CHAPTER IX
DEGREES OF HUMILITY
CHAPTER IX
The writer sighs regretfully over his own shortcomings in the search for Truth.
But how can a poor creature like myself ramble on about the two higher heavens in a way more suggestive of the outpouring of words than of spiritual activity, seeing that it is as much as I can do to crawl on my hands and feet under the lower one?
Yet I have already, with the help of Him who calls me, set up for myself a ladder to that higher level.
I am moving in the direction wherein I may show to myself the salvation of God.
Now I look upwards to the Lord who is leaning over me, now I spring forward at the call of truth.
He has called me and I have answered Him, to the work of thine hands thou
Thou, Lord, dost indeed number my steps, but I, slow climber and tired traveller, am looking for a resting place by the way.
Woe is unto me if the darkness gets hold of me, or if my flight be in the winter or on shalt reach out thy right hand. the sabbath day, yet, though now is the acceptable time, and now is the day of salvation,
I delay to set forth towards the light.
Why do I thus hold back?
Pray for me, son, brother, friend, fellow-traveller with me in the Lord if such there be.
Pray to the Almighty that He will strengthen 1 In Ps. xlix.
(Vulg.) 23 from which these words are quoted, the speaker is the Lord.
St. Bernard here supposes the climber to have set up the ladder for himself with divine assistance.
2 Job siv. IS (Vulg, not A. V.).
SAINT BERNARD
my feeble foot, yet in such a way that the foot of pride may not come to me.
For though my foot is feeble and unable to attain to the truth, it is more reliable than one which, when it has reached it, cannot stand therein, as you have it in the
Psalm, they are cast out, and could not stand.
So much for the proud.
But what about their chief?
What about him who is called king over
He, said the all the children of pride ?
Master, stood not in the truth,* and elsewhere, I saw Satan jailing from heaven.
Why did he thus fall, unless on account of pride?
Woe be to me if he who knoweth the high afar off,* should see me also indulging in pride, and should launch at me the terrible sentence, Thou wast indeed the son of the most high, but as a man thou shalt die, and thou shalt fall like one of the
Who would not quail before this voice princes. of thunder ? O how much better it was for Jacob that the sinew of his thigh shrank at the touch of the angel than that it should swell, weaken and perish at that of the messenger of pride.
Would that an angel would touch my sinew and make it shrink, so that I, who in my own strength cannot but fail, may from my weakness begin to make 1 Ps. xxxvi. 11, (xxxv. 12, Vulg.).
2 Ps. xxxvi. 12, (xxxv. 13, Vulg-.).
3 Job xli. 25.
* John xiii. 44.
5 Luke x. 18.
Ps. cxxxvii. 6.
1 Ps. Ixxxii (Ixxxi, Vulg.) 6, 7.
DEGREES OF HUMILITY
progress.
I surely read, The weakness of God is
So also did the Apostle, when he complained of the sinew which an angel, not of God but of Satan, was buffeting, receive stronger than men. the reply, My grace is sufficient for thee f for virtue is made perfect in infirmity.
What is this virtue?
Let the Apostle himself give the answer, Gladly therefore will I glory in mine infirmity, that the virtue of Christ may dwell in me.
But you may, perhaps, not quite understand to what virtue he particularly alludes, since Christ possesses all the virtues.
But though He has them all, there is one which He pre-eminently possesses and specially commends to us in His own Person, namely, humility, for He says, Learn of me because I am meek and humble of heart.
Gladly therefore will I glory in mine infirmity, in the shrinking of my sinew, that thy virtue which is humility may be made perfect in me.
For thy grace is sufficient for me, when my strength has failed.
I will then by thy favour 1 1 Cor. i. 25.
2 2 Cor. xii.
St. Bernard here strangely misunderstands the meaning of the word virtus.
Its leading idea, froth in classical and ecclesiastical Latin is strength.
In the Vulgate it is usually (but not always) the rendering of the Greek buvauis and is rightly rendered ' power ' strength ' by the English versions, though in Mark v. 30, Luke vi.
19 and viii. 46, the A. V. and Rhemish but not the R.V. translate it 'virtue'.
