I was totally unprepared for the spiritual kindling of heart and the engagement of mind that preparation for this Sunday class brought me. Bernard of Clairvaux, I knew, spoke eloquently of love and grace but (now I know) also of the opportunities to experience the divine. I hope you find these notes inspire you to think, pray and love more.  The notes are below the hymn.

One of his hymns… Jesus, the very thought of thee – Mormon Tabernacle Youth Choir
Jesus, the very thought of Thee
With sweetness fills the breast;
But sweeter far Thy face to see,
And in Thy presence rest.
Nor voice can sing, nor heart can frame,
Nor can the memory find
A sweeter sound than Thy blest Name,
O Savior of mankind!
O hope of every contrite heart,
O joy of all the meek,
To those who fall, how kind Thou art!
How good to those who seek!
Jesus, our only joy be Thou,
As Thou our prize will be;
Jesus be Thou our glory now,
And through eternity.

Trinity Church
Newport RI 02840

LENT 2016 – Sunday March 6th 2016
“Walking with Giants… spiritual lives, spiritual teachers”

Bernard of Clairvaux – The Mellifluous Minister of Divine Experience

Introduction

Born in 1090 into the minor nobility of Burgundy, France, Bernard enjoyed a good education and position of privilege. At the age of twenty-two he abandoned the life of comfort to join the newly founded Cistercian Order. Always a charismatic figure followed by others, Bernard brought thirty men with him to Cîteaux—an uncle, four brothers and some twenty-five young nobles. Just three years later Bernard was asked to found a new monastery at Clairvaux, where he remained as abbot until his death in 1153.

Bernard traveled the countryside of Europe, preaching the gospel. Through his ministry, throngs of knights renounced their destinies of glory, warfare and carnal living in order to make a life-transforming commitment to Christ. Pursuing the Lord through the standard means in the day, these new believers took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, joining the Cistercian Order, where they could be discipled and learn God’s Word.
Over the next thirty years, Bernard founded sixty-eight new Cistercian communities that functioned much like Christian colleges in our day—teaching Scripture and molding Christ-like character. Supervising these communities, as well as their daughter houses, Bernard eventually oversaw 164 centers. He personally mentored many young believers and trained new leaders for these monastic houses. In his vast correspondence, he corrected bishops, popes and kings, calling the powerful in the church and state alike to genuine faith and godly leadership.
Always zealous for the Lord, Bernard did not shy away from controversy. In vigorous debate he confronted compromise in the church, especially the growing rationalism of his day that he saw in the universities. He also summoned the nobility of Europe to unite against the military threat of Islam. Above all, Bernard tirelessly preached the gospel to his generation.
In 1121 he gave a stricken dumb man speech while singing in mass.
He also healed sick people by simply making the sign of the over them.
Bernard often had poor health.
He is the patron saint of candle makers, beekeepers, bees, Queens College Cambridge, wax-melters, and wax refiners.

Quotations about Bernard

It is difficult now to look back across the centuries and appreciate the tremendous impact of his personality on all who knew him. The fire of his eloquence has been quenched in the written words that survive. As a theologian and a controversialist he now appears rigid and a little crude and unkind. But from the day in 1115 when, at the age of twenty-five, he was appointed Abbot of Clairvaux, till his death nearly forty years later he was the dominant influence in the religious and political life of western Europe. Steven Runciman, in The History of the Crusades ([1951-4] 1971) vol. 2, p. 252.
Bernard, without dispute the holiest man of the twelfth century, offered no excuse or palliation for his harangue to the faithful. “Let them kill the enemy or die. To submit to die for Christ, or to cause one of His enemies to die, is naught but glory.” James Meeker Ludlow, James Meeker Ludlow, The Age of the Crusades. Christian Literature Co. (1896) p. 23
Quotations from Bernard
‘hell is full of good wishes and desires’
‘Vines and trees will teach you that which you will never learn from masters’
To learn in order to know is scandalous curiosity. (Translation from Etienne Gilson, The Mystical Theology of St. Bernard)
Then you have some people who wish to know for the sake of knowing, and that is scandalous curiosity. (Translation from J. Van Herwaarden, Between Saint James and Erasmus: Studies in Late-Medieval Religious Life)

I have freed my soul.
Letter to Abbot Suger, Epistles no. 371 (c. 1147)

