Bernard of Clairvaux: Lover of God and Lover of Jesus
Uncover the life and influence of Bernard of Clairvaux, the last great interpreter of the Early Fathers, who transformed monasticism, made significant
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Dr. James Houston

Identity

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Bernard of Clairvaux—Lover of God and Lover of Jesus

Lesson Transcript

We now come as the seventh lecture to Bernard of Clairvaux, that I’m describing as lover of God, as lover of Jesus. I have to confess he’s my favourite saint.

The Dark Ages, as we already referred to, were once thought to be the great gulf between the 5th and the 12th centuries, now more well-known as Late Antiquity. And it’s this period that is bridged by Bernard of Clairvaux. For that reason, he was the last great interpreter of the Early Fathers, such as Origen and Augustine and Gregory the Great. Now monasticism, from being a purely centripetal institution as a shelter from paganism, was transformed by Bernard, the greatest of the Cistercian reformers, to lead forward centrifugally towards further major cultural changes. Justifiably then, he’s been claimed as the last of the fathers. But we can also claim him to be the first of the reformers, as he later was to be appreciated by Martin Luther and again endorsed by John Calvin. In all reform movements, including those today, he remains a uniquely pivotal presence.

Much has been said about the many aspects of Bernard in acknowledging him to be the greatest Christian leader of the 12th century, not only in politics and cultural influence, but also in sanctity. As the man of the century, inevitably he appears larger than life and therefore is bound to be a controversial figure that daunts personal identification, like all charismatic figures do. For medieval saints like Hollywood stars today, they share charisma that makes them inevitable leaders, but they also bedazzle us and sometimes mystify us as to who they really are in their own personal identity. As Thomas Merton noted in honouring Bernard’s anniversary of his death in 1153 to 1953, he says he left his mark on schools of spirituality, on Gregorian chant, on the clerical life, on the whole development of Gothic architecture and its art, from politics to the [inaudible courtousie 00:03:07] and its deteriorating trend into courtly love and medieval chivalry, Bernard was involved voluntarily and involuntarily in this whole culture.

So we begin by saying who is Bernard? There are multiple Bernards. Appropriately, on the nonacentenary of his birth, 1990, to 1090, before when he was born, the great Bernard scholar Jean Leclercq contributed his own mature views. He says towards a sociological interpretation of the various St. Bernards, there are the following: first, there are the various legendary views of Bernard, first begun secretly by his friend William of St. Thierry, to initiate the process of canonisation, knowing that Bernard himself would frown upon such hagiography. This mirrors both William’s own needs of his friend as well as who Bernard really was like in his desire for God. Another admirer from outside his circle, Arnold of Bonneval, continued the legendary account now formally in the process of ecclesial canonisation, along with other legends about Bernard’s mystical appearances with the Virgin Mary—itself another legendary approach. It is also a complex, mirrored receptivity like entry into a tunnel of walled mirrors.

Then secondly, there are the various historical accounts of Bernard past, present and future ones, which disclose more about the history and future historiography as a continued industry of scholarship. This is exemplified in studies as widely ranging from Max Weber to Brian Stock today and no doubt more to come. Involved culturally in a remarkable 12th renaissance that we associate with the rise of the individual, the rise of Scholasticism, the first major medieval urbanisation movement and its supportive agricultural revolution, there’s also the confused role of the divided papacy and the expensive crusades that were spreading against Islam. It’s the age of the revival of the Latin classics, especially Cicero with his theme of friendship as well as of courtly love and the later troubadours coming from the Moslem influence of the South. In all this cultural maelstrom, Bernard is caught up having no influence with power hungry potentates and yet having great spiritual influences with saintly leaders.

Then thirdly, there’s Bernard the monastic reformer, the mellifluous doctor, being celebrated in voluminous scholarship on the basis of his own meditative works. This certainly gets us closer to the mind of Bernard, but again it is a moving target for there have been identified five periods in the life of Bernard. First, his family life from his birth about 1090, his entry on the monastic order of [Seto 00:07:24], into the community of Clairvaux and the spread of the order between 1113 and 1130. Then there’s the intense political life of Bernard with much travel in the schism of Rome in the period 1130–40. And then the more mature scholarly life of Bernard when he wrote his major writings and dispositions: 1140–1143. And then finally, there’s the elderly or apostolic life of Bernard commissioned to preach the Second Crusade and to perform other public duties in the last ten years of his life, 1143–1153.

