Medievalish 4.4

Palm Sunday with St. Bernard

Dear friend,

Palm Sunday is tomorrow. I decided to read some sermons from St. Bernard of Clairvaux for the occasion. They did not disappoint.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux, for those folks who might not have your medieval monastic theologians all at hand for recollection, was one of the greatest and most influential thinkers of the Middle Ages. As I summed him up in an earlier Medievalish:

If you start to read medieval literature, you cannot escape Bernard. He’s everywhere, his words popping up in literature for nuns, in The Canterbury Tales, and as himself in the Divine Comedy (in Paradiso, naturally). He was born around 1090 to Burgundian nobility. When he entered the brand-new Cistercian Order, a reformed Benedictine order, thirty young Burgundian noblemen came along for the ride and professed vows alongside him. He was the third of seven children, and practically his entire family, even his widowed father, took monastic vows in his powerful wake. You can almost tangibly feel the force of his fire and brilliance as you read his writings, which circulated widely after he founded the new Cistercian abbey of Clairvaux and became its first abbot.

Bernard constantly wrote letters, advised the rulers of Europe, especially the King of France, vigorously intervened in the papal schism of 1130, and ferociously feuded with other giant personalities of the twelfth-century, Peter Abelard and Eleanor of Aquitaine. He also, unfortunately, bent his great gifts to more unsavory medieval projects: spearheading the disastrous Second Crusade, and avidly persecuting heretics to their deaths in Southern France.

So—to quote Emily Wilson’s controversial translation of the first line of the Odyssey (which I liked!), “Tell me about a complicated man.” St. Bernard of Clairvaux was brilliant and on fire with the love of God, and also confined, as we all are, to his own time and place and blinkered sense of righteousness.

The Raising of Lazarus and the Entry into Jerusalem, ca. 1330, from Muri Abbey, now at Muri-Gries monastery, South Tyrol

Many churches today still do a Palm Sunday procession into the church. In Bernard’s day, this was true as well.¹ Bernard spends time thinking about this procession, where it is going, and what it means in his first Palm Sunday sermon. But it is his second that truly caught my attention. In this sermon, he considers the four “types” in the procession on the original Palm Sunday as well as the potent liturgical combination of the procession with the gospel account of the passion. Why present the passion tomorrow, when it is only the procession that took place within the history of the gospels on Palm Sunday?

Perfectly rightly was the passion added to the procession so that we may learn to trust in none of the happiness of this world, being aware that the end of joy is grief. (Proverbs 14:13). …We see that what happens to people in the world is sometimes pleasant, sometimes unpleasant, and to spiritually minded people things are not always sad, not always happy, but it is evening and morning, one day … Truly for as long as this present age abides, it ebbs and flows.²

I think most of us need this call-out of that curiously unyielding expectation that uncomplicated happiness, fun, admiration, all those things should be normative rather than part of the larger ebbing and flowing, triumphs and failures, joys and griefs of life in time. Christ shows humility and patience in his moment of triumph, rather than arrogance or vanity. Bernard even shows a bit of humor: “he was lowly, seated on the back of an ass, with the apostles’ garments on it—which I think were not the best in the area.”³ Cue small chuckle from Bernard’s Cistercian brethren, themselves clad in rough robes.

Bernard divides the folks in the procession on Palm Sunday into four categories, in that classic medieval way of reading the Bible allegorically. Besides the literal meaning of Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem, the folks in the crowd offer examples of modes of orientation towards Jesus: “Now that I come to the procession, I seem to see four groups within it; perhaps they can all be found in our procession today,” muses Bernard.⁴ These groups overlap, many of us will find ourselves in multiple categories or shifting in different times of our lives.

The first go ahead and prepare the way as they walk ahead of Christ on the donkey: “They are the ones who prepare a way into your heart for the Lord, who guide you and direct your steps in the way of peace.”⁵ Leaders and parents and teachers of hearts, may find yourselves making those joyful, zealous steps of anticipation. These are the “wise and good,” for wisdom by itself without goodness does not mean much.

Then there are those following Jesus, behind him on the road to Jerusalem. “[T]hese are the ones who, knowing their own lack of wisdom, follow in a spirit of devotion and keep always in the footsteps of those who have gone before.” I think we are all called to reorient ourselves behind the donkey, remembering that “lack of wisdom,” recollecting our intense inability to think outside our own expectations and desires. Sometimes we will be called only to follow in overflowing, joyous humility, not knowing where we are going but happy to be in the great procession. These are the “simple and good.” Simple, but not foolish, as Bernard points out.

There are also those in the best position, says Bernard, the disciples clinging to the side of Christ, able to see his face at times when he turns toward them. Bernard identifies these with those who have chosen the monastic, contemplative life. This is where a divide between medieval and modern may be most clear: Bernard would disqualify the vast majority of us from this category. I believe there are a few readers subscribed to Medievalish under monastic vows, but not many!

