Since God is God, everything is his business, and thus everything was Bernard’s business as well. During his adult life, Bernard was at the centre of every major ecclesial, theological and political event. There is no man in the history of Christianity that so dominated his age. Not even St Francis of Assisi comes close to Bernard in the influence he exerted upon his contemporary world.
A Man Alive
To think of Bernard is to ponder a man of contrasts. He was sickly and frail due to his fasting and penances. He could barely eat without vomiting and the doctors only made his condition worse. He was a monk first and foremost. He loved the solitude of his monastery and the fellowship of the monks. He was a mystic who passionately loved God and the gospel of Jesus Christ. He knew almost the entire Bible by heart and wrote with a spiritual depth and passion that can still touch the hearts of men and women today. His Sermons on the Song of Songs is a scriptural and spiritual masterpiece.
‘I became conscious that my weak character needed a strong medicine.’
Yet this frail monk, who loved nothing more than to pray quietly in his cell, crossed the Alps three times in the dead of winter. He healed quarrels between cities. He founded monasteries throughout the whole of Europe. He castigated kings and abbots for their laxity and sumptuous living. He fought against heresy. He arbitrated between two claimants to the papacy, ensuring that the rightful pope was duly recognized. He was the consultant of popes and wrote a book on the duties and conduct of bishops. All of this he did and much more. When one ponders Bernard, one sees a man who was alive to God, alive to others, alive to the entire world around him in all its many and varied facets. He was merely imitating God who also is alive to all. God’s business was indeed Bernard’s business. Nothing was foreign to him.
The Making of a Monk
Bernard was born in 1090 at Fontaines, near Dijon in Burgundy. He was the third son of a noble and wealthy family. He had five brothers and one sister. His mother, Alice, had a dream in which she was told that her child would be ‘a shining light of the Church’. His father, Tescelin, joined the First Crusade in 1095, and returned from the Holy Land as a heroic knight. From his youth Bernard showed himself to be an intelligent student who was eager to learn. It was while still a youth that he, like his mother, had a dream. It was Christmas Eve, and Bernard fell asleep during Matins. In the dream Mary and the Christ Child appeared to him. He awoke filled with joy and love for the incarnate Son of God. This love for Jesus and his mother would remain with Bernard throughout his life.
Bernard’s teenage years were like those of other boys. He studied hard. He was popular. He was a cheerful lad. But he also became aware of his weaknesses as well. As he put it: ‘I became conscious that my weak character needed a strong medicine.’ This was the source of his monastic vocation. On the one hand he was attracted to the monastic life, and yet to be a monk was indeed strong medicine, medicine that young Bernard was not sure he wanted to take. But he gradually gave way to God’s calling.
Near his home, at Citeaux (Cistercium in Latin), a new monastery had been founded in 1098. This group of monks wanted to live the Rule of St Benedict in its simple purity. So they left their abbey of Molesmes and set off to initiate their ‘reform’. An Englishman, Stephen Harding, who became the third Abbot of Citeaux, was one of their number. Despite their good intentions and hard work, the Cistercians, as they came to be called, did not at first prosper. It seemed that their experiment had failed. But then came Bernard, and he came not alone.
When Bernard told his friends and family that he was going to join the Cistercians, he was met with scepticism and opposition. Here Bernard’s ability to lead and to inspire first began to shine. Not only did he enter the Cistercian order, but he took thirty others with him, including all of his brothers apart from the youngest. This extraordinary event brought the seemingly dying monastery at Citeaux back to life. Later Bernard was joined not only by his youngest brother, but by his father as well. His sister, Humbeline, became a nun. Bernard threw himself wholeheartedly into his new way of life. He fasted to such a degree that he ruined his health. Yet it was not his fasting for which he is noted. Bernard, above all, became a man of love. He grew in his love for Jesus and for his fellow monks. His heart went out to all of God’s people.
Less than two years after this noviciate, at the age of twenty-four, Bernard set off with twelve other monks to found another monastery at Clairvaux. From there Bernard alone founded sixty-eight monasteries during the course of his life, one of which was the famous monastery at Rievaulx in North Yorkshire. When he died, there were 338 Cistercian monasteries. Bernard was so enthusiastic about his role as a monk and spoke of it with such inspiring affection that it is said that parents hid their young sons when they heard that Bernard was coming. He once wrote to a young man:
Bernard alone founded sixty-eight monasteries during the course of his life‘Should your father lie down across the threshold of your door, your mother, hair hanging and garments rent, bare the breasts that nourished you, your little nephew cling about your neck, step over your father’s body, over your mother’s body and go forward. Without tears fly to the standard of the cross. In such a situation, the greatest filial piety is to be cruel for the sake of Christ.’
Bernard loved his brother monks. He missed them when his duties often took him away. He once wrote:
‘Your own experience can tell you how much I am suffering. If my absence is irksome to you, you can be sure it is much more so to me. You are suffering from the absence of one person, but I am suffering from the absence of each and all of you, and this is something quite different and much more hard to bear. I cannot but have as many anxieties as I have sons at Clairvaux; I cannot but fear for the safety, and grieve for the absence of each one of you. This twofold grief will never leave me until I am restored to you, for you are part of my life.’
Bernard never lost his enthusiasm for life, for it was a life lived in union with Christ, though the humiliating and scandalous defeat of the Second Crusade caused him much suffering at the end of his life. His last act before he died was to be a peacemaker, a role that he had often played. He reconciled two warring factions within the city of Metz. He returned to his beloved monastery exhausted. There he died, surrounded by his beloved brothers, on 20 August 1153.
A Man of Love
Bernard had such a passionate love for God that he was forced to use language that at times is almost erotic. In his Sermons on the Song of Songs, Bernard speaks of the Holy Spirit as the kiss of the mouth between the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit is not a peck on the cheek type of kiss, but the full and abundant love expressed between the Father and the Son. For Bernard, the great thing is that we as human beings can share in this kiss of the Holy Spirit. We are ‘kissed by the kiss’, and so we are taken up into the very love of the Father and the Son. The life that we live is a life within the very Trinity itself.
Bernard too had a great love for the humanity of Jesus. In the incarnation he saw the depth of the Son’s love for us, and so he could only respond in love:
‘Christian, learn from Christ how you ought to love Christ. Learn a love that is tender, wise, and strong; love with tenderness, not passion, wisdom, not foolishness, and strength, lest you become weary and turn away from the love of the Lord. Do not let the glory of the world or the pleasure of the flesh lead you astray; the wisdom of Christ should become sweeter to you than these. The light of Christ should shine so much for you that the spirit of lies and deceit will not seduce you. Finally, Christ as the strength of God should support you so that you may not be worn down by difficulties. Let love enkindle your zeal, let knowledge inform it, let constancy strengthen it. Keep it fervent, discreet, and courageous.’
Lastly, Bernard had a great love for Mary, the Mother of Jesus. She exemplified the love and ardour that all Christians should have for her Son. It was Bernard too who composed the Memorare:
‘Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thy intercession was left unaided. Inspired by this confidence I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother; to thee do I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but hear and answer me. Amen.’
