Reading: Presentation of the Lord

How the Coming and Returning of the Word
Works for the Soul’s Salvation 5
A Reading by St Bernard of Clairvaux

I admit that the Word has also come to me…But although he has come to me,
I have never been conscious of the moment of his coming. I perceived his presence,
I remembered afterwards that he had been with me; sometimes I had a
presentiment that he would come, but I was never conscious of his coming or his
going…How then did he enter? Perhaps he did not enter because he does not come
from outside? He is not one of the things which exist outside us. Yet he does not
come from within me…I have ascended to the highest in me, and look! The word is
towering above that. In my curiosity I have descended to explore my lowest depths,
yet I found him even deeper. If I looked outside myself, I saw him stretching
beyond the furthest I could see; & I looked within, he was yet further within. Then I
knew the truth of what I had read, ‘In him we live & move & have our being’. And
blessed is the man in whom he has his being, who lives for him, and is moved by
him.

You ask then how I knew he was present, when his ways can in no way be
traced? He is life and power, and as soon as he enters in, he awakens my
slumbering soul; he stirs and soothes and pierces my heart, for before it was hard as
stone, and diseased. So he has begun to pluck out and destroy, to build up and to
plant, to water dry places and illuminate dark ones; to open what was closed and to
warm what was cold; to make the crooked straight and the rough places smooth, so
that my soul may bless the Lord, and all that is within me may praise his holy name.
So when the Bridegroom, the Word, came to me, he never made known his coming
by any signs, not by sight, nor by sound, not by touch. It was not by any movement
of his that I recognized his coming; it was not by any of my senses that I perceived
he had penetrated to the depths of my being. Only by the movement of my
heart…did I perceive his presence; and I knew the power of his might because my
faults were put to flight and my human yearnings brought into subjection. I have
marvelled at the depth of his wisdom when my secret faults have been revealed and
made visible; at the very slightest amendment of my way of life I have experienced
his goodness and mercy; in the renewal and remaking of the spirit of my mind, that
is of my inmost being, I have perceived the excellence of his glorious beauty, and
when I contemplate all these things I am filled with awe and wonder at his manifold
greatness.

But when the Word has left me, all these spiritual powers become weak and
faint and begin to grow cold, as though you had removed the fire from under a
boiling pot, and this is the sign of his going. Then my soul must needs be sorrowful
until he returns, and my heart again kindles within me – the sign of his returning.
When I have had such experience of the Word, is it any wonder that I take to myself
the words of the Bride, calling him back when he has withdrawn?…

As often as he slips away from me, so often shall I call him back. From the
burning desire of my heart I will not cease to call him, begging him to return, as if
after someone who is departing, and I will implore him to give back to me the joy of
his salvation, and restore himself to me.

5 St Bernard of Clairvaux. On the Song of Songs IV. CF 40. Trans. Irene Edmonds. Kalamazoo, MI:
Cistercian Publications, 1980. 89-92.