Later in the Middle Ages, a movement began which believed lay people, but in unusual circumstances, could also attain this disciplined contemplative life outside of the monastery or hermitage, but Bernard did not hold this view. Is there a way to understand this position in our own context if we do share those exact understandings of the monastic and contemplative life versus the active life in the world? I think the invitation to become Christ’s friend, seated next to him, occasionally seeing his face, remains that invitation to disciplined, sustained, contemplative prayer. In order to be close friends with someone, you must spend sustained time with them, focus attention on them. This choice is no less true regarding friendship with Christ.

And then, at last, a group in which I often find myself: the initially slightly offensive category, “the beast upon which [Christ] sits.”⁶ This category belongs to those who are “hard of heart,” more of “a bother than an honor.” They do not know “how to sing, but make a loud roar.” They are not all that devoted to Jesus, yet they continue ploddingly onward. Bernard continues, “If some are here for whom the discipline is heavy and all things burdensome, who must often be prodded and urged forward, I beg them to change from beasts into human beings.”⁷ Alas, yes, I am reluctant and recalcitrant in nearly all the ways of following Jesus, of carrying him in my body.

Yet another glimmer of grace and humor from Bernard, who knew that many in his monastic audience would feel like me: “But do you want me to console our beast a little?”

He is not among those who can say, Your statutes have been my songs in the place of my pilgrimage. (Ps. 118:54) But still, he is the one who is nearer the Lord than any other.⁸

Bernard interprets this beast as those who have severe flaws of character, as those who have have trouble loving, or those who are spiritually sick. Basically, this is the group of people unable to rejoice and sing like those in the Palm Sunday procession who go before and behind and beside. But the Lord is closest to the brokenhearted, he loves the little ones, he draws like a mother nearer to her sick child, says Bernard. If all you can do is roar, you are still welcome in the procession—and the Lord himself is closest of all to you in his love for the wounded.

Even while Bernard categorizes and ranks the spiritual life, that medieval impulse that I always find deeply uncomfortable though also at times helpfully challenging, the categories themselves turn upside down.

It is impossible to forget, with the liturgical relationship between the procession and the passion, that all will fall and betray their Lord in the events of Holy Week, save the broken women at the foot of the cross. Those going ahead and behind will shout crucify him; those next to him will hide in fear. Joys and griefs, triumphs and sorrows. Palm Sunday goes to the Cross and then to Resurrection and Ascension. But the Road in between traverses the wild communion of the Last Supper, the agony in the Garden, the Scourging and Crucifixion, Death and Hell itself. But none of these things are the end: the Communion of Saints and forgiveness of sins and that Life of the world to come are those ends.

Meanwhile, we find ourselves on the road, as close and trusted friends, as eager teachers and pathfinders, as humble, rather dusty followers, even as asses.

What I’ve been up to this month:

• Planning my research trip to England at the end of this month. All the medieval churches!!!!!! No amount of exclamation points can adequately convey my enthusiasm. But truly, I would appreciate your prayers as I expand and enrich my understanding of medieval Christianity on this trip.

• The Lent series on Old Books with Grace on T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets has been a real treat.

  Andy Patton
  joined me for the most recent episode, on “The Dry Salvages.” Listen wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple and Spotify.

• Plough Quarterly published an essay of mine on the deep gift of rereading. They also translated an essay of mine from the last issue on Sister Penelope Lawson into German—always a trip to see your writing in a different language! You can also read the original English version, if you missed it.

What I’ve been reading this month:

• Nonfiction: Ann K. Warren, Anchorites and their Patrons in Medieval England (what a scholarly feat of a book… I’m learning so much!)

• Fiction: Rereading Elizabeth Goudge’s The White Witch.

• Medieval/Medieval-adjacent: Ancrene Wisse, still. Slow going!

• Article: At The Atlantic, David Brooks’ indictment of the power-oriented celebratory cruelty of this administration, deeply antithetical to the spirit of the gospel, is right on target. For something pleasanter, more medieval scribes were women than previously thought!

A Prayer from the Past

Nothing seems more fitting than Bernard’s own words of his closing blessing in the second sermon of Palm Sunday:

May he in his great loving-kindness grant us so to persevere in his procession while we are alive that in that great procession, in which he is to be received by the Father with all those who belong to him, and will hand over the kingdom to his Father, we may be worthy to enter the holy city with him who lives and reigns world without end.⁹

Amen!

Peace for your April,

Grace

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1. This tradition dates all the way back to the fourth century!

2. Bernard of Clairvaux, “Palm Sunday: Sermon Two,” Sermons for Lent and the Easter Season (trans. Irene Edmonds), (Liturgical Press for Cistercian Publications, 2013), 103-4.

3. Ibid., 105.

4. Ibid., 106.

5. Ibid.

6. I want so badly to make a joke here about God’s ass, but as a faithful donkey, I confine my temptation to the footnotes.

7. All quotes in this paragraph from ibid., 106-7.

8. Ibid., 107.

9. ibid., 108.