossed about between heaven and earth while the Lord sits on his high and exalted throne and the whole earth is filled with his glory;280 and you have no place except the air.
35. Some of the Seraphim use the wings of their contemplation to fly from the throne to the footstool, from the footstool back to the throne; others veil with their wings the face and feet of the Lord.281 We can learn from this, I think,282 that, as the Cherubim were posted at the gate of Paradise to bar it to sinful man,283 so the Seraphim check your impudent and imprudent curiosity that you might not be allowed to pierce the mysteries either of heaven or of the Church on earth. You must be content with the hearts of the proud, who will not stoop to live like the rest of men on earth and may not soar to heaven like the angels. Although the Head who is in heaven and the "feet" on earth are hidden from you, nevertheless you are allowed to see something of what is in between so that you might be envious. While suspended in air you will see the angels descending and ascending284 as they pass you in their flight, but what they hear in heaven and what they announce on earth are hidden from you.
27a Rev 12:8.
277. Mt 5:35.
278. Mt 7:25.
279. Eph 2:2.
28a Is 6: Iff.
281. Is 6:2.
282. See above, Retractation, p. 25.
283. Gen 3:24. Bernard describes the role of each of the ranks of the angels in Csi 5:8 (OB 3:472f; CF 19) and more fully in SC 19:2-6 (OB 1:109-12; CF
4:141-4).
284. Gen 28:12.
The Steps of Humility and Pride X:36
36. Lucifer, you who rise in the morning285—no, not Lucifer the Lightbearer, but Nightbearer and Deathbearer—your true course was from East to South, why did you swerve to the North? The higher you would climb the swifter your fall.
Nevertheless I am curious, O Envious One, to know more about the course of your curiosity.286 You say: "I will place my throne in the North."287 I know of course that you are a spirit and there is no question here of the North Pole of this earth. The North stands for the reprobate and your throne is your kingdom over them. Now, you were once very close to God and in his foreknowledge288 you might have seen the future more clearly than could others. You foresaw these reprobate men shining with no ray of wisdom, burning with no flame of love and of this empty wasteland you chose to be lord, to infuse into them the light of your own cunning, to inflame them with your own evil desires. The Most High God rules over the children of obedience289 in his love and goodness; and you would be king of the sons of pride290 in your clever malice and your malicious cleverness and so be like the Most
High.291 But tell me, for it is this which makes me wonder: if in the foreknowledge of God you saw your lordship, did you not also foresee your downfall? And if you did foresee it, what madness made you choose such wretched dignity, prefering to rule in misery rather than be subject in happiness?
Would it not have been better to share with the sons of light than to be the leader of the sons of darkness?292 I find it easier to believe that you did not foresee it. Or perhaps, as I suggested already, you looked to the goodness of God and 285. Is 14:12. Cf. with the passage in I Nov 5:7-8. According to its literal sense the text of Is does not refer to Satan but rather to the King of Babylon. However the Fathers commonly see here a type of the evil angel, finding some basis in Lk 10:18.
286. Typical Bernardine alliteration: Velim tamen curiosius, curiose, intentionem tuae curiositatis inquirere.
287. See above, note 262.
28a 1 Pet 1:2.
289. 1 Pet 1:14.
290. Job 41:25.
291. Is 14:14.
292. Eph 6:12.
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said to yourself: "He will not take notice."293 Or it may be that the vision of your coveted princedom was a beam of pride294 blinding your eye so that it could not see the fall.
37. It is quite possible that one could really foresee the future in a spirit of prophecy and yet be ignorant of some details.
These gaps in his knowledge need not make us conclude that the whole prophecy was a delusion. We have a case of this in Joseph. He foresaw his own future greatness295 but did not foresee his sale as a slave,296 though that came before his triumph. I do not think the great Patriarch was guilty of pride.
I am only using him as an example. Still, if anyone would hold that he was guilty of vanity when he spoke about his dreams in his young days when their mystery was still unknown I would think it was less vanity than the greatness of the mystery, or a boy's simplicity. However, if he was guilty of any vanity he was able to make up for it by all he suffered. Some have pleasant things foretold to them at times and it would not be human if there was not some touch of vanity either at the fact of the revelation or at the things promised.297 That would not prevent the prophecy from being fulfilled though there could be some punishment for the vanity. Our heavenly Physician does not always treat our moral sores with ointment.
They may be too infected for that. He will at need cauterize or lance them, sending temptations and afflictions to the chosen soul to crush and humiliate it so that its joy is turned into sorrow298 and its revelation now seems a delusion. It is preserved from vanity; but the revelation still stands true. St Paul's pride was kept down by a sting of the flesh but he was lifted up by his many revelations.299 Zachary was punished by dumbness for his unbelief300 but the angel's prophecy did not fail.301 The saints always go forward, in honor or dishonor.302
If they are ever led to think too much of themselves by their gifts and fall into the human weakness of vanity, they will very quickly be reminded of what they really are.
293. Ps 9:34.
298. Bar 4:34; Jas 4:9.
294. Mt 7:3.
299. 2 Cor 12:7.
295. Gen 37:5-10.
300. Lk 1:20.
296. Gen 37:28.
301. Lk l:57ff.
297. Cf 2 Cor 12:7.
302. 2 Cor 6:8.
The Steps of Humility and Pride
X:38-XI:39
38. How did we get on to this matter of revelations while we were talking of curiosity? I wandered off into this by-path when I was trying to show that the reprobate angel could have foreseen the dominion he was later to have over fallen men and still not foresee his own damnation. In the meantime we have opened up a good many minor questions and have not answered them. However, the sum total is: he fell from truth by curiosity303 when he turned his attention to something he coveted unlawfully and had the presumption to believe he could gain. Curiosity was the beginning of all sin304 and so is rightly considered the first step of pride. Unless it is checked promptly it leads to the second step: levity.
THE SECOND STEP: LEVITY OF MIND
XI. 39. The monk who observes others instead of attending to himself will begin before long to see some as his superiors and others as his inferiors; in some he will see things to envy, in others, things to despise. The eyes have wandered and the mind soon follows. It is no longer steadily fixed on its real concerns and is now carried up on the crest of the waves of pride, now down in the trough of envy. One minute the man is full of envious sadness, the next childishly glad about some excellence he sees in himself. The former is evil, the latter, vain; both bespeak pride because it is love of one's own excellence305 that makes one weep when he is surpassed and rejoice in surpassing others. His conversation will show how his mind is tossed up and down. One moment he is sulky and silent except for some bitter remarks; the next sees a full spate of silly chatter. Now he is laughing, now doleful; all without rhyme or reason.
If now you care to compare these two steps of pride with the last two of humility you will find that they correspond;
303. Cf. Div 14:2; OB 6-1:135; CF 46.
304. Sir 10:15.
305. See above, note 106, p. 42.