Commentaria in Deuteronomium
Tropologically St. Bernard: “Thou shalt love God,” he says, “with thy whole heart, that is, sweetly, lest thou be enticed; with thy whole soul, that is, prudently, lest thou be deceived; with thy whole strength, that is, bravely, lest thou be oppressed and turned away from the love of the Lord.”
Fix this precept of love in thy mind, therefore, and all hard things, all temptations, all labours thou shalt easily overcome, and shalt lead a life most sweet as well as most holy; for, as Peter of Ravenna says: “It is the soldiery of the tender to carry off victory over all vices by love alone.” “Who,” says Paul, “shall separate us from the charity of God? Tribulation? or distress? etc. For I am sure that neither death, nor life,” etc. God gave himself wholly to thee; give thyself wholly, nay render thyself, to God. O how happy is he who gives his whole heart and affection to God! who loves not delights, nor riches, nor anything created, but the one, immense and eternal good! “Too late have I loved thee, O beauty so ancient and so new, too late have I loved thee; let me know thee, my knower, let me know thee,” says St. Augustine, Confessions book X, chapter xxvii. O Lord, if men knew thee and thy goods, if they perceived how excellent and lovable thou art in all things, how they would love thee, and despise all else in comparison with thee; how sweet thou art to him who loves! how mighty to him who hopes! how delightful to him who enjoys! For thou art the ocean of all goods. O charity, ever burning and never extinguished, charity, my God, enkindle me; thou commandest that I love thee, give what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt. Grant, O Lord Jesus, that for love of thy love we may die to the love of the flesh and the world, who for love of our love didst deign to die. Would that with a thousand hearts we could love thee, with a thousand tongues praise thee!
Jesu, the heart’s rejoicing, Jesu, sweetness of hearts, Living fount, light of minds, honey, nectar, music of ears, surpassing every joy,
See St. Bernard, the sermon On Loving God, and the sermon On the Threefold Love, and the treatise On Loving God.
[…] thou shalt repeat, revolve, review these my precepts) TO THY CHILDREN.—Secondly, thou shalt sharpen, that is, sharply, that is, precisely, distinctly, clearly and openly set forth and explain them to thy children: as an obscure matter or question is sharpened by a teacher, when by him it is treated clearly part by part, set forth, sifted and discussed. It is a metaphor drawn from a sword, which, while it is sharpened, is driven again and again against the whetstone. It signifies, therefore, that they are to be often and continually turned over, explained and inculcated, to be known and carried out by the children of God.
The Hebrews relate that in Jerusalem formerly the study of the divine law was so great that they had above four hundred public schools and synagogues in which the law of God was taught.
AND THOU SHALT MEDITATE.—In Hebrew, thou shalt speak with them, as a servant speaks familiarly with his master, to ask his mind, which he may fulfil by his work.
SLEEPING,—in Hebrew, lying down, while thou goest to bed, or while thou liest: for one asleep cannot meditate. This is a holy and useful practice of pious Christians, that when they go to bed they pray and think something pious, and fall asleep in that thought, so that among other things they dash aside and escape the temptations and illusions of the devil and foul phantasms. The same they do when they wake in the night. Concerning which hear St. Bernard enjoining, in the book On the Solitary Life: “When about to go to sleep, always bring with thee into thy memory or thought something in which thou mayest quietly fall asleep, which it may even help thee to dream of, and which also, meeting thee as thou wakest, may restore thee to the state of yesterday’s intention. So the night shall be enlightened for thee as the day, and the night shall be thy illumination in thy delights. Thou shalt fall asleep quietly, rest in peace, wake easily, and rising be easy and nimble to return to that from which thou hadst not wholly departed. For sober sleep follows a sober meal and sense: but carnal sleep, and brutish, and, as it is called, Lethean, is to be abominated by a servant of God.”