Bernard’s life as a monastic reformer therefore remains paradoxical. He’s both a servant of the Church ecclesiastically and politically and he’s a servant of God mystically. Various choices of St. Bernard occur even when one focuses upon his writings as Bernard the theologian. Martin Luther was one of the first to select him as the theologian of the love of God. John Calvin followed suit. Many Catholic theologians have adopted him from the reforming motives of their differing periods of history as being Cistercian, during which the writings of his scholarly friend William of St. Thierry were almost totally eclipsed as being Bernardian until the rediscovery of William himself was made in the early 20th century. In other words, he so dominated the literature that it was all viewed as being that of Bernard and careful scholarship was required to remove that fantasy. As Etienne Gilson was later to say, William of St. Thierry has everything: power of thought, the orator’s eloquence, the poet’s lyricism and all the attractiveness of the most ardent and tender piety. And yet, it was obscured by the great stature of Bernard.

Why then did Gilson still choose to focus upon the mystical theology of St. Bernard? Because in the prelude to Vatican II council is was becoming clear that Catholicism needed reform, as other scholars, such as the historian Henri de Lubac and the theologian von Balthasar in the movement of Theologie Nouvelle, were pointing the way forward. Like the more recent spiritual theology, mystical theology has been a critique of theological scholarship as being pursued as an end in itself instead of being for the transformation of its readers. The theological process continues as the evangelical theologian A.N.S. Lane now has adopted Bernard to be the medieval defender of the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

We can speak then, as a second point, of Bernard being the chimera of his culture. Bernard was not conscious of being either a scholar or a writer as we professionalise these roles today. My monstrous life, my troubled conscience, cries out to you, he confesses. I’m something like a chimera of my age. I’m neither cleric, nor am I lay, for I have cast off the life of a monk though not the habit. Yet Bernard’s literary output is massive. It’s now collected in nine volumes of the critical edition of his works. He wrote eight treatises, some 138 liturgical sermons out of a total of 718 sermons, various homilies, parables, some 358 sentences, which are notes and fragments, and a growing collection of letters which now have reached 547. They’re still, of course, being discovered in the archives of Europe.

He was constantly revising his works throughout his life, since rhetoric and the polish of his words and thoughts he perceived as a moral obligation to honour the word who became flesh. Isn’t that an interesting thought that he says you must use the highest quality of literature by which to express the things of the Christian. Many of his writings are responses to the requests made by others to initiate letters, to write treatises, to record his sermons. Obedience was his saintly motive, not self-promotion, as is the common habit of our fallen nature. Who motivated Bernard to preach or to teach or to write or to revise? He says it’s simply Jesus, together with the obedient example of Mary, his mother. It certainly wasn’t flattery, egotism, ambition, vainglory or even scholarship per se as we have it today. Rather like the C.S. Lewis I knew at Oxford, he was a sound scholar who wrote Christian literature on the side. Yet Bernard was not the [inaudible 00:14:14] of the 12th century. It was only later that Lewis mania became an American industry. Likewise, Philip Hughes, a fellow Englishman, sees that Pope Alexander III actually dominates the stage of the second half of the 12th century, as Bernard had done in the first half. And so when Adriaan Bredero started in 1978 to rewrite a life of Bernard as his contemporaries viewed him, Bredero hesitated for some time to write his biography because of all the conflicting evidence he was gathering from over 25 other notable chroniclers who were all Bernard’s illustrious contemporaries.

I want now to dwell on Bernard’s youthful identity, which he embraced in the sweet name of Jesus. Bernard, as we’ve said, was born somewhere between 1090/91 as the third son of a noble knight, Tescelin, Lord of Fontaines, near Dijon, and close to the person of the Duke of Burgundy, and to Elizabeth his young mother, whose godliness was enveloped in mystical experiencing. Attempting to focus on the inner life of Bernard, it is his love of Jesus that is the consistent theme through all his life. It’s like a hidden spring of water from which flowed the later Franciscan spirituality, accumulatively swelling into the late medieval renewal of Devotio Moderna as the imitation of Christ. Even as a child, Bernard is reported to have had a mystical vision of Jesus as his birth. In contrast, the Apostle Paul in full manhood as a zealous persecutor of the Christians was smitten on the Damascus Road by the exalted vision of the transcendent Christ. Ever since, Paul saw his identity wholly in Christ.

