Page 36 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 19

And a li�le later “Shall we indeed accept good Desire Unfilled
from God, and shall we not accept adversity?”
(2:10, NKJV).
Like Job, Bernard is no sen�mentalist, no pro-
ponent of posi�ve thinking, the prosperity gos-
pel, or Chris�an life hacks. He is rather a sober
spiritual father who grounds his counsel to us in
the sacramental and asce�cal vision of the
Chris�an life he found in the Church fathers and
monas�c authors.
This vision is rooted in the analogy of being;
crea�on, and redemp�on are both the work of
God. Though with their own unique characters,
their differences don’t obscure their funda-
mental similarity and unity. To understand crea-
�on is to also understand something of red-
emp�on. Likewise, our understanding of red-
emp�on helps us understand God’s crea�ve
act. God creates in order to redeem and red-
emp�on fulfills God’s inten�on in crea�ng. And
so crea�on and redemp�on are related not
only analogically but teleologically. Crea�on
ends not by ceasing to be but by becoming
what God from all intends it to be in Jesus
Christ.
To understand then human psychology and psy-
chopathology is also to understand something
of the great drama of human redemp�on. To
say grace perfects nature, is to say that nature
aspires toward that which is above nature. Like-
wise, grace not only perfects nature but, in so
doing, reveals nature to us.
As for the work of grace which is salva�on,
though not wholly absent in Bernard’s theolo-
gy, salva�on is not simply a forensic declara�o-
nor moral improvement. To be a Chris�an in his
view means to “partake of the divine nature,”
as the Apostle Peter tells us (see 2 Peter 1:4). In
other words, his is a soteriology of deifica�on,
of our becoming by grace what Jesus is by na-
ture. “For if anything merely human remained
in man, how then should God be all in all?” Ber-
nard asks before con�nuing “It is not that hu-
man nature will be destroyed, but that it will
a�ain another beauty, a higher power and glo-
ry” (p. 36).
36
This leads us to our next them: the eschatologi-
cal fulfillment of all human desire. This is a the-
me Bernard returns again and again to in his
sermons of the Song of Songs. In Sermon 50 he
gives his brothers an overview of what he
means by love. Here he tells the monks that,
yes, love is an emo�on or feeling it is however
something beyond my ability to fulfill as I would
like much less in the measure required. This is
why, in this life, love remains an unfulfilled de-
sire.
Ironically, nothing so kills love as my a�empt to
consummate my desire. It is one thing to be in
the presence of the Other (whether divine or
human); it is quite another to possess the
Other. Here Emmanual Levinas’s discussion of
alterity is helpful. I can only possess the Other
by an act of literal or metaphorical violence
that strips the other of his or her uniqueness
(otherness or alterity). Doing so I exchange an
image (ikon, see Hebrews 8) for an idol.
There remains even in the life to come, love re-
tains a certain unfulfilled quality. At least this is
the argument made by St. Gregory of Nyssa
who sees heaven as a process of our unending
growth in love for God. God being infinite
means that there is always more to discover,
more to know and love. To be in the divine pre-
sence is to experience the possibility of desire
that is never fulfilled not through any nega�ve
factor in us but rather because of the supera-
bundance of beauty in God.
A Ra�onal Desire and a Gi� to Be Received
As Levinas’s works suggest, there is a sense in
which love is perfectly natural and our proper
response to each other. At the same �me, while
natural [i.e., created] desires inspire me to love
(and here again, Levinas proves himself Ber-
nard’s ally), divorced from right reason these
same desires degrade love. To say love must be
reasonable, is to say that it must conform not
only to the divine will but the divine inten�on.
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
For you pay �the of mint and anise and cum-
min, and have neglected the weigh�er ma�ers
of the law: jus�ce and mercy and faith. These