Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Saints

when men rose up against us, perhaps they would have swallowed us alive. Our soul has passed through a torrent; perhaps our soul would have passed through an unbearable water; and they add: Blessed be the Lord, Who has not given us up as a prey to their teeth (Ps. 123:1–6). And the words too which the Apostle spoke when the time of his dissolution was already at hand, words taken in anticipation of the state in which he now happily rests, seem even now to suit him much better: for now indeed he speaks securely: I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith: for the rest there is laid up for me a crown of justice, which the Lord, the just judge, will render to me in that day (2 Tim. 4:7–8). These, I tell you, brethren, these are now the whole business of the saints, this their food, this their sleep: and therefore the Holy Spirit willed that the words we have brought forward, and others like them, should be written, so that from them their state might become known to us in some measure.

8. Yet they are affected far otherwise in meditations of this kind, and are delighted much more fully than our thought can grasp or our speech unfold. For hear how the prophet labours, pressing home and multiplying his words, and yet not able even so to magnify worthily what he intends. How great, he says, is the multitude of Thy sweetness, O Lord, which Thou hast hidden for those who fear Thee! Yet what did he add? Thou hast perfected it, he says, for those who hope in Thee, in the sight of the sons of men (Ps. 30:20). There is, then, a multitude of sweetness which is hidden, great indeed and very great, but not yet perfected; for it will be perfected in the open, not in hiding, when the saints will not rest beneath the altar but will sit upon thrones as judges. For holy souls, stripped of their bodies, are admitted at once to rest; but to the full glory of the kingdom, not so. The just wait for me, says the Prophet, while he was still held in the custody of this body, until Thou reward me (Ps. 141:8). And the divine voice says to the holy souls demanding the resurrection of their bodies: Wait a little while, until the number of your brethren be filled up (Rev. 6:11). But now the sermon must be closed: for the solemnities of the Masses, still to be celebrated, call us. What remains on the same matter, then, let us reserve for another sermon.

SERMON III. How holy souls will be without spot or wrinkle.

1. You have noticed, unless I am mistaken, from what was said in the preceding sermon, that there are three states of holy souls: the first, namely, in the corruptible body, the second without the body, the third in the body now glorified. The first in warfare, the second in rest, the third in consummated blessedness; the first, finally, in the tabernacles, the second in the courts, the third in the house of God. How beloved are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of powers! yet much more to be longed for are the courts, according to what he adds: My soul longs and faints for the courts of the Lord (Ps. 83:1–2). But since in the very courts too there is, as you hear, some fainting, wholly blessed are they who dwell

in Thy house, O Lord. I have rejoiced indeed in the things that were said to me, brethren, that we shall go into the house of the Lord. And if you ask whence I presume this so confidently: from this, without doubt, that many of us already stand in the courts, waiting until they receive their bodies, until the number of the brethren is filled up. For into that most blessed house they will enter neither without us nor without their bodies; that is, neither the saints without the people, nor the spirits without the flesh. For it is not fitting that entire beatitude be granted until the man to whom it is given is entire; nor that a Church imperfect be endowed with perfection. Therefore, when they were asking for the resurrection of their bodies, as we have already said in the former sermon, they received a divine answer, saying: Wait a little while, until the number of your brethren is completed (Rev. 6:11). They have, however, already received one robe each; but they will not be clothed with the double until we too are clothed: as the Apostle says of the patriarchs and the prophets: God providing something better for us, that without us they should not be made perfect (Heb. 11:40). For the first robe is that which we have spoken of, the happiness and rest of souls; the second is the immortality and glory of bodies. Hence they also say: Avenge, O Lord, the blood of Thy saints which has been shed (Rev. 6:10), not as though eager for vengeance, nor out of zeal for their own revenge; but out of desire for the resurrection and glorification of their bodies, which they do not doubt is to be deferred, of course, until the day of judgement.

