Bernard of Clairvaux: “That Contemplator”

These are only preliminary, unedited outlines and may differ from Andy’s final message.

1. “That Contemplator”
2. The Love of God shed Abroad in Our Hearts

Romans 5:5  “…hope does not disappoint because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom he has given us.”

Ephesians 3:16-19    I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge–that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

1. Thirsty for Christ

John 7:37-39  On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” 39 By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.

Bernard of Clairvaux points the way to a deeper life of meditation on the love of Christ!!

Introduction to Bernard’s Complexities

It is the way of men to make of great figures either heroes or villains. There are good guys and bad guys, black hats and white hats. Real people, however, are not so easily categorized. We are, all of us, complicated creatures. The best among us has elements within him more appropriate (we suppose) to the worst among us. This is as true of the saints of the Church as it is of anyone. The great thinkers and preachers of the Church, like any Christian, struggled in that state of being that theologians identify as simultaneously saint and sinner.

Bernard of Clairvaux too was a complicated man. He was a humble and pious monk, yet found himself caught up and deeply involved in the affairs of kings and popes. He was one of the greatest preachers the Church has known and was greatly admired by Martin Luther for his teachings on grace and absolute reliance on Christ. Yet we find Luther saying that while he “was superior to all the doctors of the church when he preached… he became quite a different man in his disputations, for then he attributed too much to law and to free will.” Bernard was very much a man of his time. What we see as theological inconsistencies were not always viewed as such in his day. Bernard could uphold papal authority and yet debate about who legitimately sat on Peter’s throne. He could speak of the absolute dependence of the sinner upon the grace of Christ, and yet talk of things like indulgences and merit. He could promote warfare in the name of God, yet teach that those who took up arms for Christ should conduct themselves as monastic pilgrims. A complicated man indeed!

David Kind, Christian Culture, Summer/Fall 2022

II. An Overview of Bernard’s Life

Major Events of Bernard of Clairvaux’s Life

1090              Born in Fontaines, near Dijon, France

1112              Entered monastery at Citeaux

1115              Founder of monastery at Clairvaux

1147              Preached Second Crusade

1153              Died

1174              Canonized by Pope Alexander III

1830              Made Doctor of the Church by Pope Pius VIII

1. Early Life: The Impact (yet again) of a Godly Mother
2. Born in 1090 in Fontaines, near Dijon, in Burgundy, France
3. Parents were pious, of the highest level of nobility
4. father a knight named Teclin, perished on the First Crusade (launched by Pope Urban in 1095)
5. mother Aleth a daughter of noble house of Mon-Bar… she died while Bernard was still a boy… yet had a deep influence on him
6. Very well educated, especially in literary Latin
7. Mother was extremely godly; she had wanted to enter a religious order, but married instead; during last years of her life she ran her home as if it were a monastic order
8. Bernard deeply affected by home life… mother’s example ran deep with him
9. Consistent physical illnesses curtailed his activity; during first ten years at Clairvaux, he was so sick he was virtually confined to the monastery
10. Entering the Monastery at Citeaux (1112)
11. Founded by Robert of Molesmes, on the point of extinction when Bernard arrived with thirty men: his brothers and many relatives!!! This group of young men of the highest families would change the course of church history through their impact on medieval monasticism
12. Benedictine monasticism: goals—piety and simplicity
13. Corruption had taken over: laxness, worldliness
14. Cistercians had already begun these reforms: return to a simpler life of work and prayer… Bernard was one of a movement of people, but the greatest natural leader of them all
15. Bernard so effective at recruiting for the monastery that mothers would hide their sons and wives their husbands when he would come by!
16. Founding Clairvaux (1115)
17. Movement grew rapidly through Bernard’s leadership
18. Time came to plant a daughter offshoot in Clairvaux… in a wild valley branching off from that of the Aube
19. Bernard named abbot of the new monastery
20. From 1130 to 1145, no less than 93 monasteries in connection with Clairvaux were founded
21. The Nature of Bernard’s Ministry

Bernard was the most influential preacher of his day… he frequently preached before popes and kings

Preached all over Europe: Germany, Italy, in the Alps, and France

Tremendous personal courage and clarity of communication made his preaching powerfully effective

Not afraid to call sin sin, even if it is in the life of a pope or a king… or in himself

He had compassion, pleading for mercy for downtrodden, unpopular people (including the Jews); constantly involved in relief for the poor

He was involved in the issues of the day: wealth, the use of money and power, governmental intrigues, prejudice, daily purity of life

