In Episode 32 of our Week 4 Lenten journey with St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s On Loving God, we reflect on the furthest reach of love: when love is so healed and rightly ordered in God that a person can receive even his own life as gift. St. Bernard is careful here. He is not describing a return to self-interest, but a self restored by grace and rightly loved in God.

In conversation with the Holy Rule of St. Benedict, this episode explores how humility, obedience, stability and prayer loosen the grip of self-will and free the soul from anxious self-protection. The false self begins to fade, not so the person disappears, but so the whole person can be more deeply healed and ordered toward God. Bernard shows that when love is purified, the self is no longer grasped or defended, but received.

This episode offers a beautiful and careful vision of spiritual maturity. The soul does not become less human, but more deeply restored in God. Love is no longer divided between God and self in the old way. It comes to rest. This kind of union is not something we achieve by effort, but a gift of grace that can quietly grow in a life marked by prayer, humility, repentance and perseverance.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God, Chapter 15 §§30-40

“In the fourth degree, man loves himself,
but for God’s sake.
This happens when he so clings to God
that he becomes one spirit with Him,
and can say with the Apostle:
‘He who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him.’”

“In quarto gradu diligit homo se ipsum propter Deum. Quod fit cum ita inhaeret Deo, ut unus spiritus fiat cum eo, et dicat cum Apostolo: Qui adhaeret Domino, unus spiritus est.”

“He who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.”

1. Do I notice ways that I still cling to myself anxiously rather than receiving my life as gift from God?

2. How does St. Bernard help me understand the difference between self-interest and a self rightly loved in God?

3. In what areas of my life is God inviting me to let go of fear, resentment or self-assertion?

4. How are humility, obedience, stability, and prayer helping to loosen the grip of self-will in me?

5. Do I find it difficult to believe that God desires not only to save me, but to heal and rightly order my whole life in Him?

6. What might it look like for me to receive myself more peacefully as one who belongs to God?

7. How does this teaching invite me to greater trust in the hidden work of grace?

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