Liber Quintus, Caput XIV. Modum, quo praedicta secundum Apostolum comprehendere possimus, ostendit.
The Paradox of Comprehending the Incomprehensible
Bernard resolves the apparent contradiction that the Apostle bids us comprehend what is itself incomprehensible, teaching that holy fear and holy love are the twofold affection by which the soul truly grasps divine reality.
We know these things. Isn't it true, then, that we think we've comprehended? This discussion doesn't comprehend holiness, but holiness itself: if it can be comprehended in any way, it is that which is incomprehensible. But if it could not be, the Apostle would not have said: 'That we may comprehend with all the saints.' Therefore, the holy ones comprehend. You ask how? If you are holy, you have comprehended, and you know; if not, be so, and you'll know through your own experience. A holy affection makes one holy, and it is itself twofold: the holy fear of the Lord and holy love.
Holding God with Two Arms
The soul that is perfectly endowed with fear and love grasps and embraces God, fear corresponding to the height and depth of divine power and wisdom, love to the breadth and length of charity.
A soul perfectly endowed with these affections grasps, embraces, clings, and holds fast, as if with two arms of its own, and says: "I have held him, and I will not let him go." And fear, indeed, corresponds to what is lofty and profound, while love corresponds to what is broad and long.✦1 What is so worthy of fear as a power you cannot resist, or as a wisdom from which you cannot hide? God could be feared less if he lacked either one.2 But now you must perfectly fear him whose eye, seeing all things, is never missing, and whose hand is powerful over all things.✦ And likewise, what is so worthy of love as love itself, by which you love and by which you are loved?✦ Yet joined eternity makes it even more worthy of love: as long as it does not fall away, it casts out suspicion.✦3 Love, therefore, perseveringly and patiently, and you have its length; extend your love even to your enemies, and you hold its breadth.✦✦
The Height and Depth Found in Humility and Caution
Anxious caution before every concern is presented as the way to lay hold of what is lofty and deep.
So be cautious in every anxious concern, and you'll have grasped what is lofty and what is deep.
Four Divine Questions, Four Interior Postures
Bernard proposes four interior responses—astonishment, fear, fervor, and endurance—corresponding to four divine realities: God's majesty, judgments, charity, and eternity.
Or if you prefer, you can respond to the four divine questions equally; you do this if you are astonished, if you are afraid, if you are fervent, if you can endure. Truly, the majesty's sublimity is astonishing; the abyss of judgments is to be feared. Charity demands fervor, and eternity requires the endurance of perseverance. Who is astonished, except the one who contemplates the glory of God? Who is afraid, except the one who scrutinizes the depths of wisdom? Who is fervent, except the one who meditates on the love of God? Who can endure and persevere in love, except the one who longs for the eternity of charity? Indeed, perseverance prefers a certain image of eternity.
Perseverance Alone Receives Eternity
Eternity is given only to the one who perseveres to the end, as the Lord promises salvation to those who endure.
Ultimately, eternity is given only to the one who perseveres to the end — or rather, it is the one who returns to eternity who gives life to humanity, as the Lord says: "Whoever perseveres to the end will be saved."✦
The Four Contemplations
Bernard enumerates four kinds of contemplation—wonder at majesty, fear of judgments, memory of benefits, and hope of promises—each with its own spiritual effect on the soul.
And now notice how these four kinds of contemplation correspond to those four. The first and greatest contemplation is wonder at God's majesty. This requires a cleansed heart — freed from vices and unburdened from sins — so that it can easily rise to heavenly things; and at times it holds the one who gazes upon it suspended in amazement and ecstasy through certain lingering moments of wonder. The second is necessary alongside it, for it looks upon the judgments of God. With a gaze that is truly fearful — the more violently it shakes the one who looks — it puts vices to flight, establishes virtues, initiates into wisdom, and preserves humility. Humility is, after all, a certain good and stable foundation of virtues. Surely if that foundation wavers, the whole structure of virtues is nothing but ruin. The third contemplation is engaged with — or rather takes its ease in — the memory of God's benefits; and so that it not let the one who remembers become ungrateful, it stirs them up to love for the one who has shown them kindness.
Matching Contemplation to the Apostle's Dimensions
Bernard aligns his four contemplations with the Apostle's four dimensions of divine reality and closes the book by affirming that the end of writing must not be the end of seeking God.
The prophet says this about such things, speaking to the Lord: they will pour forth the memory of the abundance of your sweetness.✦ The fourth kind, forgetting what lies behind, rests in the sole expectation of the promises: since it is a meditation on eternity (for what is promised is eternal), it nourishes patience and gives strength to perseverance.✦ I think it's now easy to match these four of ours with those four of the Apostle: meditation on the promises comprehends length, remembrance of benefits comprehends breadth, contemplation of majesty comprehends height, and inspection of judgments comprehends depth.✦ He still had to be sought — who has not yet been found sufficiently, nor can He be sought too much — but perhaps He is sought more worthily by praying than by disputing, and found more easily. Therefore let this be the end of the book, but not the end of seeking.
Read the original Latin
Novimus haec. Num ideo et arbitramur nos comprehendisse? Non ea disputatio comprehendit, sed sanctitas: si quo modo tamen comprehendi potest quod incomprehensibile est. At nisi posset, non dixisset Apostolus: Ut comprehendamus cum omnibus sanctis. Sancti igitur comprehendunt. Quaeris quomodo? Si sanctus es, comprehendisti, et nosti: si non; esto, et tuo experimento scies. Sanctum facit affectio sancta, et ipsa gemina: timor Domini sanctus, et sanctus amor.