1. Sought moral reform and personal piety
2. Stressed the need for a personal experience of Christ
3. Encouraged self-denial and the sublimation of all worldly loves for God
4. in his own monastery, he strictly enforced poverty
5. BUT not opposed to the church possessing wealth, just misusing it
6. Center of his ministry: Contemplation of the Love of God in Christ
7. primary concern: calling people into a right relationship with God through Jesus Christ
8. all life then centered around love relationship with Christ… deep experience of Christ through meditation and prayer the center of it all
9. Fighting False Teaching: The Struggle with Peter Abelard
10. Heresies abounded in Bernard’s day

Bernard’s response was PREACH THE WORD!!! He was very effective at it…on many occasions his sermons to heretics resulted in scores of heretics returning to the church

2. As a theologian and inspirational writer, Bernard said that theology and bible study should “penetrate hearts rather than just explain words.”
3. Fought against Scholasticism; scholastic theologians spent all their time debating over logic, reason, and the meaning of words; Bernard focused on the need for a transformed life

Scholasticism is the discipline and method of bringing together philosophy and theology to make God and His ways understandable. In the medieval context, in which theology was “the queen of the sciences” and philosophy was employed as “the handmaid of theology,” scholasticism addressed vexing questions such as “Are revelation and reason compatible or contradictory?” and “Can reason demonstrate what theology affirms about God?”

4. Bernard especially opposed Peter Abelard (the medieval age’s quintessential doubter)… he did everything he could to silence Abelard’s teachings

Peter Abelard (AD 1079–1142) served as professor of philosophy and theology at the University of Paris and was a notable scholastic theologian.

Abelard’s most famous work, Sic et Non (Yes and No), developed the dialectical approach of offering arguments both pro and con for a given position. In Sic et Non, he juxtaposed passages from Scripture and the opinions of the early church fathers on both sides of 158 theological issues. Rather than offering a reconciliation of the conflicting positions, Abelard let the contradictions stand, allegedly to stimulate careful thinking. His opponents viewed the unresolved tension as indicative of his heretical views.

In terms of scholastic theological development, Abelard clashed with the traditional ransom theory of the atonement, which posited that Christ’s death was a payment to Satan in order to liberate sinful people. He also dissented from the satisfaction theory of Anselm, which viewed Christ’s death as a satisfaction offered to God, whose honor had been robbed by sin.

In their place, Abelard developed the “moral influence theory” of the atonement. In Abelard’s words: “The purpose and cause of the incarnation was that [Christ] might illuminate the world by his wisdom and excite it to the love of himself.” That is, Satan was not offered a ransom, nor did God demand Christ’s death as a payment for sin; rather, people needed their love for God stimulated by a convincing exhibition of love on the part of Christ. He provided such a demonstration by His life and death, which was the crowning act of love.

[Gregg Allison, Ligonier]

1. Abelard was a phenomenal debater… men were afraid to face him because of his cutting brilliance in oratory
2. Bernard faced him fearlessly, many times… although confessing that he was but a child in regard to learning and oratorical abilities; Abelard was actually afraid to face him!!
3. for many years the controversy between the two divided Europe
4. Abelard was the equivalent of a theological liberal, Bernard staunchly conservative theologically
5. Bernard had a great deal of influence with Rome, and in 1141, used that influence effectively to silence Abelard
6. On Society, Government, and Church Politics

The Crusades:

Christianity in Europe had already been sullied by the “convert or die” approach of many European “Christian” kings, including Charlemagne. Meanwhile, Islam began with the visions of Muhammad in 610, and soon spread to challenge the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire militarily. It was checked by the Byzantines, so it spread across northern Africa and into Spain, where it was eventually checked by Charles Martel at Tours in 732. But Islam continued to gain strength and power. So in 1095, when the Eastern Emperor Alexus I was threatened by Muslim Seljuk Turks and sent out an urgent appeal for help, Pope Urban II called for the First Crusade to try to retake the Holy Land. This began the most tragic misconstrual of Christian mission in the history of the church… The Crusades. The goal was a retaking and holding of the Holy Land militarily. There were eight major crusades from 1096 through 1270.

Raymon Lull (1232-1312), missionary to Saracens:

I see many knights going to the Holy Land beyond the seas and thinking they can acquire it by force of arms, but in the end all are destroyed before they attain that which they think to have.  Whence it seems to me that the conquest of the Holy Land ought not to be attempted except in the way You (Christ) and Your apostles acquired it, by love and prayers, and the pouring out of tears and blood.