I would count him blessed and holy to whom such rapture has been vouchsafed in this mortal life, for even an instant to lose thyself, as if thou wert emptied and lost and swallowed up in God, is no human love; it is celestial.
To reach this state is to become deified. As a drop of water poured into wine loses itself, and takes the color and savor of wine; or as a bar of iron, heated red-hot, becomes like fire itself, forgetting its own nature; or as the air, radiant with sun-beams, seems not so much to be illuminated as to be light itself; so in the saints all human affections melt away by some unspeakable transmutation into the will of God. For how could God be all in all, if anything merely human remained in man? The substance will endure, but in another beauty, a higher power, a greater glory. When will that be? Who will see, who possess it? ‘When shall I come to appear before the presence of God?’ (Ps. 42.2). ‘My heart hath talked of Thee, Seek ye My face: Thy face, Lord, will I seek’ (Ps. 27.8). Lord, thinkest Thou that I, even I shall see Thy holy temple?
From, On Loving of God, Paul Halsall trans., Ch. 10

Qui me amat, amat et canem meam.
Who loves me, loves my dog.
In Festo Sancti Michaelis, Sermo 1, sect. 3; translation from Richard Chevenix Trench, Archbishop of Dublin On the Lessons in Proverbs ([1853] 1856) p. 148

“My burden is light,” said the blessed Redeemer, a light burden indeed, which carries him that bears it. I have looked through all nature for a resemblance of this, and seem to find a shadow of it in the wings of a bird, which are indeed borne by the creature, and yet support her flight towards heaven.
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 88

It’s not as if grace did one half of the work and free choice the other; each does the whole work, in its own peculiar contribution. Grace does the whole work, and so does free choice – with this one qualification: That whereas the whole is done in free choice, so is the whole done of grace.
On grace & free choice, chap 14.(de Gratia Et Libero Arbitrio), Daniel O’Donovan, trans., Introduction, Bernard McGinn, Cistercian Publications, 1988, ISBN 0879070706 ISBN 9780879070700 p. 37. (Note: Fr. Harry J. McSorley, C.S.P. Commenting on this teaching of Bernard, states: “We are indebted to Bernard of Clairvaux … for the clarification that grace and free will are not related as partial causes – which would be a false synergism – but as total causes of the act of justification, each on its own proper plane. Bernard maintains the Catholic-Augustinian tradition by insisting that man’s natural freedom (liberum arbitrium) remains even after the fall. It is a wretched, but nonetheless integral free will. This natural freedom of the will, possessed by the just and sinners alike, enables us to will, but not to will what is good. It is grace alone that gives us good will.” Luther, Right or Wrong, (1969), Newman Press / Augsburg Publishing House, p. 133

Experiencing the Divine

Intimacy with Jesus
Conversion, for Bernard, meant not simply renouncing the world—it ushered believers into a deeply personal friendship with Jesus. This relational emphasis made Bernard’s message revolutionary in the Middle Ages. While scholastic theologians were debating abstract theology, Bernard insisted on practical application of the Bible in each believer’s life. Although an eloquent author in Latin and a gifted scholar in his own right, Bernard brought Scripture down to earth on an individual level for each believer and his or her relationship with God.
Rather than using terminology of “personal relationship” with the Lord, as we might today, Bernard portrayed our relationship in terms of bride and bridegroom. Employing the imagery of marriage, Scripture presents Christ as the heavenly Bridegroom and the church as his bride (Eph 5:25-33), being prepared for the great wedding feast (Matt 25:1-13; Rev 19:7-9 and 21:1-27).
In his writings, and especially in his sermons on the Song of Songs, Bernard personalized this reality and welcomed each believing soul to see itself as Christ’s bride and receive the Lord’s tender touch. [1] Sometimes referred to as bridal spirituality, this message invited men and women alike to experience the closest possible relationship with their Savior. The final goal of Bernard’s whole ministry was to bring hungry souls into true intimacy with Jesus.