But Bernard experienced the immanent experience of the birth of Jesus. Still a small child falling asleep one Christmas Eve while waiting for the midnight vigil to begin, Bernard dreamt he saw the birth of Jesus coming from the Virgin Mary. From then on, Bernard loved Jesus passionately in his humility and in his humanity. His identity secretly and gradually grew to maturity as the lover of the name of Jesus. Nurtured by his saintly mother, Elizabeth, who dedicated herself also as a child to become a nun, instead was parentally overruled to have an arranged marriage at the age of 15. she sweetly accepted her new role as a mother, as the Virgin Mary had exemplified her obedience. The church within the grounds of Fontaine was dedicated to St. Ambrose and, strangely, while appearing still in good health, Elizabeth announced that she would die on the feast day of St. Ambrose. Amazingly to all her family, she died that day.

Another powerful event occurred for Bernard on a visit to his elder brother serving with the Duke of Burgundy at the siege of [inaudible 00:18:39]. As Bernard wrote deep in reflection as a young knight, the words of Matthew 11:28–29 entered his heart with new depth: come to me all you that labour and are burdened and I will refresh you; take my yoke upon you and you will find rest to your souls. Entering a nearby chapel, thrilled to the very marrow of his bones and praying with many tears, prostrate on the ground, a deep calm fell upon his soul and Bernard, all on fire with love, consecrated himself forever to God and joyfully tool upon himself the yoke of him who is meek and humble of heart. Later, whenever he felt cold and distant from the presence of Jesus, he would recall this life-changing moment, reflecting with the Psalmist, who can endure such cold? Psalm 147:17.

As a gifted student, he was sent to the one of the new secular schools, reading and writing Latin with ease, engaging in dialectics, yet chilled by the often casual way logic, analysis and irreverence of the text were being made of the holy scriptures. Turning 19, he had his first and last sexual temptation that both horrified and strengthened him for the rest of his life against a sensual life, whether it be in sex or carnal passions and desires, or indeed in scholarship that was becoming more secular than spiritual. The youthful Bernard also had great natural beauty, so he was tempted to be vain and sensuous, while also being passionately studious as an intellectual student. With such gifts, he had all the world at his feet as well as his father being such a wealthy, chivalrous, powerful knight. He could so naturally have been tempted to disobey his inner call of God by his external circumstances.

Then to the astonishment of all, his uncle, the valiant knight Gaudry, Count of Touillon, decided to attach himself to his nephew Bernard to prepare to enter a new spiritual world, that of the cloister. Then Bernard’s elder brother Bartholomew on the point of entering the service of the Duke of Burgundy, he too decided to follow. And soon after, his younger brother, Andrew, now already received as a knight, decided to withdraw. The oldest brother, Guido, followed suit. And thus an amazing spiritual revival began to affect the whole family as well as their small community of friends. It was all just too much for Bernard’s younger sister, who in a mixture of anger and anguish begged them not to leave the ancestral home. Yet, as this amazing change was occurring within the family, they remained uncertain where all this was leading. Citeaux was not yet their star of guidance. But sitting in church one day, they heard the text read from Paul’s Epistle: he who has begun a good work in you will perfect it unto the day of Jesus Christ—Philippians 1:6. Reignited, their faith was fired to move forward, for we can all have the experience of spiritual wavering when we ponder can I really know if God is actually speaking to me personally. Now, our theme is how they were freed from chivalry, from feudal love and indeed from Scholasticism, which were all the features of the culture of their day.

Bernard was not devising some new form of monasticism; he was simply wanting to initiate a reform and a return to the original rule of St. Benedict. But it had been abused as a demographic device to sustain the growth of feudalism by admitting children into cloisters who were too many of them to marry off to the neighbouring barons. This was the privilege of the older children. But now the knightly youth who entered of his own free will to the life of the conversae, the converted ones, as the monks were called, like his own band of brothers and friends, were all freely seeking the cloister to accept a life of obedience through personal humility. They were very conscious of reforming the Benedictine Order, but their actions clearly demonstrated they were doing so with humility and spontaneously so.