St. Bernard, however, understood it in its more usual modern sense as denoting moral excellence, which is certainly not its meaning in the passage quoted from St. Paul though St. Bernard's interpretation of it snakes it necessary so to translate it in the text.
' or 3 Matt. xi. 29.
SAINT BERNARD
put my foot firmly down, and though through its weakness I must move slowly, I will mount safely by the ladder of humility until, by keeping to the truth, I reach the broad expanse of love.
Then will I sing with a gesture of thanks, the words Thou hast set my feet in a spacious place.
Thus by close and careful following of the narrow way, by slow and sure ascent of the steep staircase, with steady but painful progress, I limp along until by some marvellous method, the goal is approached, But Woe is me that my sojourn
Who 'will give me wings like is prolonged.
wherewith I may fly more quickly to the truth, and so may rest in love ?
Since a dove, these are wanting, lead me, Lord, in thy way and I will walk in thy truth, and the truth shall set me free.
Woe unto me that I ever came down thence.
For had I not foolishly and madly begun this descent, I should not have had this long and laborious climb.
But why do I speak of a 'descent' when I might more accurately call it a 'fall' unless indeed because, as no one comes at once to the top but all have to go up gradually, so no one becomes at once utterly bad but goes gradually down hill.
Otherwise how could the saying stand, The wicked man is proud all the 1 Ps. xxxi. 8 (xxx. 9, Vulg.).
2 St. Bernard quotes accurately the Vulgate of Ps. cxix. 5, which follows the Septuagint but differ 5? considerably from the Hebrew and A. V. of Ps. cxx. 5. s Ps. Iv. 6 (liv. 7, Vulg.)
DEGREES OF HUMILITY
There are, in fact, roaHs days of his life. which seem good to men, which yet lead to destruction.
There is then an upward as well as a downward road a road to good and a road to evil.
Avoid the evil and choose the good.
If you cannot do this by yourself, pray with the prophet and in his words : Remove from me the way of 2 and how shall this be?
He adds, Out of iniquity, thy law have mercy on me.
This means by the law which thou didst give to those who fainted by the way that is to those who departed from the truth.
And of tKese I, who have indeed fallen from the truth, am one.
But does not a man who has fallen use every effort to rise again ?
For this 3 by which reason I have chosen the way of truth, I may rise through humility to the place from which 1 I fell through pride.
I will rise, say I, and I will sing, It is good for me, Lord, that thou hast humbled me ; the law of thy mouth is good to me, above thousands of gold and silver.
4* David seems to have set before you two roads, which, however, you know to be one identical yet different and called by different names either 1 Job xv. 20.
This is another instance in which St.
Bernard has been misled by the Vulgate which here has the support neither of the Old Latin nor of the Septuagint.
The passage appears to be correctly rendered in A. V.
' the wicked man travaileth with pain all his days.'
The idea is of suffering rather than of pride.
2 Ps. cxix. (Vulg. cxviii) 29.
3 Ps. cxix. (Vulg. cxviii) 30.
* Ps. cxix. (Vulg. cxviii) 71, 72.
SAINT BERNARD
that of wickedness for those who go down, or that of truth for those who go up.
For you go up to a throne by the same steps by which you come down, you use the same road for approaching or withdrawing from a town, and the same door for entering or leaving a house.
In like manner the angels appeared to Jacob as ascending and descending on the same ladder.
What do these comparisons suggest?
Surely that if you wish to return to the truth, you need not look for a new and unknown road, but for the one by which you know that you came down, so that you may follow your own footsteps, and may humbly rise through the same degrees through which you fell in your pride.
That which was the twelfth degree of pride in your fall will be the first degree of humility in your ascent ; the eleventh will correspond to the second, the tenth to the third, the ninth to the fourth, the eighth to the fifth, the seventh to the sixth, the sixth to the seventh, the fifth to the eighth, the fourth to the ninth, the third to the tenth, the second to the eleventh and the first to the twelfth.
And when you have discovered and really recognized these degrees of pride in yourself, you will have no difficulty in looking for the path of humility.