Hence Rabbi Moses held that cocks, by their crowing at midnight, teach men to rise then to praise God; Pineda is witness, on Job xxxviii, 36. Where St. Gregory relates that cocks in the deeper hours of the night utter stronger and longer songs, but in the morning softer and shorter: as though by the former they rouse the sleepers, by the latter invite those already awake to pour out morning prayer to God; whom they themselves praise with a sweeter voice, and venerate in their own measure; whence the Church sings: “The cock rouses the sleepers, and rebukes the drowsy.”
Finally, hence St. Ephrem, tome III, Ascetic Sermons, and Blessed Dorotheus, sermon 11, and St. Bernard, in the book On the Solitary Life, earnestly commend to pious men, both evening and morning, a strict care, guard and examination of themselves; nay Pythagoras, says St. Jerome, Against Rufinus book III, chapter x, ordained that “care is to be taken most of all of two things, morning and evening, that is, of what we are about to do, and of what we have done.” Hence “night birds,” says St. Ambrose, Hexameron book V, chapter xxiv, “are wont to follow the setting of the day with tuneful song, lest they depart without the thanksgivings with which every creature praises its Creator.” The same, sermon on the prophet Malachias, at the end of tome II: “Birds,” he says, “give thanks for vile food; thou art fed with most precious feasts, and art ungrateful! Imitate, brother, the smallest birds, giving thanks to the Creator morning and evening. And if thou art more devout, imitate the nightingale, who because the day alone does not suffice for saying praises, runs through the spaces of the night with a wakeful song. Thou also, therefore, surpassing the day with thy praises, add the night courses to thy work, and console the sleepless industry of the labour undertaken with the series of the psalter.”
Hear Seneca, On Anger book III: “The mind,” he says, “is to be called daily to give account. Sextius did this, that when the day was ended, having betaken himself to nightly rest, he would ask his mind: What evil of thine hast thou healed today? what vice hast thou resisted? in what part art thou better? Anger will cease, or be more moderate, which knows that it must come daily before a judge. What then is fairer than this custom of searching out the whole day? what sleep follows after the examination of oneself? how deep, how tranquil and free!”
Hear Hugh of St. Victor, On the Soul book III: “Return to thy heart, and subtly examine thyself; consider whence thou comest, whither thou goest, how thou livest, what thou doest, what thou losest, how much thou daily advancest or fallest back, by what thoughts thou art more accused, by what affections thou art touched, by what devices of temptation thou art more sharply assailed by the malignant spirit: and when thou hast fully known the whole state of the inner and outer man, not only what thou art but also what thou oughtest to be, from the knowledge of thyself thou canst be raised to the contemplation of God.”
Hear St. Bernard: “It is the first duty of a man who aspires to wisdom to contemplate what he himself is, what is within him, what beneath, what above, what against, what before, what after. This consideration yields a fourfold fruit: the vileness of oneself, charity to one’s neighbour, contempt of the world, love of God.”
Secondly, Lyranus and Abulensis expound thus, as if to say: By day so continually and effectually meditate these my precepts that the same may recur to thee in sleep in dreams: for, as Aristotle says, Ethics, “the phantasms in the dreams of the studious are better,” that is, of him who studies virtue. So St. Xavier. Such were formerly also those monks who, because they slept little and almost kept vigil in the praises of God, were called Acoemetæ, as if you should say, Not sleeping; such was Isidore, of whom Palladius says in the Lausiac History that he never slept on purpose, but sometimes, overcome by sleep at work or at eating, he would nod, so that the morsel which he had put into his mouth fell out of it; asked the cause, he answered: “If ever thou shalt persuade the angels to sleep, then thou shalt persuade the student of virtue also.” For such men, from long and assiduous meditation on God and divine things, dreamed of the same.
Hence Plutarch, in the book How a Man May Perceive his Progress in Virtue, gives this from Zeno: he says one can detect whether anyone has advanced in the study of virtue. For if in dreams he is taken with no pleasure toward baseness, nor gapes after any grave crime to defile himself, and sees absolutely nothing joined with vice and foulness, it is consistent that all things are set in safety. For as yoked horses trained to run straight do not leave the road even when the driver sleeps, so the tamed affections of the brute part do not easily kick back even in dreams.