Vigils Reading

THE THANKS THAT SPRINGS

FROM A PURE HEART

From a sermon by St Bernard of Clairvaux

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“In all things give thanks to God.” If you can credit yourself with wisdom

or with virtue, realize that the credit is due rather to Christ, who is the Power

and the Wisdom of God.

“Who is so mad,” you say, “as to presume otherwise?” Actually nobody.

Even the Pharisee gives thanks, although his justice merits no praise from God.

And if, as the Gospel points out, his act of thanksgiving does not increase his

grace, why is this so? Because the pieties that our mouths proclaim will not

justify the pride of our heart in the sight of him who is repelled by the arrogant.

“God is not mocked, O Pharisee. What do you have that was not given to you?”

“Nothing,” he says, “and therefore I offer thanks to the giver.” But if there is

really nothing, then you had no antecedent merit to warrant your reception of

the things of which you boast. And if you admit this, then in the first place it is

futile to give yourself airs at the expense of the publican who does not possess as

much as you because he has not received as much.

Secondly, make sure you realize that God’s gifts are entirely his own; if

you attribute to yourself some of the glory and honor that are his, you may

deservedly be convicted of fraud, of attempting to defraud God. If you brazenly

boast of gifts as though they were your own, I should prefer to believe you are

deceived, not that you wish to defraud. It is an error I should hope to correct.

But when you make thanksgiving, you manifest that you regard nothing as your

own, you wisely acknowledge that your merits are really God’s gifts.

When you despise others, however, you betray the inner reality of your

condition, you are speaking from a double heart, with one lending your tongue

to a lie, with the other usurping the honor due to truth. Never would you judge

the publican more despicable than yourself if you did not consider that you are

more honorable than he. But how will you reply to the principle laid down by the

Apostle: ‘Honor and glory to the only God?’…

Do you not perceive that the Pharisee, in offering thanks, honors God with

his lips but in his heart pays tribute to himself? And so, through force of habit

more than by intention or inclination, you will hear people of all sorts

pronouncing words of thanks, for even the wickedest persons will offer a

perfunctory thanks to God…for any kind of crime, because things fell out well

and prosperous, at least according to their estimation, when their perverse will

was fulfilled. For instance, when the thief has bagged the loot for which he has

planned, he celebrates in the privacy of his hide-out and says: “Thank God!”…

It is clear then that God will listen only to the thanks that spring from a

pure and genuine simplicity of heart. I say “pure heart,” because when those

who boast of their evil conduct presume to thank God for it, they bring him

down to the level of their own profligacy and make him share in their wicked

pleasures. God says to people of this kind: “Do you really think I am like you?”