One insight that we have into the character of Bernard at this time is the reflection on the Bernardian hymnody of meditating on the name of Jesus. Perhaps even before the dignity of Gregorian Chant that later characterised the Cistercian reform, it all began with the Bernardian hymnody that first filled the cloisters of Citeaux soon after Bernard and his youthful associates began their new life as conversae. Many early hymns about the name of Jesus are all identifiable as Bernardian since they’re the hymns a childlike Bernard learned to sing himself on his mother’s knees. Such is the hymn Jesus, the very thought of thee with sweetness fills my breast; but sweeter far thy face to see and in thy presence rest. For in all the cosmos, there is no sweeter sound than thy blessed name, O saviour of mankind. Ever since the 12th century, Jesu Dulcis Memoria has been continuously translated time and time again until, in the Olney Hymns of 1179, John Newton finally rephrased it as how sweet the name of Jesus sounds in the believers’ ears. These hymns link Bernard to his later love of the Song of Songs. As he reflected, in the Song of Songs 1:3 your name is perfume poured forth. And this became the focus of Bernard’s meditations.

We’ve already described Bernard, secondly, as Doctor Mellifluus—the honey-mouthed doctor. Appropriately, the encyclical letter of Pope Pius XII in 1953 commemorating the fourth centenary of the saint’s death, ascribed to him this title, Doctor Mellifluus, because of the wisdom and the sweetness of his theology. But Bernard himself conjoined Biblical wisdom with meditation upon the humanity of Jesus and therefore upon the sweetness of his name. And much later, in his sermon on the Song of Songs, a sermon based on Song of Songs 1:13, he reflects on this extensively. The name of Jesus: this is both light and nourishment. Are you not strengthened in the spirit when you meditate upon it? What else enriches the mind so much as this name of Jesus? What so restores our wasted powers, strengthens the soul in virtue, inspires it to good and honourable conduct, forces in it all pure and saintly characteristics. No book or writing has any savour to me if I read not therein the name of Jesus. No colloquy or sermon grips unless the name of Jesus be heard. As honey to the taste, as melody in the ear, as songs of gladness in the heart, so is the name of Jesus. It is also medicine. Nothing but the name of Jesus can restrain the impulse of anger and oppress the swelling of pride, cure the wound of envy, bridle the onslaught of luxury, extinguish the flame of carnal desire, can temper avarice and put to flight impure and ignoble thoughts. For when I call upon the name of Jesus, I’m reminded immediately of one who is meek and lowly of heart, benign, pure, temperate, merciful, a man conspicuous for every honourable and saintly quality. And also in the same person, the almighty God so that He both restores me to health by His example and renders me strong by His assistance. No less than this is brought to my mind by the name of Jesus whenever I hear it expressed. This is a long quote in his Commentary on the Song of Songs 1:28.

One aspect of his childhood is how he communicates the humility of Jesus through the apple tree. The community of believers as the bride, whether as the Church universal, or as mirrored in the small Cistercian communities that Bernard and his associates founded, identified their beloved spouse, Jesus, with the apple tree. The Christmas carol composed by Poston Jesus Christ the Apple Tree actually echoes this medieval carol, which is again traceable to Bernard: ‘For happiness I long have sought, and pleasure dearly I have bought: I missed of all, but now I see ’tis found in Christ the apple tree.’ With Bernard, the monks confess in the final verse, ‘This fruit doth make me my soul to thrive, it keeps my dying faith alive; which makes my soul in haste to be with Jesus Christ the apple tree.’ Is this the other fruit tree of the garden?

Much later, Bernard asks in his 48th sermon, on Canticle 2:3, why does the bride of Christ universal, as also the bride represented by the small Cistercian communities, compare Jesus to the apple tree, surrounded perhaps and smothered by all the stately trees of the forest? Why, he asks, when the finer and nobler trees were ignored was the insignificance of this tree brought forward to be eulogised as the bridegroom, as you would find in the forests of Normandy? For to compare him with that tree seemed to indicate that he has no equal as a superior. What shall we say to this? The praise is little, but it’s for one who is little. The proclamation made here is not great is the Lord and greatly to be praised, but little is the Lord and greatly to be loved. It’s, namely, a child who is born unto us.

The deep meaning of what Bernard and his successors continued to celebrate in the apple tree was the humility of Jesus, which escapes the notice of the proud. And Bernard further marvels at the wonderful way in which the son is both subjecting himself as a man under the angels and yet remaining God and yet retaining the angels as his subjects. Because the littleness of Jesus gives sweetest relish to the bride, happy to contemplate him as a man amongst men, not as God among the angels. This is what John of Ford, one of his later disciples, was to make further comment. And so in fact John, as Bernard does, is quoting from the Epistle to the Hebrews: he did not concern himself with angels, but with the sons of Abraham.

