Friday 20 August 2021
Saint Bernard, Abbot, Doctor
on Friday of week 20 in Ordinary Time
Spiritual Reading
Your Second Reading from the Office of Readings:
Saint Bernard, Abbot, Doctor
"Christ Embracing St Bernard" (c.1625) by Francisco Ribalta (1565-1628), Museo del Prado, Madrid.
From a sermon of St Bernard of Clairvaux
I love because I love, I love that I may love
Love is sufficient of itself, it gives pleasure by itself and because of itself. It is its own merit, its own reward. Love looks for no cause outside itself, no effect beyond itself. Its profit lies in its practice. I love because I love, I love that I may love. Love is a great thing so long as it continually returns to its fountainhead, flows back to its source, always drawing from there the water which constantly replenishes it. Of all the movements, sensations and feelings of the soul, love is the only one in which the creature can respond to the Creator and make some sort of similar return however unequal it may be. For when God loves, all he desires is to be loved in return; the sole purpose of his love is to be loved, in the knowledge that those who love him are made happy by their love of him.
The Bridegroom’s love, or rather the love which is the Bridegroom, asks in return nothing but faithful love. Let the beloved, then, love in return. Should not a bride love, and above all, Love’s bride? Could it be that Love not be loved?
Rightly then does she give up all other feelings and give herself wholly to love alone; in giving love back, all she can do is to respond to love. And when she has poured out her whole being in love, what is that in comparison with the unceasing torrent of that original source? Clearly, lover and Love, soul and Word, bride and Bridegroom, creature and Creator do not flow with the same volume; one might as well equate a thirsty man with the fountain.
What then of the bride’s hope, her aching desire, her passionate love, her confident assurance? Is all this to wilt just because she cannot match stride for stride with her giant, any more than she can vie with honey for sweetness, rival the lamb for gentleness, show herself as white as the lily, burn as bright as the sun, be equal in love with him who is Love? No. It is true that the creature loves less because she is less. But if she loves with her whole being, nothing is lacking where everything is given. To love so ardently then is to share the marriage bond; she cannot love so much and not be totally loved, and it is in the perfect union of two hearts that complete and total marriage consists. Or are we to doubt that the soul is loved by the Word first and with a greater love?
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The ferial reading for today:
Friday of week 20 in Ordinary Time
The Explanations of the Psalms by Saint Ambrose: Psalm 48
The one mediator of God and men is the man Christ Jesus
‘Brother does not redeem; a man shall redeem; he shall not give to God his ransom, nor the price of the redemption of his soul’; that is, ‘Why shall I fear in the evil day?’ For what can hurt me, who not only do not need a redeemer, but am myself the redeemer of all? I shall make others free, and shall I be afraid for myself? See, I make all things new, surpassing the affection and duty of kinship. The one whom a brother, delivered into the light of day from the same mother’s womb, cannot redeem, because he is held by the weakness of an equal nature, him will a man redeem: the man, however, of whom it was written that the Lord ‘will send them a man who will save them’; one who said of himself: ‘You seek to kill me, a man who has spoken the truth to you.’
But although he is a man, who shall know him? Why shall no one know him? Because just as there is one God, so also there is one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus. He is the only one who will redeem man, surpassing kinsfolk in duty; because he sheds his own blood for strangers, whereas a brother cannot do this for a brother. And so to redeem us from sin he did not spare his own body; and he gave himself a ransom for all, as his true witness the apostle Paul affirmed, who claimed: ‘I tell the truth, I do not lie.’
But why is only this man the redeemer? Because no one can equal him in goodness, insofar as he lays down his life for his own servants; no one can equal him in innocence, for all are under the yoke of sin, all lie under Adam’s fall. Alone he is chosen as redeemer since he cannot be affected by the ancient sin. Therefore, by ‘man’ let us understand the Lord Jesus, who assumed the state of man, to crucify the sin of all in his own flesh, and by his own blood wipe out the condemnation of all.
You may perhaps say: ‘How is a brother denied the possibility of redeeming, when he himself said, “I will proclaim your name to my brothers”?’ But it was not as brother to us, but as the man Christ Jesus, in whom was God, that he did away with our sins. So it is written: ‘God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself,’ in that Christ Jesus of whom alone it was said that ‘the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.’ So it was not as a brother but as Lord that he dwelt among us when he dwelt in the flesh.
Copyright © 1996-2021 Universalis Publishing Limited: see www.universalis.com. Scripture readings from the Jerusalem Bible are published and copyright © 1966, 1967 and 1968 by Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd and Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc, and used by permission of the publishers. Text of the Psalms: Copyright © 1963, The Grail (England). Used with permission of A.P. Watt Ltd. All rights reserved.