The image would have lain stained and deformed, had not the woman of the Gospel lit her lamp — had not Wisdom appeared in the flesh, in other words — swept the house — of the vices — searched carefully for her lost coin — her image — which, its original luster gone, coated over with the skin of transgression, lay buried as it were in the dust; having found it, had she not wiped it clean and taken it away from the ‘region of unlikeness;’ then, refashioned in its erstwhile beauty made it like the saints in glory; were she not, indeed, some day to make it quite conformable to herself.
Who was better suited to this task than the Son of God? That very Form came, therefore, to which free choice was to be conformed, because in order that it might regain its original form, it had to be reformed from that out of which it had been formed.
Bernard of Clairvaux
