"Sad is my soul, and not to be consoled, until I may return. For what consolation save you in the Lord have I in an evil time and in the place of my pilgrimage? Wherever I go, your sweet recollection does not leave me; but the sweeter the memory the more vexing is the absence. Alas! my wandering not only is prolonged but aggravated. Hard enough is exile from the Lord, which is common to us all while we are pilgrims in the body. But I endure a special exile also, compelled to live away from you.
"For a third time my bowels are torn from me.[1] Those little children are weaned before the time; the very ones whom I begot through the Gospel I may not educate. I am forced to abandon my own, and care for the affairs of others; and it is not easy to say whether to be dragged from the former, or to be involved in the latter is harder to bear. Thus, O good Jesus, my whole life is spent in grief and my years in groaning! It is good for me, O Lord, to die, rather than to live and not among my brothers, my own household, my own dearest ones."[2]
Bernard had a younger brother, Gerard, whom he deeply loved. In 1138 he died while still young, and having recently returned with Bernard from Italy. Bernard, dry-eyed, read the burial-service over his body; so says his biographer wondering, for the saint was not wont to bury even strangers without tears.[3] No other eyes were dry at that funeral. Afterwards he preached a sermon;[4] it began with restraint, then became a long cry of grief.
The saint took the text from Canticles where he had left off in his previous sermon—"I am black, but comely, as the tents of Kedar." He proceeded to expound its meaning: the tents are our bodies, in which we pilgrims dwell and carry on our war. Then he spoke of other portions of the text—and suddenly deferred the whole subject till his next sermon: Grief ordains an end, "and the calamity which I suffer."
"For why dissemble, or conceal the fire which is scorching my sad breast? What have I to do with this Song, I who am in bitterness? The power of grief turns my intent, and the anger of the Lord has parched my spirit. I did violence to my soul and dissembled till now, lest sorrow should seem to conquer faith.