His perfecte affecta anima, veluti quibusdam duobus brachiis suis comprehendit, amplectitur, stringit tenet, et ait: Tenui eum, nec dimittam. Et timor quidem sublimi et profundo, amor lato et longo respondet. Quid tam timendum quam potestas, cui non potes resistere; quam sapientia, cui abscondi non potes? Poterat minus timeri Deus, alterutro carens. Nunc autem perfecte oportet timeas illum, cui nec oculus deest omnia videns, nec manus potens omnia. Quid item tam amabile, quam amor ipse, quo amas, et quo amaris? Amabiliorem tamen juncta aeternitas facit: quae dum non excidit, foras mittit suspicionem. Ama igitur perseveranter et longanimiter, et habes longitudinem: dilata amorem tuum usque ad inimicos, et latitudinem tenes.
Esto etiam in omni sollicitudine timoratus, et sublime profundumque apprehendisti.
Aut si mavis quatuor aeque tuis, divinis quatuor respondere; facis hoc, si stupes, si paves, si ferves, si sustines. Stupenda plane sublimitas majestatis: pavenda abyssus judiciorum. Fervorem exigit charitas, aeternitas perseverantiam sustinendi. Quis stupet, nisi qui contemplatur gloriam Dei? Quis pavet, nisi qui scrutatur profundum sapientiae? Quis fervet, nisi qui meditatur charitatem Dei? Quis sustinet et perseverat in amore, nisi qui aemulatur aeternitatem charitatis? Nempe aeternitatis quamdam imaginem perseverantia praefert.
Denique sola est cui aeternitas redditur, vel potius quae aeternitati hominem reddit, dicente Domino: Qui perseveraverit usque in finem, hic salvus erit.
Et nunc adverte in quatuor istis contemplationis species quatuor. Prima et maxima contemplatio est admiratio majestatis. Haec requirit cor purgatum, ut a vitiis liberum, atque exoneratum peccatis, facile ad superna levet: interdum quoque vel per aliquas morulas stupore et ecstasi suspensum teneat admirantem. Secunda autem necessaria est huic; est enim intuens judicia Dei. Quo sane pavido aspectu, dum vehementius concutit intuentem, fugat vitia, fundat virtutes, initiat ad sapientiam, humilitatem servat. Virtutum siquidem bonum quoddam ac stabile fundamentum, humilitas. Nempe si nutet illa, virtutum aggregatio nonnisi ruina est. Tertia contemplatio occupatur, vel potius otiatur circa memoriam beneficiorum; et ne dimittat ingratum, sollicitat memorantem ad amorem benefactoris.
De talibus dicit propheta loquens ad Dominum: Memoriam abundantiae suavitatis suae eructabunt. Quarta quae retro sunt obliviscens, in sola requiescit exspectatione promissorum: quae cum sit meditatio aeternitatis (siquidem quae promittuntur, aeterna sunt), longanimitatem alit, et perseverantiae dat vigorem. Puto jam facile est quatuor nostra haec, quatuor illis Apostoli assignare, dum longitudinem comprehendit meditatio promissorum, latitudinem recordatio beneficiorum, sublimitatem contemplatio majestatis, profundum inspectio judiciorum. Quaerendus adhuc fuerat, qui nec satis adhuc inventus est, nec quaeri nimis potest: at orando forte quam disputando dignius quaeritur, et invenitur facilius. Proinde is sit finis libri, sed non finis quaerendi.
Scripture echoes
- ↩Eph.3.18 — rooted and grounded in love, that you may have the power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
- ↩Prov.15.3 — The eyes of the LORD are in every place, watching the evil and the good.
- ↩1John.4.8 — The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
- ↩1Cor.13.7 — Love bears all things, and believes all things, and hopes all things, and endures all things.
- ↩Matt.5.44 — But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
- ↩Eph.3.18 — rooted and grounded in love, that you may have the power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
- ↩Matt.24.13 — But the one who endures to the end will be saved.
- ↩Ps.144.7 — Reach down your hand from on high; rescue me and deliver me from many waters, from the hand of foreign sons.
- ↩Phil.3.13 — Brothers, I do not yet consider myself to have taken hold of it; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,
- ↩Eph.3.18 — rooted and grounded in love, that you may have the power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
Notes
- 1 ↩The ablative adjectives 'sublimi et profundo' and 'lato et longo' likely function as ablatives of quality modifying their respective nouns (fear and love), or as dative/ablative of respect. Rendered here as the qualities 'what is lofty and profound' and 'what is broad and long' to capture the spatial dimensions Bernard assigns to these affections.
- 2 ↩'Alterutro carens' means lacking either of the two (i.e., power or wisdom). The logic is that if God lacked either attribute, he would be less fearsome.
- 3 ↩The pronoun 'quae' refers to 'aeternitas'. The logic is that the eternal nature of God's love removes the suspicion that the love will fail or change.
De consideratione (On Consideration) companion
Make consideration a daily appointment
Bernard told Eugene to set aside time every day. Chosen Portion holds that time for you, free.
Bernard's core prescription — a fixed daily time reserved for examining the soul — is exactly the habit Chosen Portion installs with its daily devotional portion.
- One 10-minute daily portion for self-examination and prayer
- Reflection prompts drawn from historic texts, not improvised journaling
- A visible streak that protects the daily interval Bernard insisted on