Where were the apple trees? They were the boyhood’s memory of delight for Bernard in the family home of the castle grounds. It’s the antithesis of what we find Augustine doing: stripping the orchard of his parents. Here is Bernard delighting in the taste of the apple. Certainly, we find the same thing in the experience of John of Ford. It’s interesting where these two men came from. Where today is the best cider of France? In Normandy. And John of Ford, he comes from Devon in Somerset. And where’s the best English cider? It comes from the South West. What is so interesting about the apple is that it’s the kind of thing that a small child can shake to the ground. And likewise, a child’s simple prayer has a like efficacy of humility to wait upon the Lord to renew the desires of the heart all in a richness given only to the humble of heart. The more I develop thinking about child theology, the more you can see all these illustrations are helping me to put it all together.

Now we come to his older life, his mature reflections. And his maturer reflections are on the freedom of humility. Now grown up, Bernard writes on the Steps of Humility and Pride, one of his first treatises, of 1125. Humility has always been countercultural and Bernard made it more positively an expression of freedom from the culture by relating it to the symbol of Jacob’s ladder. It’s the voluntary descent of the humble God that provides our ascent in the steps of humility. That’s how he interprets Jacob’s dream. St. Benedict had set out 12 ascending degrees of humility. Now, Bernard reverses it. It’s the descending steps of humility that we need to have. Bernard had taught freshly of the renunciation of self-will in the contempt of the self, which needed self-knowledge, not in the Socratic way, nor as advised by the Delphic Oracle, but in knowing ourselves as sinners before God by knowing him. Then the fear of the Lord will lead to wisdom, towards knowing God in the light of knowing ourselves. And so this double knowledge that we find in Augustine, which is traceable through him, through all the Early Fathers, is now being reiterated by Bernard himself.

A further maturing that takes place in Bernard is his maturing identity into deeper freedom. While the troubadours and later courtly love only began to flourish in the generation after Bernard, their roots are certainly traceable to the 1090s, a century before and the beginning of his life. As feudal lords, Bernard’s family were surrounded by its culture. Therefore, Bernard’s deepening sphere of reform was to critique the widely popularised sources of Classical love and friendship that were so immensely appealing. Even if unrequited, Plato taught that love was a spiritual and intellectual beauty, not a personal relationship with a human being, certainly not alone with God. [Ovid 00:40:54] and Horace were much more crudely sensual and erotic in their love poems, but how could Cicero be faulted in his highly popular de Amicitia, on friendship, where he teaches that the love of a friend must be selfless. Thus, de Amicitia was particularly deceptive to the majority of monks since it was a practical manual on the ethics of what all true friendships should be. Happily secluded in a Yorkshire dale, Bernard’s friend Aelred of Rievaulx composed his charming treatise On Spiritual Friendship under this wonderful influence of Cicero. He wrote knowing Cicero had influenced Augustine, Gregory the Great and Jerome before him.

Now some 20 years after moving into the cloister of Citeaux, when his followers were spreading into a widening circle of ever more Cistercian foundations, Bernard began his mature period of writing with a further focus upon Christ’s love. This meant a deeper engagement in the popular culture developing from poetic love, troubadours, courtly love, but seeing all of these as expressive of the ancient heresy of Gnostic love, an abstraction about love. This was further complicated because the acquired culture of chivalry was deeply attracting in opposite directions. It was creating courtliness with violence, humility with pride, peace with war. There erupts like a thunderstorm a challenge now to Bernard that he never experienced. It’s the challenge of Abelard, who was born in 1079 and so he’s 20 years older than Bernard, and who died in 1142. And worst of all, it’s the challenge of Heloise, his lover, who was born in 1089 and died about 1163. They were indeed Gnostic scholars and Gnostic lovers.

It was an itinerant scholar, Peter Abelard, who was the sensation of the age, with audiences of youthful thousands. We do not know how early on Bernard heard of Peter Abelard, who was so immersed within this new culture of Classical love. Abelard had already been condemned by the Council of Soissons in 1121 for his treatise on the introduction to being a theologian, where he defined the love of God as being a love for God because of His own perfection, following on Cicero’s pagan doctrine of pure love. In Abelardian practice, one does not have a personal reciprocal relationship with God any more than he was to have a personal reciprocational relationship with is lover, Heloise. It was the love of an abstracted philosophical God from whom one expected no response. Love of God and love of a human being like Heloise was really no different. So Heloise’ intellectual abilities could be loved, not her person. And after he had violated her virginity with no concept of marriage, which would get in the way of his own selfish scholarly pursuits, no wonder her family were outraged.