2. But whence is this to you, O wretched flesh, O foul, O fetid, whence is this to you? Holy souls, which God has marked with His own image, desire you; those whom He redeemed with His own blood await you; and without you their joy cannot be completed, their glory perfected, their beatitude consummated. So strongly indeed does this natural desire thrive in them that their whole affection does not yet go freely to God, but is in some manner drawn together and makes a wrinkle, while they are bent by desire of you. Hence also blessed John, who through the Spirit disclosed to us many things about that state in which the blessed souls happily rest, says: They are without spot before the throne of God (Rev. 14:5). Without spot, I say, but not yet without wrinkle; until the day comes when Christ shall present the Church to Himself glorious, not having spot or wrinkle. For in those who still fight, the Church is not even without spot; since no one is clean of filth, not even an infant whose life upon the earth is of one day: which life indeed blessed Job testifies to be a warfare (Job 7:1). But in those who rest beneath the altar of the Lord, the Church is now indeed without spot, as you have in the psalm: Lord, who shall dwell in Thy tabernacle? or who shall rest in Thy holy mountain? He who enters, it says, without spot (Ps. 14:1–2). He, then, shall rest in the mountain of the Lord who enters without spot; but he who shall be without wrinkle shall be exalted above the mountain. But if you wish to know when holy souls will be without wrinkle: when the heavens shall be stretched out like a skin, which

is stretched out completely, so that not even the least wrinkle is found in it: then without doubt, when they shall now follow the Lamb whithersoever He goes. For truly the souls must be stretched out and widened by whom, indeed, the Lamb is to be followed. For where does He go? He reaches, assuredly, from end to end mightily, and orders all things sweetly.

3. Do you wish to know further where the Lamb goes, and where the blessed souls must needs follow Him? In all things I sought rest (Sir. 24:11). This is plainly the rest of the Lord, not broken off, not restricted to some particular thing; for He rejoices in all things, delights in all things, seeks rest in all things, and finds it. For good things please Him in themselves, and He delights none the less in the good ordering of evil things. He loves mercy and judgement: and He is well pleased not only in the glory of the good, but also in the punishments of the wicked, inasmuch as they are just. What then? Do you think a human soul will be able to enter into this joy of its Lord, and into this His rest, so that it too delights in all things, and is no longer drawn together into a wrinkle by any private affection, but passes over into an affection that is universal and divine? It will be able, without doubt, if it is found faithful over the few things which it received in the time of its warfare, that is, over its limbs, over its senses, over its appetites, which it took on to govern, so that in these it might be proved how faithful it is to its Lord. Let the servant of Christ, then, know how to possess his vessel in sanctification, let him glorify and bear God in his body: and there is no doubt that the Lord, generous and rich, will set the servant faithful in a little over many things. Over many things indeed, since He will make him lord of His house and ruler of all His possession. And let this not seem incredible to you, brethren, as though I spoke it of myself: for the Truth Himself plainly promises it, whose promise it is not lawful to doubt at all. Blessed, He says, is that servant whom his Lord, when He comes, shall find so doing. Amen I say to you, that He will set him over all His goods (Matt. 24:46, 47). For then the faithful servant is set over all the goods of his Lord, when he merits to enter into His joy, and thenceforth with Him to be glad in all things, to rejoice in every thing, to delight in all things. For he who cleaves to God, as the Apostle bears witness, becomes one spirit with Him (I Cor. 6:17); and his will, cleaving wholly to the divine will, becomes one with it, so that nothing is any longer found in all creatures that is against it; but all things come to be, or rather remain, according to its judgement.

4. This, then, is the blessed hope which holy souls await: and although they are engaged in thanksgiving for that happiness in which they already rest, yet they still pray and cry to God for that consummation which they look for. Hence, just as we have said that they are without the spot of oldness, but not without the wrinkle of contraction, so they seem to have already come to thanksgiving, but not yet to the voice of praise; for it befits the perfect that the perfect should praise Him, so that He may be praised with His inheritance, when they too shall praise Him, and every one shall have praise from God.

Hence the Prophet too seems pointedly to have used a verb of the future tense: Blessed, he says, are they who dwell in Thy house, O Lord; they shall praise Thee for ages of ages (Ps. 83:5). For blessed John also, in the Apocalypse, heard not the voice of praise but rather the voice of prayer. For thus you have it: Under the altar of God I heard the voices of the slain. What voices? Avenge, O Lord, the blood of Thy saints which has been shed (Rev. 6:10). That is the voice of prayer, not of praise. But how long shall we circle that altar from afar, and fear to approach? Your charity desires, unless I am mistaken, to hear the sacrament of this altar and to know its sacred and secret mystery. But who am I, that I should dare, a rash searcher, lightly to burst into the chamber of the saints? As though I had not read that the searcher of majesty shall be overwhelmed by glory (Prov. 25:27). Nevertheless, let us pause here today, if you please, in case perhaps the holy souls who dwell at that altar may deign to open its mystery to us as we knock, not indeed by our merit, but for the sake of Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His blood: recognizing us too as among the citizens and household of God, may they not judge that we are to be driven away from that secret dwelling as strangers and foreigners.

