August 20th – Feast of St. Bernard.

Adam Paige
Aug 19
5 min read

August 20th – Additional Meditation. Feast of St. Bernard.

Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation

We will meditate to-morrow upon this illustrious doctor of the Church, and we will consider: 1st, that he was great by his union with God; 2d, by his works; 3d, still more by his humility. We will then make the resolution:1st, to give up leading the thoughtless life which is so hurtful to our souls, and to enter upon a life of recollection and prayer; 2d, always to have very humble sentiments in regard to our souls. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the eulogium of Moses applied to St. Bernard: “Beloved of God and men: whose memory is in benediction” (Ecclus. xlv. 1).

Meditation for the Morning

Let us adore Jesus Christ, who, always attentive to the needs of His Church, sends her at each epoch saints appropriate to the circumstances, and who, in the twelfth century, in order to apply a remedy to the calamities inflicted upon the Church, specially sent her St. Bernard, a saint who was at one and the same time a doctor endowed with the science of the saints and with the understanding of the divine Scriptures, an apostle by means of his preaching of the gospel, a martyr by the mortification of his senses, a confessor by the eminence of his virtues, a prophet through his predictions of the future, a worker of miracles, a patriarch by the diffusion of his Order, an angel by the purity of his body. Let us thank Our Lord for having given the Church such a saint and to all coming ages such a model.

St. Bernard was Great through his Union with God.

St. Bernard was aware from his earliest youth that his soul was made for something higher than the world; and in consequence, closing his heart to all terrestrial attachments, and wholly opening it to the love of Jesus and of Mary, he raised himself by means of this double love as by a lad der, even as he himself expresses it, above all that passes away, and said farewell to the world, taking with him, as though triumphantly, into the solitude of Citeaux, his father, his uncle, his brothers, and thirty young men from among the number of his friends, to whom he had communicated the heavenly fire by which he was himself consumed. Leading there a celestial life, under favor of perpetual silence, he kept his soul continually united to God by prayer and disengaged from the senses by fasting and labor. God recompensed so much love by raising him to the most intimate communications with Himself, to the highest contemplations, sometimes even to holy ecstasies, which were for this holy religious a foretaste as it were of Paradise. Therefore the hour for prayer never came, in his opinion, frequently enough, and the time during which he was engaged in it always seemed too short. In com parison with this great saint, how little and degraded are worldly men who live only for earthly things, absorbing an immortal soul in dissipation and in the miserable enjoyments of this world ! How poor we are ourselves in regard to the little recollection which we possess, how little do we know of union with God and of the spirit of prayer !

St. Bernard was Great in his Works.

This marvellous union with God did not hinder St. Bernard from giving himself up to the labors of an active life. He wrote immortal works, admirable epistles to the bishops, the incomparable book “De Consideratione” to Pope Eugene; and this man, who, according to the expression he made use of, had had nothing but oak-trees and beeches for his masters, becomes the doctor of the Church, the oracle consulted by the wisest prelates, the mouthpiece of Sovereign Pontiffs, the scourge of heretics, the living treasure of ecclesiastical science. Then, passing from a life of solitude to the functions of the apostolate, in order to withdraw the Christian world from the chaos of iniquities in which it was buried, he traverses Europe, regulating the Church in regard to both morals and doctrine; makes the truth to be listened to by kings and great men, acts the part of an arbitrator in all differences that arise, draws up the canons and decrees of the councils of Pisa, of Troyes, of Etampes, and of Rheims; draws up the symbols of faith; triumphs in Languedoc over Henry the Heresiarch, in Guienne over William, Duke of Aquitaine; brings about the condemnation of Gilbert de la Poree and of Peter Abelard; stops scandals, abolishes schism and heresy, extinguishes hatreds between princes who are at variance. What man has ever done more great works ? And by what means did he perform them ? It is a marvellous history. Doubtless, his rare merit contributed greatly to it, but at the same time the principal secret of his success was his incomparable sweetness, which charmed all those who came near him, and changed wolves into lambs. Let us be confounded and ashamed in the presence of so many great works, we who do so little for God; let us above all be ashamed that we are so far from having the sweetness of St. Bernard.

St. Bernard was still Greater by his Humility.

To be profoundly humble in the midst of the tumult of praises, of splendor, and of honors, is the masterpiece of true goodness; and it is therein that St. Bernard is admirable. He is praised for his virtues and his miracles, and he begs for pity on his poor soul; he knows himself better, he says, than those who judge him from appearances. He blushes that he should be revered, not what he is, but what he seems to be, and he asks God that his baseness may be so well known that people should be ashamed of having praised a man who so little deserved to be praised. Who will enable me, he said again, to be as much humiliated in the presence of men for the defects which exist in me, as I am praised for the virtues which I do not possess ? O Lord, he adds, my monstrous life, my miserable con science cry out towards Thee; I am neither a monk nor a courtier, neither a priest nor a layman; I am a monstrous composite of all these states; I am the chimera of my century ! O prodigious humility ! What a lesson for us who have so little, and who, instead of abasing ourselves, seek only to be raised !

Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.

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