Song of Songs - Sermon 42

 At the start of this sermon St. Bernard presents the mental processes all of us go through when faced with someone who is obviously on a wayward path. Should we try to correct their actions? Do I have the moral authority to correct someone? Is it my responsibility to point out the error of their ways? What happens if they get angry with me? Will I end up losing a friend?

 As for the moral authority, St.Bernard defends action.

"I am neither prophet nor apostle, but I dare to say that I fulfill the role both of prophet and apostle; and though far beneath them in merits I am caught up in similar cares. Even though it be to my great embarrassment, though it put me at serious risk, I am seated on the chair of Moses, to whose quality of life I do not lay claim and whose grace I do not experience. What then? That one must withhold respect for the chair because the man sitting there is unworthy?”

St. Bernard then goes on to discuss the possible consequences of correcting someone’s errant ways. Will his actions produce a penitential response? Will it produce a defensive response? Will it produce a hardened conviction, a rationalization, that the error was actually a good? Will it produce an anger toward you that ruptures a relationship? 

“Sometimes the anger is spiced with impudence, as when the correction is not only met with impatience, but the error impudently defended. … While refusing to be angry with the archer who shot him, he is angry with his physician!” 

Then St. Bernard expresses what many in this predicament say.

“For this reason I should sometimes prefer to remain silent and pretend I had not seen some wrong being done, rather than to bring about so great a calamity by a reprimand. 

Perhaps you will tell me that my good deed will redound to my welfare; that I have freed my own soul and am innocent of the blood of that man in speaking and warning him to turn away from his evil path that he might live. But though you give me countless reasons, they will not comfort me because my eyes rest on a son who is dying. It is as if by that reprimand I sought to achieve my own salvation rather than his. … How much more should I weep and lament for the eternal death of a son of mine even if I am conscious of no failure on my part, even though I have warned him? You see then how great the evils from which a man delivers both himself and me when he responds with meekness on being corrected, submits respectfully, obeys modestly, and humbly admits his fault. To a man like this I shall in all things be a debtor, I shall minister to and serve him as a genuine lover of my Lord….”

CISTERCIAN FATHERS SERIES: NUMBER SEVEN - BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX - Song of Songs II