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?”