711 the third word I have no doubt that everyone wants to know why the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, predicted in various forms by the wisest King57 guided by the Holy Spirit, was also shown to him in the form of the moon. Upon setting his eyes on her, the king asked, “Who is this that looks forth like the dawn, fair as the moon, bright as the sun[?]” (Cant 6:10). We shall understand this mystery if we remember that God, when creating the moon, imposed upon it the duty “to rule the night” [Gen 1:16], as He had fixed it in the heavenly firmament. What do you think the word “night” symbolizes? [It signifies] sinners. Paul, formerly Saul, confessed this frankly, writing to the Ephesians in this manner: “For once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord” (Eph 5:8). Augustine, who later became an eminent saint, was not ashamed to confess before God that he was such [darkness] as he wrote: “Before the eyes of my vanity, there were great and dark clouds, such that I was not able to see the Sun of Justice and the light of Truth. I was enveloped in darkness, as a son of darkness: I loved my darkness, because I did not know the light. I was blind, and I loved blindness, and I walked toward darkness through darkness” (Soliloquia, Ch. 38). Finally, who will doubt that in the Sacred Scriptures the night is frequently compared to sinners, if he contemplates at least one ray of the Sun of Clairvaux58 who illumines the Sacred Page? Saint Bernard says, “The night is the treachery of the Jews. The night is the ignorance of the Pagans. The night is the heretical perversity; likewise, even now the night is the carnal and animal manner of the life of Catholics. And is it not night then, when what is from the Spirit of God is not received?”59 “He who says he is in the light and hates his brother is in the darkness still. He who loves his brother abides in the light, and in it there is no cause for stumbling. But he who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know 57 St. Stanislaus is here referring to Solomon. 58 This refers to St. Bernard of Clairvaux. 59 The source of this text was not able to be found in the Opera Omnia of St. Bernard.
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