Saint Bernard of Clairvaux

My spiritual director who died in June on the feast day of Sts Peter and Paul said that Saint Bernard of Clairvaux was the "air we breath" at Holy Cross Abbey, Berryville. I had asked him for a good place to begin reading St. Bernard. He sent me a voluminous letter with multiple photocopies, suggestions, one with the still intriguing title of The Family That Overtook Christ: the amazing story of the family of Bernard of Clairvaux.

We remember St. Bernard today as founder of a host of monasteries, the counselor to pontiffs, the figure whom Dante deemed worthy to escort his literary self into Paradise.

St. Bernard, son of knights, pray for us.

Sanctity, Pure Love, and St Bernard

Fr Dwight Longenecker analyzes the age-old version of the two-pronged attack on Mother Church. He tells us, rightly, that each one of us is to engage in the battle using the only remedy: sanctity.

Below is a key understanding of the mysticism of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the Doctor Mellifluus, on that remedy of sanctify as explicated by Thomas Merton:

False contemplation can be attained by the prudence of the flesh, but true mysticism is a gift that is granted only to those who are extremely little and poor in their own eyes, and who have learned, as Bernard himself did, to live not for themselves but for others. Such things are only learned supernaturally from the Holy Spirit ...

First ... every man should aspire to perfect union with God, at least in heaven. The fact that we are made in God's image should lead us to do this without any fear. The perfection of love, indeed, demands that we cast out all fear and seek the mercy of God with perfect confidence ...

...(S)ince God Himself is love, nothing can give Him greater honor than our love. Consequently nothing could be more meritorious than this pure love by which we abandon all and live for God alone. What does love merit? More love. For charity is at once the merit and the reward ...

Turning to our own world, the Holy Father (Pius XII) laments the fact this charity has grown cold. The love of God is not known. The doctrine of this divine union has been forgotten by those who lose themselves in the cares and business of increasingly active lives. They have forgotten the meaning of contemplation and of that charity which is fed not by human enthusiasm and the inspirations of natural ambition but by God Himself in prayer and sacrifice.