Teachings on Humility by St. Bernard

“The way is humility, the goal is truth.  The first is the labor, the second the reward” (p.29).  These evocative words of St. Bernard from his treatise, The Steps of Humility and Pride, offer us a picture of what the monastic is to be about in the ‘school of the Lord’s service’.  Encompassing the learning and the labor involved in this daily walk of humility and truth is Jesus, whose Voice continually reminds us: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (Jn 14:6).  We are graced with this paradigm, this pattern, and so we are met each step of the way by the presence of Mercy, Christ.  St. Bernard was clear about Christ’s presence in this process; he thus proceeds to translate for us through Christ’s life what is involved in the way (humility) and how the goal (truth) unfolds through the ground of humility. 

So if any of us thinks this path is too difficult here is how Bernard responds: “Supposing, then, that you go on to object: ‘I see the way—humility; I long for the goal to which it leads—truth; but what if the way is so difficult that I can never reach the goal?’  The answer comes promptly: ‘I am the life,’ that is, I am the food, the viaticum, to sustain you on your journey” (p.29-30).  Ok, so there is no excuse for anyone of us if we have just an ounce of faith!

Before Bernard goes into his main topic: which is, interfacing the steps of pride with the steps of humility, he speaks of three degrees “in the perception of truth” (p.34): “We must look for truth in ourselves; in our neighbors; in itself.  We look for truth in ourselves when we judge ourselves; in our neighbors when we have sympathy for their sufferings; in itself when we contemplate it with a clean heart” (p.34).  After stating what these three degrees of truth are, Bernard says that it is important to notice the order of these three degrees.  Why is the order so important?  He says: “For just as pure truth is seen only by the pure of heart, so also a brother’s miseries are truly experienced only by one who has misery in his own heart.  You will never have real mercy for the failings of another until you know and realize that you have the same failings in your soul” (p.35).  So sure enough we have to first begin by looking for truth in ourselves.  When we are so negative towards a sister’s failings and cannot find a trace of mercy in our heart for her, what is that telling us?  We are being called to return to our hearts and to look first for truth in ourselves. As we look for truth in ourselves are we finding the burn of jealousy, or an insistence on having to be right, or a defensive posturing?  To learn about truth in our selves is the on-going work of self-knowledge. Another way Bernard will express it is that we are “learning mercy” (p.40).  He tells us that Christ learned mercy, “the mercy that springs from sharing in our misery” (p.40).  To repeat: we are to learn mercy and we have Jesus who is the icon of mercy to teach us; and one essential way that we learn mercy is when we look for truth in ourselves, and see that we have similar failings as our sister or brother.

In his book, Living In Truth, Michael Casey says that humility, as Bernard described it, is based on truth: “within oneself, in one’s relations with others, and with regard to God” (p.17).  The parallel reality to humility is pride and Michael Casey points out that pride is more than inflation, “it is radical falsehood” (p.17).  He says that in the ancient world truth was understood to mean “a quality of being” and that “truth touched not only the mind but also the heart and the emotions” (p.17).  To understand truth ‘as a quality of being’ I think gives us a fresh approach or understanding of what Bernard means by ‘truth’.  Also, that truth is not just a concept of the mind but it includes the heart and our emotions.  Perhaps we could describe the first degree of truth as looking at the quality of my living, and of my authenticity.  

To return to Bernard, he writes: “If a person wants to know the full truth about himself he will have to get rid of the beam of pride which blocks out the light from his eye, and then set up in his heart a ladder of humility so that he can search into himself” (p.43).  Bernard says that when a person has seen “the truth about herself” or “when she sees herself in truth” she has come to have a “deep heart” (The Steps of Humility and Pride, p.43).  The way: humility accompanied with the work of self-knowledge, leads to truth, a quality of being, a deep heart, a heart that knows mercy because it knows its own wounds, wounds that when they are not faced lead to sin, to blindness, to deceit, to hurting others and so on.  The Steps of Humility and Pride was Bernard’s first work.  But we can see how the themes in this work reappear in later works.  For example, we had at mid-day prayer this pithy reading from On Precept and Dispensation:  “I believe two things are necessary for the interior eye to be truly simple: love in intention and truth in choice….A person needs not only a warm and undeceiving heart but a keen and undeceived eye as well” (CF 1:36, p.133).

Humility is the way to truth: within our selves, in our relations with others, and with God.  It transforms the heart and the interior eye helping us to live a quality of life that is evermore Christ like.