SERMON IV. On Abraham's bosom, and the altar beneath which blessed John heard the souls of the saints, and the seven loaves, from which as many baskets are read to have remained.

1. When our discourse had fallen upon that heavenly altar beneath which blessed John heard the voices of the saints (Rev. 6:9, 10), we put it off, as I think your charity remembers, so that, prayer having gone before, a safer approach might lie open to us to so sacred and secret a chamber. It is time now to say what it has been given us to think about it, without prejudice, of course, if to anyone it has perhaps been revealed otherwise. This, then, may first give pause: what it means that blessed John declares he heard the voices of holy souls beneath the altar of God, when the Saviour in the Gospel, speaking of the soul of Lazarus, says that it was carried by angels not beneath the altar of God but into the bosom of Abraham (Luke 16:22). For holy Job too, as appears, by no means dared to aspire to the altar of God, when he said: Who will grant me this, that Thou protect me in hell and hide me until Thy fury pass, and appoint me a time in which Thou wilt remember me? (Job 14:13). But that time, brethren, which blessed Job asked for had already come, the time of remembering had already come, the time of showing mercy, when blessed John heard the voices of the saints beneath the altar of God. For until that Desired One should come who would blot out with His blood the handwriting of our condemnation, and, quenching the flaming sword, open the kingdom of heaven to believers, there lay open to none of the saints whatever any approach to it

: but the Lord had provided for them in hell itself a place of rest and refreshment, setting fast a great chaos between those holy souls and the souls of the wicked. For although both were in darkness, both were not in punishment; but the wicked were tormented, while the just were comforted. That they were in darkness we have learned from the testimony of blessed Job, who declared that he too would go into a dark land, covered with the mist of death (Job 10:21). This place, then, dark indeed but quiet, the Lord calls Abraham's bosom: because, as I think, it rested in faith and in expectation of the Saviour. For Abraham's faith was so manifestly proved and approved that he was the first who merited to receive the promise of Christ's future incarnation. Into this place, then, the Saviour descending crushed the gates of brass and broke the bars of iron, and those bound whom He led out of the prison house, sitting indeed, that is, resting, but in darkness and the shadow of death, He then and there placed beneath the altar of God, hiding them in His tabernacle in the day of evils, and protecting them in the secret place of His tabernacle, until the time come when, the number of the brethren now complete, they may go forth and receive the kingdom which has been prepared for them from the beginning of the world. Now if anywhere, perhaps, the present rest of the saints is also called Abraham's bosom, it is certain that this custom has grown up from the Gospel: although no one ought to doubt that this bosom is far other than that one: since that one was in darkness, this in great light; that was in hell, this in heaven. Yet it seems not unfittingly said even now that the sons of the patriarchs are received into the fathers' bosom, when they merit [alias, have merited] to pass from this world into their fellowship.

2. Further, the altar itself, of which we are to speak, I for my part judge to be nothing other than the very body of the Lord Saviour. And I believe that I too have His mind on this, especially since I hear Him promising in the Gospel: Wherever the body shall be, there will the eagles also be gathered together (Luke 17:37). Meanwhile, then, the saints [alias, the souls] rest happily beneath the humanity of Christ, into which, truly, the angels themselves desire to look, until the time comes when they shall no longer be placed beneath the altar, but exalted above the altar. But what have I said? Shall anyone be able to attain the glory of Christ's humanity, I do not say of men, but even of angels, much less surpass it? In what way, then, should I say that those who now rest beneath the altar are to be exalted above the altar? By vision, surely, and contemplation, not by preferment. For the Son will show us Himself, as He promised (John 14:21), not in the form of a servant but in the form of God. He will show us also the Father and the Holy Spirit, without which vision, truly, nothing would suffice us; for this is

life eternal, that we may know the Father, the true God, and Him whom He sent, Jesus Christ (John 17:3), and in them, as is not doubtful, the Spirit also of both. For passing by He will serve us with the delights of His manifest contemplation, new indeed, and until that time wholly untasted by us. Hence blessed John too, in his Epistle: Now, he says, we are sons of God, but it has not yet appeared what we shall be; and he adds: But we know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is (I John 3:2). Hear, finally, the bride in the Song of Songs speaking with confidence, and already set, in hope at least, above the altar. His left hand, without doubt the bridegroom's, is under my head, and his right hand shall embrace me (Song 2:6). For the blessed soul passes beyond the incarnation and humility of Christ, which is rightly called His left hand, so as to contemplate more loftily His divinity and His majesty, which she not unfittingly names the right hand.