Yet, Abelard had long pursued Heloise with love songs that he’d composed, verses well popularised among the youthful troubadours of southern France by the 1130s. So like our contemporary culture, such songs express the zeitgeist, the spirit of the age. And as [inaudible 00:46:08] has paraphrased Abelard’s distorted view of love of God, or indeed his love of Heloise, each was to be interpreted abstractly. As he said, I never loved Heloise. What I loved in her was my own pleasure. Likewise, he distorts through Ciceronian lens the Apostle Paul’s passage of 1 Corinthians 13:7, love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. But this was a pseudo-selflessness. It was a deception. When he then offered Heloise to marry her, she danced around with her wilful alternative now to embrace the cloister as a pseudo-nun, to make it plain to everyone that she was the absolute mistress of her own heart and body, even if it meant humiliation and contempt in order to love the beloved.

Perhaps never before had there been publicly exhibited such ingeniously destructive concepts of God and of love. And it was only in the last days of Abelard’s life after much public disgrace that we can say praise be God’s grace their lives were redeemed. But of course, a secular scholar doesn’t tell you anything about that. Nor do we know very much about it.

What Bernard then is significantly doing as a challenge to Abelard is the recovery of Biblical love. Unlike his own fraternity, Bernard had become anchored solidly on Biblical love, but he had done so since childhood. For him, it was clearly expressed in 1 John 4:8: love is of God. Love, he saw, is not sourced in friendship. It’s not humanly attractive. It comes alone from God and, as such, it is gifted to us only by His holy spirit, as 1 John 4:13 is disclosing. Love then is no metaphysical cause. It’s not to be interpreted by a Gnostic logician. It is God who is love, whom we have not seen, but whose presence is evidenced in acts of humanly kindness and charity, indeed as love of neighbour, as further evidenced as freedom from fear. God’s love then provides multiple freedoms: freedom from self, freedom from human resources and perhaps, above all, freedom from fear.

Only now a neuroscientist, like a colleague of mine, a friend of mine, Ted George, who is the chief psychiatrist at the National Institutes of Health in Washington DC, he’s been exploring in the source of addiction, that the basic human emotion in the lower thalamus of the brain is fear. It all stems from fear. And the pleasure principle of having some momentary relief from fear is the trigger to start addiction. It’s fear that drags downward in our egotistical reactions. What they’re telling us scientifically is just simply what is so clearly known and that is it’s only perfect love that casts out fear. And so we’re dwelling on writing a book together on the freedom from fear to love.

But freedom, like love, has many facets for Bernard. He starts with a human consciousness of having self-knowledge, of being free from the instinctual life like animals, free to make choices and to have knowledge of our own [indignity 00:51:18]. But when the source of this dignity is ignored as coming from God our Creator, then our freedom is lost in false choices in some form of idol worship and, worst of all, in self-glorification. This is the sabotage of love of which God alone is, as freedom alone is of God. Our first condition then is the bondage of egotistical love, of loving ourselves for our own sake. Its reversal or emancipation is not in the annihilation of self like the Buddhist way, but like the human dignity of free will, love of self is God’s gift to us. So the motive for love of self must be reorientated as sourced in God’s love for us. And this is Bernard’s interpretation of 1 Corinthians 15:46: it is not the spiritual that is first, but natural and then the spiritual. We may think we are made in our own image and likeness—this is natural. But in fact, we bear God’s image and likeness—that is spiritual. A newborn child can only revolve around all that is of the body, as our contemporary secularists can only be obsessed by what is body fitness, since for them there’s no prospect of immortality.

Where I live I’m surrounded by runners every morning and the frenetics with which they do their running remind me these people don’t believe in the Resurrection. If you lose your body, that’s the end of the story. Since we are body spirit, excessive asceticism will not do either. We have to love the body. Not that we confuse this with what the fathers call concupiscence or [inaudible], for this is love of sensual pleasure, of bondage to sensual appetites. Rather, we need metanoia: a radical change of heart and mind that gives freedom to love God, not by our own efforts, but as the gift of the Holy Spirit. And so Bernard never ceases to demonstrate the constant misery in bondage that is addictive of cupidity. As Bernard would see it, cupidity is but a perverse love of God become unaware of itself.

