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| Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum. JJ Tissot. Brooklyn Museum. |
*SERMONS OF ST. BERNARD ON ADVENT & CHRISTMAS
Compiled and translated at St. Mary s Convent. R. & T. WASHBOURNE, LTD., LONDON MANCHESTER, GLASGOW, NEW YORK, CINCINNATI, CHICAGO 1909
Totus tuus ego sum et omnia mea tua sunt. Tecum tutus semper sum.
Ad Jesum per Mariam.
“Behold the handmaid of the Lord, may it be done unto me according to thy word”
Mary speaks. “Behold the handmaid of the Lord, may it be done unto me according to thy word.”
Humility is ever the close companion of Divine grace, for “God resisteth the proud, and giveth
grace to the humble.”[1] She answers humbly, therefore, that the throne of grace may be prepared. “Behold the handmaid of the Lord.” She is the chosen Mother of God, and she calls herself His handmaid. Truly, it is no small sign of humility to preserve even the remembrance of the virtue in presence of so great glory. It is no great perfection to be humble when we are despised; but it is a great and rare virtue to preserve humility in the midst of honours.
If, deceived by my apparent virtue, the Church has raised me, an insignificant man, to some small dignity, God permitting it, either because of my own sins, or those of my subjects, do I not immediately, forgetting my past deficiencies, imagine myself to be that which men, who see not the
heart, have reputed me to be? I hearken to fame, and attend not to conscience. I forget that honour is rendered to virtue, and take the virtue for granted because of the honour, and so esteem myself the
more holy when I find myself in an exalted position.
Let us listen to the words of her who, though chosen to be the Mother of God, yet laid not aside her humility. “Behold,” she says, “the handmaid of the Lord, may it be done unto me according to thy word.” Fiat mihi (Be it done to me). Fiat is a mark of desire, not of doubt. In saying, “Be it done unto me according to thy word,” she expresses the disposition of one who longs to see the effect, not of one who doubts its possibility. Fiat may also be understood as a word of petition, for no one prays unless he believes, and hopes to obtain. God wishes to be asked for what He has promised, and perhaps promises many things which He had predetermined to bestow, in order that the promise may arouse our devotion, and that what He intends to give gratis we may merit by devout prayer.
Thus, our gracious God, Who desires the salvation of all, as it were, extorts meritorious works
from us, and while He strengthens our will by His grace, He wishes that what He gives freely we shall labour to obtain. This the prudent Virgin understood when to the prevenient grace of a gratuitous promise she joined the merit of her own prayer, saying: “Be it done unto me according to thy word.” Be it done unto me concerning the Divine Word according to Thy word.
May the Word which was in the beginning with God be made flesh of my flesh according to Thy word. May He, I entreat, be made to me, not a spoken word, to pass unheeded, but a word conceived—that is, clothed in flesh—which may remain. May He be to me not only audible to my ears, but visible to my eyes, felt by my hands, borne in my arms. Let Him be to me not a mute and written word traced with dumb signs on lifeless parchments, but an Incarnate, living Word vividly impressed in human form in my chaste womb by the operation of the Holy Ghost. Be it done unto me as it has never hitherto been done to mortal, and never shall be done to any after my time.
“God diversely and in many ways spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets”[2]—to some in the hearing of the ears, while to others the word of the Lord was made known in signs and figures. Now in this solemn hour I pray that in my own being it may be done unto me according to Thy word. Be it done unto me—not preached to me in the feeble strains of human eloquence, not shown forth to me in the figures of earthly rhetoric, not painted in the poetic dreams of a fervid imagination, but breathed upon me in silence, in person Incarnate, in a human form veritably reposing within me. In His own nature the Word needed not change, was incapable of change. Yet now graciously in me “may it be done according to thy word.” Be it done universally for all mankind, but most especially for me—“Be it done unto me according to thy word.”
[1] [5] In like manner, ye young men, be subject to the ancients. And do you all insinuate humility one to another, for God resisteth the proud, but to the humble he giveth grace.
Similiter adolescentes subditi estote senioribus. Omnes autem invicem humilitatem insinuate, quia Deus superbis resistit, humilibus autem dat gratiam. [1 Peter 5]
[2] [1] God, who, at sundry times and in divers manners, spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all,
Multifariam, multisque modis olim Deus loquens patribus in prophetis :
[2] In these days hath spoken to us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the world.
novissime, diebus istis locutus est nobis in Filio, quem constituit haeredem universorum, per quem fecit et saecula : [Romans 1]
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