3. For in three ways, brethren, shall we enjoy God in that eternal and perfect beatitude: seeing Him in all creatures, having Him in ourselves, and (what is unspeakably more delightful and more blessed than all these) knowing also the Trinity itself in Itself, and contemplating that glory without any riddle, with the pure eye of the heart. For in this will life eternal and perfect consist, that we know the Father, and the Son with the Holy Spirit, and see God as He is: that is, not only as He is in us, namely, or in the other creatures, but as He is in Himself. Hence those two which we spoke of before seem to be as it were what lies around, and like the husk of the wheat: but this knowledge, the summit of beatitude, is the kernel of the wheat, the fat of the grain, with which, truly, the holy city Jerusalem is filled (Ps. 147:14). But as great as that beatitude is, so hidden is it from our eyes, since eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, how great a brightness, how great a sweetness, how great a delight awaits us in that knowledge. It is the peace of God which surpasses all understanding; how much more all our speech? What, then, it is given to no one to experience, let no one attempt to utter. Good measure, says the Lord, full and pressed down and shaken together and running over shall they give into your bosom (Luke 6:38). Full with the whole of creation, pressed down in our inner man, shaken together in the outer, running over in God Himself. There is the heap of happiness, there the surpassing glory, there the overflowing beatitude.

4. For how He is to be seen in creatures, how He is to be had in us, we can conjecture at least in part, namely from the very first-fruits of the Spirit which we have already received. But that knowledge is still wholly unknown to us: it has become wonderful; it is high, so that we cannot reach it. But how He is to be seen in creatures we can understand to some degree, since indeed He is seen in them even now: whence the philosophers too, as the Apostle bears witness, beheld the invisible things of God through the things that are made (Rom. 1:20). But

however far anyone may advance in perceiving by understanding how most mightily, how most wisely, how most kindly the eternal majesty has made all things, rules all things, orders the universe, he grasps only a very little of what it is. But [the time] will come when, as we said in the preceding sermon, we shall follow the Lamb whithersoever He goes, and shall overtake Him in all creatures, so that we may rejoice in all things, which is the joy of the Lord our God. Let us indeed rejoice in all things, but from no other source than from Him, just as He too enjoys no other things, but Himself.

5. Now how He is to be had in us, this too we can think out at least in part. For it is agreed that the nature of souls is threefold. Hence the wise men of this world too have taught that the human soul is rational, irascible, concupiscible: which threefold power of the soul nature itself, too, and daily experience teach us. Further, just as about our rational part there stand knowledge and ignorance, as a habit and its privation, so about the concupiscible there are desire and contempt; and about that which is called the irascible both gladness and anger alike are concerned. God, then, will fill our rational part with the light of wisdom, so that nothing at all is lacking to us in any knowledge. He will fill our concupiscible part with the fountain of justice, so that we desire it wholly and are wholly filled with it, as it is written: Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be filled (Matt. 5:6). For no other thing can fill the desire of the soul, nothing other than justice can make the soul blessed. When, then, God has filled our concupiscible part with justice, whatever the soul ought to reject it will reject; whatever it ought to desire it will desire: and of all things it will seek that the more which is more to be sought. Rightly, then, do we assign justice to our concupiscible part, by which, truly, we are accounted either just or unjust. And that which is called the irascible in us, when God has filled it, there will be perfect tranquillity in us, and we shall be filled with divine peace into the highest delight and gladness. And see whether beatitude, so far as it concerns the soul, does not indeed consist perfected in these three: when knowledge will no longer puff up, because of justice; will no longer sadden, because of gladness, so that that proverb ceases: He who adds knowledge adds also sorrow (Eccl. 1:18): when justice will be neither indiscreet, because of knowledge, nor burdensome, because of gladness: when gladness will be neither foolish [variant: suspect], because of knowledge, nor impure, because of justice.

6. But in all these our outer man has as yet received nothing. For it, then, that glory may dwell in our land too (Ps. 84:10), and, according to another prophet, that all the earth may be filled with the majesty of the Lord (Isa. 6:3), four things are to be sought, since, truly, it is agreed that it is compacted of four elements. And do not wonder that the one who is more wretched seems to need more things, since you read in the psalm too, the Prophet saying: My soul has thirsted for Thee, for Thee my flesh, how many ways! (Ps. 62:2). Let our earth, then, have immortality,