Living outside the awareness of God’s love and freedom is like being exiled in a strange land like the prodigal son, when we bear God’s image and likeness predestined to dwell in the father’s house. Augustine interpreted this to be within our intelligence, but Bernard sees it more in the exercise of freedom, freedom from necessity. We don’t have to go on living with the misery of the status quo. The image of the Imago Dei can never be lost, though we may rebelliously forfeit the likeness. We can all call upon God repentantly at any time for conversion to learn to love differently. But one alone is the image: the Word of God. Hence the transformative power dwells alone with the Word to change us towards our true likeness. Thus, the Psalmist can acclaim Lord, who is like unto thee? All this is prelude to the wonderful little classic that Bernard wrote On Loving God, written some time after 1127. Whether he knew of William of St. Thierry’s treatises on similar countercultural themes, on contemplating God and on the nature and dignity of love, which William had written between 1118 and 1135, we don’t know. But certainly, these treatises were exchanged later with each other to reinforce each other’s Biblical convictions when both were attacked by Abelard in the Council of Sens in 1140. But this occurred later, much later—indeed the last stages of Bernard’s life.

Lets then examine more Bernard’s pursuit of the contemplative life. Already at age 25, Bernard had been appointed abbot of his community of Citeaux. After this, he led a conflicting life between the cloister and much travel as an ecclesial political advisor. On one of his journeys he stopped off in Paris to deliver a powerful recruiting address to his scholars to consider becoming conversae—the members of the cloister. On Conversion is this powerful presentation of scriptural appeal to enter this change of life. Unlike the cited text of scripture that had arrested Bernard from time to time in his Christian growth, now he used the mastication of scriptural words in a stream of Biblical words and their allusion. In this sermon, he cites over 400 Biblical texts, largely from the Psalms, which were memorised by daily chant and with numerous references from the Apostles Paul and John. So he began his address: to hear the Word of God I believe you have come. I entirely approve this desire and I congratulate you on your zeal. Blessed are they who hear the Word, but only if they observe it.

And then he begins to explain what it means to be a conversae. It’s wanting to live God’s will. Then he follows an exposition of theo-anthropology and the nature of God’s relation with human beings. It was not just to be recruitment to a monastic way of life. It was simply to become serious Christians. It’s like saying today Christians that are so nominal in church, they need to create a whole new community. And the purpose of the community is we’re all together because we’re serious Christians. That’s what Bernard would do in our generation. He would totally, radically change the whole of our organised religious life.

And, of course, for Bernard, Church and Christ were inseparable, so you can’t be an isolated Christian. And just as there was all this cultural confusion in the 12th century with the rise of the individual, so we have the utter confusion of the end story of the rise of the individual, which is the perishing that we have with narcissism. We’ve come to the end of the beginning and the ending of individualism. That’s what Bernard would recognise to be the prognosis of our time. Of course, Bernard was concerned about the lamentable corrupt state of the Church in his day. Of course, he called for metanoia. But he concludes that to expose and rebuke the greed and the ambition and the avarice of its leaders was bound to face persecution. It was necessary to suffer for Christ’s sake.

Another contribution that we find in his maturity Bernard is making is a growing discernment of his adoration of the humanity of Mary. As we noted, as a child Bernard had received this mystical experience of the Virgin Mary when he’s presented with the child Jesus. He witnesses the birth of Jesus as an unforgettable memory. And later in his sermons on advents, he attributed in a prayer to Queen Mary her titles of queen, of mediator and advocate. She was called upon in the juridical usage of these terms of the 12th century—not necessarily our terms today—to recommend us, exercise her influence, to show her mercy upon humans as exiles, as citizens of another country, as helpless, all because she shares our humanity. Of course, we have to reinterpret these words today, but the truth is still there. Mary herself acts in uncertainty over the mystery of her own human son Jesus, as the Gospel writers report. Jesus too is caught up in human events such as the wedding arrangements in Canaan of Galilee, when Mary points out to Jesus they have no wine. Jesus is caught up in the tension of which has prior claim: his Father in Heaven or his earthly mother.

Bernard’s friend Aelred of Rievaulx pondered over the incident of Jesus at the age of 12 when Jesus was being presented by his parents at the temple as coming of age. And when he’s not with them, Mary’s response in bewilderment is to Jesus why are you treating us so? And mystically, Jesus has to say, ‘Did you not know? I must be in my Father’s house.’ So if the Gospel record leaves the reader confused about the role of Mary with her son and with the disciples, is it any wonder that two millennia of ecclesial Mariology has intensified the confusion? But for Bernard, all the glory of Mary is reflected from the mystery of her son, from whom is the ultimate intercession and mediation and redemptive grace. She’s but an aqueduct. Jesus is the spring of eternal life.