Listening to the Divine Voice

Last week I talked about ‘listening’ in the Rule of St. Benedict, specifically verse 1 of the Prologue, ‘listening with the ear of the heart’.  I talked about its multi-layered dimensions:  that ‘listening with the ear of the heart’ is not just a surface level of hearing.  It goes far deeper; it involves emptiness, surrender so that the heart opens from inside and is ready to receive the Divine voice: ‘Today if you hear God’s voice harden not your hearts’.  So much can get in the way of our listening; and still if we can remember the interior movement of ‘bending’ the heart in humility to listen, knowing that the Spirit has something to say to us, or to teach us, or to convert our hearts leading us into truth…into a compassionate posture.  Verse 1 as you recall ends with ‘put into practice’, put into practice what you receive through this humble deep listening that opens the heart, that evangelizes the heart in the ways of the gospel.

This morning I like to leap forward to verses 14-20 of the Prologue, which is a monastic commentary on several verses of Psalm 33.  What is important first to note is that both the ‘Master’ and Benedict, following early Christian writers, place Christ as being the voice of the psalmist.  It seems to me that what this does is it brings the Divine so much closer to us. The Holy Other is now the Incarnate One who calls to us saying: “Who are you who desire life and long for good days?”  What precedes this question is verse 14: “And the Lord, seeking his worker in the crowds, calls out to them…” Bockmann points out the obvious: it is the Lord (Christ) who is seeking us and she adds that our seeking God is a response to our being sought…to our being called (A Listening Community, p.30).  I think it is important not to overlook this spiritual truth:  we can easily forget that our seeking is already preceded by God’s call and invitation: ‘Who are you who desire life?’  We are being invited into the Divine life and love right from the beginning…and with Jesus this life of God has been brought into our human lives, into every aspect of them. Just to say a word about the ‘question’…this is a question from God…as we let ourselves be addressed by the question, notice our heart’s response.  The question evokes, the question carries the Divine presence, and we say almost immediately: ‘I do’, I want life…I want to follow and do what I have to do for this life…the ‘life’ that money cannot buy nor any achievement obtain.  The question evokes the Divine, puts us in communion, into dialogue with God.

The next verse 16, says ‘If you hear this and answer I do then God says to you’…This verse was added by Benedict and the Master…Note the phrase ‘if you hear this’, which implies we can miss and not hear the Divine voice calling to us, inviting us into his life.  And then what does God say: ‘Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit’.  What we have to put into practice is to guard our tongue!  This noticing, this mindfulness, can bring us back to a deeper listening, back to the Divine voice…God through the Spirit is always speaking to the heart; the voice of God speaks in silence and in word and we are to cultivate our listening…“If today you hear God’s voice…” How do we keep our tongues from speaking ‘deceit’; are we even aware of when this is happening?  I like us to consider that perhaps it happens more than what we like to think.  For example, whenever we have to defend an image of ourselves or refuse the truth of self-knowledge, notice how we can see a situation falsely or with untrue, partial elements.  Truth is liberating and it goes hand in hand with self-knowledge…truth deepens our love and compassion.  The tongue, meaning the words that come forth, is directly connected to the heart…to what is going on there….there, in the heart, listening, we learn the truth which makes us free.  All of verse 17 is taken from Psalm 33 and the last phrases are “Turn from evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it”.  Bockmann points out that ‘seeking’ and ‘peace’ “are two key words for monastic life” (p.34).

So, when we turn from evil verse 18 says:  “And when you do this, my eyes are upon you and my ears turned to your prayers and before you invoke me, I will say to you: ‘Here I am’”.  The Rule, says Bockmann, emphasizes the necessity of grace (p.35).  She means by this that when we turn away from the deceitful or hurtful tongue it is grace already operating.   In Bockmann’s words “Whoever avoids evil, does what is good, and pursues peace will experience that God anticipates their prayers” (p.35).  To repeat, as we turn away from the murmuring tongue, God is anticipating…it is both anticipated by God’s grace, which supports the turning, and God who says ‘Here I am’ as we ‘turn’ towards him. God is anticipating, which means grace is helping us to turn away from evil.  Bockmann refers to Chapter 4 on the ‘Tools of Good Works’ where we are given a more explicit list of what we are to turn away from: turning from such things as anger, deceit, pride, various addictions and turn towards acts of loving kindness, reverence, truth, trust, openness (p.33).  This is how concrete dear sisters and brother the Rule is!  This is how peace is built…how a community is built…how the life of the gospel is incarnated…how the consciousness of Jesus lives on through us.  It begins small (like the mustard seed)….it begins in the clay vessels of our hearts…and there is no true peace unless it begins here.

And the final two verses of this part of the Prologue:   “What could be sweeter, dearest brothers, than the voice of the Lord inviting us.  See in his kindness the Lord shows us the way of life”.  There is nothing sweeter than God showing us the way of life…and it is today, as we listen with the ear of our heart and seek peace...the peace of Christ.