August 20: Remembering Bernard of Clairvaux

Tomorrow is one of my favorite days for remembering great Christians. Although I’ve only read one of his books (his commentary on the Song of Songs I, a collection of sermons), I fell in love with St. Bernard's wisdom and insights. Take this, for example, from Sermon 12, “The Grace of Loving Kindness”:

And you too, if you will permit us your companions to share in the gift you have received from above, if you are at all times courteous, friendly, gentle and humble, you will find men everywhere bearing witness to the perfumed influence you radiate. Everyone among you who not only patiently endures the bodily and mental weaknesses of his neighbors, but, if permissible and possible, even plies them with attention, inspires them with encouragement, helps them with advice, or, where the rule do not so permit, at least does not cease to assist them by fervent prayers—everyone, I repeat, who performs such deeds among you, gives foreth a good odor among the brethren like a rare and delicate perfume. (81)

An abbot in the Cistercian order, St. Bernard's puritan-esque biblical reliance and work ethic make plain the reasons why Calvin and Luther held him in high esteem. As a monastic forerunner of the Reformation, St. Bernard of Clairvaux stressed the love of God as central to any theological undertaking or Christian living. Theo M. M. A. C. Bell nicely summarizes Luther's relationship to Bernard:

On his road to the reformation Bernard was a true companion to Luther; but also in his later years Luther remembered Bernard as the greatest of all the fathers of the church after Augstine.Certainly Luther must have been aware also of several differences between himself and Bernard, but to Luther these were matters of minor importance. Their theologies circled around the same focal point of personal experience of the Holy Writ. William of St. Thieny states in his hagiography that Bernard often used to say, "It is better to drink from the source itself than from the many streams." Almost four hundred years later a doctor of Scripture at the University of Wittenberg would make this saying very much his own. ("Luther's Reception of Bernard of Clairvaux," CTQ, 59:4: 267)

St. Bernard's writing and numerous other contributions to the Church are chronicled in this info-saturated issue of Christian History & Biography.

If you like that sermonic excerpt and want to know more about St. Bernard, you can find out more about him here and then perhaps offer this prayer in thanksgiving to God for giving us such a Christian father in Christ:

O God, by whose grace your servant Bernard of Clairvaux, kindled with the flame of your love, became a burning and a shining light in your Church: Grant that we also may be aflame with the spirit of love and discipline, and walk before you as children of light; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.