And later, the ecclesial Mary, like Beatrice that was the guide of the youthful Dante leading him out of the dark woods; likewise, Mary was for Bernard himself the emancipator from the sexual passions of youth. We remember that Bernard had lost his mother as a small child, so the mothering role of Mary always remained very special for him. Yet, Mary is always pointing to her son as the motive and the destiny of the heart’s desire, guiding the child Bernard to focus on poetic liberty. One of the things in one of the letters that I should point out is that it’s in the mature period of Bernard’s life that the theologians, speculating in Lyons in the big seminary there about the role of Mary, are the first to create this doctrine of the Ascension of Mary. And what Catholics have never liked is the spirited letter that he wrote back and said that’s heresy. So we as Protestants have to realise that there have been some wonderful Catholic theologians who themselves have navigated far more critically through the doctrine about aspects of Mariology or, indeed, Mariolatry, that are completely false. So it’s in his maturity that this new doctrine on the Immaculate Conception and then the Assumption of Mary are the things that he totally denied and criticised. Yes, Bernard can sing hymns to Mary, but they’re songs that we might sing to a lover. They’re to our friend.

Well, as we close on this theme, we now to come his aged life. When you get old, you begin to lose family and friends. He’d lost his friend William of St. Thierry. He’d lost his brother Gerard. And then in 1148, he lost the Archbishop of Armagh in Ireland, whose life he had written and Abelard, sadly, had already died in 1142. So it’s no surprise in the last series of his sermons on the Song of Songs he’s alluding now to death. He was now beginning to live more what you might call the angelic life. It’s preparing for Heaven. It’s like Richard Baxter was to do to meditate on Heaven. And when you get to my age, there’s only a thin veil between this life and the life to come. I wake up every morning: yes, Lord, thank you, I’m still alive, but I could be with you during this day. You’re in that wonderful phase of living between this world and the world to come. It’s shadowy. It’s living in the valley of death, but you’re living with His presence. And it’s in this life of living in His presence that now you discover that you go beyond meditation to contemplation. And the contemplative life is the mature life of the Christian. It’s no longer what you’ve achieved. It’s no longer the struggles that you’ve gone through. Now it’s simply waiting for the Lord to finally come.

And it’s in the mature life of such love for God that I want to close with the four stages of love that really summarised Bernard’s life. What are they? He’s already reminded us that it’s natural for us to be in stage one as sinners, that we love ourselves for our own sake. That’s our instinct: to be sinners. Number one comes first—self. And we spend most of our life struggling with self. But even as a small child with the visitation of Jesus and his birth, for Bernard, you begin to love God for His own sake, for God is love. And again, you struggle for most of your life to be able to give Him that priority. But the incentive is strong. It’s there.

Oh, but you find that all your efforts to love Him with your own love are presumptuous. And so the third stage is learning to love God for His own sake with His own love. I can’t love God, for love is of God and I’m not God. So how can I love God? Only by His love. And here is the punchline that I’ve never heard others saying, but Bernard tells it to us. The fourth stage is we’re enjoined to love ourselves with His own love as He loves us. We are to love ourselves with His own love as He loves us.

So much of the history of our identity is no different from what the philosopher tutor to Alexander the Great told him. Alexander, you are your own worst enemy. And of course, at 29 he was killed by alcoholism and sexual perversions. There was no enemy in the field that destroyed Alexander the Great, though he had swept right into the heart of the Indian continent. But it’s no different from any one of us. We destroy ourselves so easily. And so this is the message with all its simplicity that Bernard gives to us. No wonder I love to hear the words of that Bernardian hymn: How sweet the name of Jesus sounds in a believer’s ear. It surely heals us, surely comforts us.

The first question then that you might have for discussion is if the 11th century sees the rise of the individual, discuss how we’ve got into such a mess of narcissism in the ensuing centuries. Some of you may be actually historians of the humanities, but try and trace what have reinforced how individualism has almost threatened the extinction of the Western world. And all of this has happened in one millennium.

The second question is Ciceronian friendship, that is to say the idealistic friendship that Cicero has given us, is still our standard text for friendship, but how does Bernard indicate it’s dead wrong? How is Christian friendship really different from that of the Stoics? It’s so easy for us as Christians to be Stoics. So discuss all that.

And the third question is how do we ever see practically experienced that we’re to love ourselves with God’s own love as He loves us?