Experience of God (Fr. Paul Murray, OP)
What is it like, in practice, for a human being really to experience God in this life? Is an experience of this kind possible? And, if so, are there signs by which we can tell if the experience is genuine or false? And, when it is genuine, can it be described? And is it wise, in any case, to try to communicate something of this experience to others with whom we’re speaking about God or to whom we’re preaching? Is such experience not something that is attained only by a few rare contemplatives in this life? And is the task of the preacher, then, simply to proclaim certain truths about God — the central dogmas — but, for the rest, never to attempt to speak out of any kind of personal faith-experience?
In this context it is interesting to note a statement made by Pope John Paul II in Donum et Mysterium: “The minister of the Word”, he wrote, “must possess and pass on that knowledge of God which is not a mere deposit of doctrinal truths but a personal and living experience of the Mystery”.
Of all the great Doctors of the Church, Bernard of Clairvaux, the 12th century mystic and reformer, is probably the one who uses the term “experience” most often, and uses it to the greatest effect. Speaking, for example, of what happens when an individual believer has received, in profound depth, the grace of the Spirit, and has become “wholly aflame with divine love”, Bernard states that “then God is indeed experienced”. But Bernard goes on at once to say that, even here, God is not experienced “as he truly is” (i.e. not in his inmost being), “a thing impossible for any creature”.
What, in effect, Bernard is proposing to do here is to preach the Word of God by relating to his brethren something of his own individual experience of the Word. That experience carries with it a certain authority, of course, but not one that can be compared, obviously, with the authority of the Word in scripture.
“Although he has come to me, I have never been conscious of the moment of his coming. I perceived his presence, I remembered afterwards that he had been with me; sometimes I had a presentiment that he would come, but I was never conscious of his coming or of his going. And where he comes from when he visits my soul, and where he goes, and by what means he enters and goes out, I admit that I do not know even now… I have ascended to the highest in me, and look! the Word is towering above that. In my curiosity I have descended to explore my lowest depths, yet I found him even deeper”.
“[A]s soon as he enters in, he awakens my slumbering soul; he stirs and soothes and pierces my heart, for before it was hard as stone, and diseased. So he has begun to pluck out and destroy, to build up and to plant, to water dry places and illuminate dark ones, to open what was closed and to warm what was cold; to make the crooked straight and the rough places smooth, so that my soul may bless the Lord, and all that is within me may praise his holy name”.
For Bernard, part of the experience of God — a major part — is, paradoxically, the experience of his “absence”. Again and again, both in life and in prayer, we are — or so it seems — left completely on our own, bereft of the sense of God. Reflecting on this fact, Bernard quotes the words of Jesus in John’s Gospel, words intended of course to console us: “A little while and you shall not see me, and again a little while and you shall see me” (Jn 16:16). But Bernard is not consoled. With real exasperation he exclaims: “Oh little while, little while! How long a little while! Dear Lord, you say it is for a little while that we do not see you. The word of my Lord may not be doubted, but it is a long while, far too long”. As soon as Bernard loses sight of his divine Lord, he begins to search for him again in prayer. And, what is more, he begins to speak of this search for God in a number of his sermons. The effect is truly remarkable, for by speaking of God’s “absence” in this way, by revealing to his readers, and to his brethren, something of his own spiritual anguish, the reality of God — the presence of God — is made more palpably real, perhaps, than ever before.
In Conclusion…
God, in St Bernard’s opinion, wants us to “breathe freely”, and to be confident in the knowledge that, when we turn to him in prayer, no matter how great our sins appear, his kindness is even greater. “Sorrow for sin is indeed necessary”, we are told, “but it should not be an endless preoccupation”.
Truth, then, is fundamental to prayer, in St Bernard’s understanding, but grace is essential. The idea or the hypothesis that, at some stage, the Word might come to Bernard, only “as a judge”, but not as a friend, not as “a bridegroom”, that he might come as truth, therefore, but not as grace, prompts Bernard to exclaim: “God forbid that this may ever happen!”. Bernard, as a preacher, is well aware that “Truth is bitter unless seasoned with grace”. So, in the concluding words of Sermon 74, he prays that the Word of God would not approach merely “with the stern gaze of truth”, but would enter, rather, “as one who brings peace, joy, and gladness”.

SONG OF SONGS – Bernard’s Sermons.
Various Meanings of the Kiss
#2 During my frequent ponderings on the burning desire with which the patriarchs longed for the incarnation of Christ, I am stung with sorrow and shame. Even now I can scarcely restrain my tears, so filled with shame am I by the lukewarmness, the frigid unconcern of these miserable times. For which of us does the consummation of that event fill with as much joy as the mere promise of it inflamed the desires of the holy men of pre-Christian times? …
The Kiss of the Lord’s Feet, Hands and Mouth
#3 Today the text we are to study is the book of our own experience. You must therefore turn your attention inwards, each one must take note of his own particular awareness of the things I am about to discuss. I am attempting to discover if any of you has been privileged to say from his heart: “Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth.” Those to whom it is given to utter these words sincerely are comparatively few, but any one who has received this mystical kiss from the mouth of Christ at least once, seeks again that intimate experience, and eagerly looks for its frequent renewal. …
The Kiss of the Lord’s Feet, Hands and Mouth (continued)
#4 Yesterday our talk dealt with three stages of the soul’s progress under the figure of the three kisses. You still remember this, I hope, for today I intend to continue that same discussion, according as God in his goodness may provide for one so needy. We said, as you remember, that these kisses were given to the feet, the hand and the mouth, in that order. The first is the sign of a genuine conversion of life, the second is accorded to those making progress, the third is the experience of only a few of the more perfect. The book of Scripture that we have undertaken to expound begins with this last kiss, but I have added the other two in the hope that you will attain a better understanding of the last. ….

Profiles in Faith
Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)
A Mind and Heart for God – James M. Houston

On Bernard – C.S. Lewis Institute

Another of Bernard’s hymns O Sacred Head, sore wounded