Reflecting on how I might approach Bernard
for today’s feast, I found myself drawn to the theme of freedom, which is
certainly fundamental for Bernard; since for one thing he devoted a whole
treatise to it as a young abbot in his On Grace and Free Choice. Freedom
is also clearly a value very dear to our contemporaries, reaching back to the
very origins of our nation’s existence. I did a little search for a
contemporary attempt to define freedom and decided upon one that has long
intrigued me, that ventured upon by the Supreme Court in the case Planned Parenthood
vs. Casey, in 1992, which is often noted as one of the few attempts on the
official level to try to get at the essence of freedom. The majority
opinion wrote this: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s
own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of
human life.”
The first thing is that liberty is
expressed here in terms of a right, which in the modern sense, in a formulation
I find helpful, concerns “the scope of the exercise of our power to choose, as
we wish, unobstructed by the power of the will of others.” The scope here, at
first sight anyway, appears incredibly broad. In fact, one of the most common
critiques of the Court’s formulation is that it is superhuman. Who in human
history, even the most megalomaniacal tyrants of the ancient world, would have
claimed such power over the givenness of the world in which they found
themselves? Yet, here, this power is bestowed on absolutely everyone as a
right. Yet, upon closer examination, what, we might ask, does this power
actually amount to if everyone has it? First, regarding my relationship with
others: the minute I try to exercise this power I discover that I am in
conflict with everyone else’s right to define their own concept of existence,
and so on. You and I, all of us here, can have this absolute power to determine
the meaning of existence only as long as my determination of the meaning of
existence means nothing to you, and your determination of the meaning of
existence means nothing to me unless we so choose. Everyone can have this
power, it turns out, only if they keep it entirely to themselves, only if it
remains a totally private affair, concerning themselves alone. Thus, it turns
out that if everyone has this power, no one can in fact exercise it.
If I cannot determine my own meaning of
existence in such a way that brings about real change in anything or anyone
around me, then perhaps I can at least determine it for myself. Again, if I
take this power as genuinely absolute, I soon discover that it results in a
rather volatile and unstable existence since I find that I am in fact not at
all bound to any of my previous determinations of the meaning of existence, not
even the one I had this morning unless I freely choose at every moment to do
so. Such power leaves me with no more substance than a leaf blowing in the
wind, and thus cannot have any real significance even for myself and leaves me
in the end without any really meaningful existence.
Since this power does not allow me in
actual fact to determine the meaning of existence for others or for myself,
what am I left with but a purely subjective feeling of freedom, with no
foundation in the real? Such a right, then, is at bottom deceptive, an
illusion. To hold it cuts oneself off from God, the world, other people, the
community as a whole, and even oneself.
What has happened here is that the will as
a power of self-determination and choice has been isolated from any
determination outside itself, and so in this respect has become its own source
and its own goal. Remaining for a moment on the philosophical level in which
the court has expressed itself; in terms of the classical tradition, what is
missing here is the priority of the good, which gives the self-determination
and spontaneity of the will sense and meaning. In the sense associated with
Plato, goodness is a self-diffusive first principle, the ultimate cause of
generation; goodness, therefore, as generosity. In the sense associated with
Aristotle, goodness is finality. Goodness represents the telos, the goal,
toward which all things strive, it is that by which they are attracted, and in
which they rest. When the will is isolated from this framework of the good, it
becomes disordered, chaotic, destructive, meaningless, and unreal. Freedom has
its genuine place within this twofold generosity of the good as origin and
goal, the generative outpouring that gives order to all existing things.
St. Bernard shows himself within this
classical line of thought when in his treatise On Loving God, he calls God
the efficient and final cause of our love (De Dil, 22). Here, though, is
introduced a very big difference: the actuality and perfection that is the
source and goal of all our striving is no longer just the good of the
philosophers, but personal, divine love, that pours itself out on us
gratuitously and calls for a response. “Why and how should God be
loved?”, Bernard asks, “God himself is the reason why he is to be
loved. As for how he is to be loved, there is to be no limit to that
love.” “What right has God to be loved?” The fact that “he has loved
us first.” Man grows in freedom insofar as he grows in the capacity to love
without limit the God who deserves to be loved for his own sake, “since he gave
himself to us when we deserved it least” and “what could he have given us
better than himself?” Man’s rights are situated within the divine right God
thus has to be loved for his own sake. Here is where they find their scope and
meaning.
Awareness of how God deserves to be loved
is not just an idea, it is a mystery that can never be exhausted, and so is
something we need to consciously cultivate at all times. Bernard insists we do
this by being attentive to God’s many gifts: “For, who else gives food to all
who eat, sight to all who see, and air to all who breathe?” Without these, we
cannot live, but beyond these “chief gifts” lie man’s nobler gifts, of which
Bernard names three: dignity, knowledge and virtue. Man’s dignity is precisely
his free will. Knowledge is that “by which he acknowledges that this dignity
[of a free will] is in him but that it is not of his own making.”
“Virtue”, the third gift, “is that by which man seeks continuously and eagerly
for his Maker and when he finds him, adheres to him with all his might.”
These gifts seem to me to make for a
powerful recipe for human flourishing. A world view such as that of the courts
constructed around an absolute free will promotes in my view what Bernard might
call at best a “restless curiosity.”
The reason is based on our human condition.
As Bernard puts it: “Every rational being naturally desires always what
satisfies more its mind and will. It is never satisfied with something which
lacks the qualities it thinks it should have. A man with a beautiful wife, for
example, looks at a more attractive woman with a wanton eye or heart; a
well-dressed man wants more costly clothes, and a man of great wealth envies
anyone richer than he…Why wonder if man cannot be content with what is lower or
worse, since he cannot find peace this side of what is highest and best?”
Such is the condition of our contemporaries
who have been handed the “right to define one’s own concept of existence, of
meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life”. They can run
through an infinite number of these concepts and never find peace for their
restless heart until they have settled on the highest and the best, which can
only be God himself, his love, and his plan for their life.
As Bernard says, “whoever desires the
greatest good can succeed in reaching it if he can first gain possession of
all he desires short of that good itself.” That is, if you could actually do
the impossible and possess all that you desire, you would discover their
incapacity to fill your desire and so turn at last to the God of the universe.
There is another way: “If they could only be content with reaching all in
thought and not in deed. They could easily do so and it would not be in vain,
for man’s mind is more comprehensive and subtle than his senses.”
Yet, this is not the best way. “The desire
to experience all things first is like a vicious circle, it goes on forever.
The just man is not like that…he prefers the royal road which turns neither to
the right nor to the left.” The path of the just is the way of those who “take
a salutary short-cut and avoid the dangerous, fruitless round-about way,
choosing the shortened and shortening word,” That is, God’s word in Christ,
“not desiring everything they see, but rather selling all they have and giving
it to the poor.”
Our world today needs badly the witness of
the just who prefer the royal road, the straight path of genuine freedom, who
have responded to the call to walk the way of the “shortened word” in search of
the God who loved them first; and who, when they have gone astray, heed the
call of love to return and take up the path once again. Let us cling to this
God, and never let go.
Saint Bernard by El Greco. Father Timothy's homily for today's feast.
