Pope Francis recently published an apostolic letter on the liturgy entitled Desiderio desideravi. This morning I’d like to look at how St. Bernard might help us to appropriate the teaching in this letter. The title comes from the first two words from Jesus' words to his disciples at the opening of the scene of the Last Supper in Luke’s Gospel: “I have earnestly desired (Desiderio desideravi) to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.”
These words of Jesus, the Holy Father says, are a “crevice through which we
can intuit the depth of the love of the persons of the Holy Trinity have for
us.” Our response, which he repeats twice in this opening section, is
“surprise.” Surprise at the gift of the supper despite the infinite disproportion
between its immensity and smallness of the one who receives it, and surprise at
the love of the persons of the Trinity for us, expressed by Jesus burning and
infinite desire to eat the Passover with the disciples, and through it to
re-establish communion with us, a desire, he says, that “will not be satisfied
until every man and woman…shall have eaten his Body and drunk his Blood.”
For our part, “the possible response – which is also the most demanding
asceticism – is, as always, that surrender to this love, that letting ourselves
be drawn by him.”
For the Holy Father, “all the powerful beauty of the liturgy” lies in the
fact that the liturgy guarantees for us the possibility of a true encounter with
the living Lord and of having the power of his Paschal Mystery reach us.
The Holy Father says that with this letter of his he “simply want[s] to
invite the whole Church to rediscover, to safeguard, and to live the truth and
power of the Christian celebration.” Later he formulates it this way: “How can
we grow in our capacity to live in full the liturgical action? How can we
continue to let ourselves be amazed at what happens in the celebration under
our very eyes?”
The Liturgy, he says, is an antidote to what he calls “the poison of
spiritual worldliness”, but for the antidote to be effective, the beauty of the
truth of the Christian celebration must be rediscovered daily. This means
maintaining a disposition of astonishment before the paschal mystery, if this astonishment
were lacking “we would truly risk being impermeable to the ocean of grace that
floods every celebration.”
To start, I asked myself what form this astonishment might take in Saint
Bernard. In my opinion, we have a good example of it in his Sermon on the
Assumption which was read at the Second Nocturn at Vigils on Monday. First, it
catches us up beyond ourselves in joy and praise: This “glorious festival”
“when the nature of man is elevated in the Virgin to solitary eminence…is a
time when all flesh should shout for joy…” It is a response to a mystery perceived
but that lies beyond words: “neither my barren mind can conceive nor my
unpolished tongue express anything worthy of so grand a theme.” So great a
wonder can only bring forth admiration in the form of a question: “Who is she
that comes up from the desert flowing with delights?” Astonishment can only
pile up attributes and images: “loveliness of humility”, “‘dropping honeycomb’
of divine charity”, “seat of mercy”, “fulness of heavenly grace”, “prerogative
of singular glory”, “Queen of the universe”, “lovely and sweet in her
delights…even to the holy angels.” When it tries to express what it has seen,
it finds itself taking refuge in irreducible polarities and paradoxes that
remain suspended and unresolved except in the mystery of divine revelation: for,
in a unique way, we find in Mary a “virginal fecundity, or should I call it a
fecund virginity?”
But there is no resting in astonishment, nor is Bernard interested first of
all in speculation, but in action. “Therefore,” he says, “my dearest brethren,
let us run with thirsting souls to this fountain of mercy, let our misery have
recourse with all the eagerness of desire to this treasury of compassion.” From
here flows a missionary impulse, the desire to share with others the grace received:
“I beseech you, let it be the concern of your loving-kindness to make known to
the whole world the grace you have found with God, by obtaining through your
holy prayers pardon for the guilty, health for the sick, courage for the
timid.”
In this short excerpt from one of Bernard’s sermons, we find in the flight
of the “thirsting soul” the three pillars of the Bernardine path to God: humility,
charity, and contemplation. In this simple but profound pattern, I believe Bernard
shows us the way to the answer to the Holy Father’s questions: “How can we grow
in our capacity to live in full the liturgical action? How can we continue to
let ourselves be amazed at what happens in the celebration under our very eyes?”
Because Bernard offers us a path of encounter.
In his “Steps of Humility and Pride,” Bernard says that there are three
degrees in the perception of truth. “We must look for truth in ourselves
(humility); in our neighbors (charity); in itself (contemplation). We look for
truth in ourselves when we judge ourselves; in our neighbors when we have
sympathy for their sufferings; in itself, when we contemplate it with a clean
heart.” Bernard justifies the order and the number of these degrees by their
place in the order of the Beatitudes. For there, he says, “the merciful are
spoken of before the clean of heart”, and “the meek are spoken of before the
merciful:” meekness, mercy, a clean heart; these three.
“The merciful quickly grasp the truth in their neighbors when their heart
goes out to them with a love that unites them so closely that they feel their
neighbor’s good and ill as if it were their own.” “For just as pure truth is
seen only by the pure of heart, so also a brother’s miseries are truly
experienced only by one who has misery in his own heart. You will never have
real mercy for the failings of another, he insists, until you know and realize
that you have the same failings in your own soul. Our Savior has given us the
example. He willed to suffer so that he might know compassion; to learn mercy
he shared our misery…” “…pay attention, then, to what you are, Bernard
admonishes us, because you are truly full of misery;” that is, in need of
mercy, of salvation.
“If you have eyes for the shortcomings of your neighbor and not for your
own, no feeling of mercy will arise in you but rather indignation…” We all know
that experience, I think. We will lack what St. Paul calls the “spirit of
gentleness”, which is not some contrived mannerism assumed at will, but the
fruit of the formation of our character, that wells up from within, as
connatural to us. “When a man has seen the truth about himself, or better, when
he has seen himself in truth”, that is in the light of Christ, he will come to
what Bernard calls a “deep heart”. The ideal to be reached is “perfect humility”,
which I attain when I am “not…ashamed to confess the known truth about myself.”
Souls in this state “hunger and thirst after justice” and are “anxious to
exact from themselves full satisfaction and real amendment.” From justice, they
fly to mercy, by the road Truth himself shows them: “Blessed are the merciful
for they have obtained mercy.” “They look beyond their own needs to the needs
of their neighbors and from the things they themselves have suffered they learn
compassion…”
We are called to persevere in these three things: sorrow of repentance,
desire for justice, and works of mercy. In these three our hearts are cleansed
by grace and prepared for the highest possible gift: union of will with God; by
the grace of the Spirit, to be made one spirit with God. Ultimately, those who
persevere receive what Bernard calls a “simple eye”, the fulfillment of the
promise made in the beatitude: “Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall
see God.” In the purity of truth, these souls are swept up to the sight of
things invisible. With this rapture, then, we have come full circle. Astonishment
shows itself to be not just the beginning but ultimate, and the abiding reality
for those with eyes to see.
Here we have, brothers, the fitting response to the love that loved us first, what the Holy Father called that “most demanding asceticism,” that is, “the surrender to his love, that letting ourselves be drawn by him,” who in this “today” of salvation, earnestly desires to share this sacred banquet with us, which he himself has prepared for us, that we may accept the gift of his body and blood and so become one body with him. Let us then partake of this gift.
Apparition of the Virgin to Saint Bernard, Filippino Lippi, 1485-1487, oil on panel, 83 x 77 in., Badia, Florence. Today's homily by Father Timothy.