Bernard was challenged by the Pope to preach a Second Crusade in 1147, and Bernard did… with spectacular results

David Kind:  Around 1147 a former monk of his, Pope Eugenius III, appointed Bernard to preach the second crusade. So successful were his efforts in this that he later wrote in a letter to the pope, reminding him in regard to a certain matter that Eugenius was just a little in his debt: “‘I have declared and spoken it: they have multiplied beyond number.’ Cities and villages are empty. And now hardly will seven women find one man to call their husband, so many everywhere remain widows with their husbands still living.” Unfortunately Bernard’s crusade sermons are no longer extant. But we learn from one of his letters promoting the ill-fated crusade how impassioned his preaching must have been:

“Behold, brothers, now is the acceptable time, behold now is the day of full salvation. The earth is moved and shakes because the God of heaven has begun to lose His land. His, I say, in which He was made manifest as the Word of His Father, to teach and to converse for more than thirty years as a man and with men. His own land, yes, which He made famous by His miracles, which He made holy by His blood, in which the flowers of His resurrection first appeared. And now, because our sins asked for it, the enemies of the cross have raised their sacrilegious head, depopulating the land of promise by the edge of the sword. Indeed, the time is near, if no one resists them, that they will attack the very city of the living God, overturn the workhouse of our redemption, pollute its holy places, once dyed crimson by the blood of the spotless Lamb.” 

No wonder so many forsook the safety of home and hearth to fight in distant Palestine!

Sadly, Bernard’s success in this endeavor rested not only upon his rhetorical genius, but also upon the dangled promise of complete remission of sins for all who took up the cross, which Pope Eugenius would grant via a jubilee indulgence. Bernard, however, proves a complicated man again, for he never detaches such things from faith in Christ. He doesn’t question the pope’s authority to grant such an indulgence. But he was no Tetzel. Pious devotion to Jesus and His cross was necessary for remission of sins. The cross, rather than the indulgence, was the sign of salvation. And the indulgence he treats as absolution given in response to repentance, signified by the taking up of the crusading cross. It was faith in Christ, moreover, that was to motivate the crusader all along his pilgrimage, and faith that was to guide the crusader’s behavior as a warrior of the cross.

6. The preaching of the Crusade had an ugly side-effect: anti-Semitism
7. in Rhineland, a monk named Raoul wandered around telling crowds that, if they were going to fight for the faith, the logical first step was to kill Jews in their villages
8. anti-Jewish riots rose in Mainz; the archbishop there sheltered many Jews in his palace and sent for Bernard to help quell the riot
9. Bernard came and called Raoul arrogant and without authority, a preacher of insane and heretical doctrines, a liar and a murderer; Raoul snuck out of town, and the riot was over
10. to this day, Rhineland Jews remember Bernard as a righteous Gentile, and many name their children Bernard as a result
11. The Crusade: a disaster!!
12. Bernard felt God had given him signs that the Crusade would be successful
13. he put this into his preaching
14. HOWEVER… most of the soldiers who set out died of starvation and disease before reaching their goal; most of the remainder were killed or captured
15. the result was devastating to European Christendom and to Bernard’s reputation

III. Bernard’s Mysticism: Yearning After God

1. Bernard’s Writings
2. Letters: we have over 500 preserved 2. Sermons, treatises

“On Loving God”; also 88 Sermons on the Song of Songs: treated as an allegory of the love of Christ

Excerpts from On Loving God [1126-141]

1. Why God Should be Loved

You ask me, ​“Why should God be loved?” I answer: the reason for loving God is God himself. And why should God be loved for his own sake? Simply because no one could be more justly loved than God, no one deserves our love more. Some may question if God deserves our love or if they might have something to gain by loving him. The answer to both questions is yes, but I find no other worthy reason for loving him except himself.

2. The First Degree of Love: Love of Self for Self’s Sake

Love is a natural human affection. It comes from God. Hence the first and greatest commandment is, ​“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.” But human nature is weak and therefore compelled to love itself and serve itself first. In the human realm people love themselves for their own sake. This is planted within us for whoever hated his own self?

But if this love of ourselves becomes too lavish, it will overflow its natural boundaries through excessive love of pleasure. People can easily become slaves to the soul’s enemy: lust. This love of self is held in check by the command to love our neighbor. If we cannot love our neighbor because of our love of self, then we must restrain our lusts and give to our neighbor’s needs. Your love will then be temperate when you take from yourself and give to your neighbor.

… In order to love our neighbor we must see that God is the cause of our love. How can we have a pure love for our neighbor if we do not love him in God? And you cannot love your neighbor unless you love God. God must be loved first in order that we may love our neighbor in God.

3. The Second Degree of Love: Love of God for Self’s Sake

God, therefore, who makes everything that is good, makes himself to be loved. He does it as follows: first, God blesses us with his protection. When we live free from trouble we are happy, but in our pride we may conclude that we are responsible for our security. Then, when we suffer some calamity, some storm in our lives, we turn to God and ask his help, calling upon him in times of trouble. This is how we who only love ourselves first begin to love God. We will begin to love God even if it is for our own sake. We love God because we have learned that we can do all things through him, and without him we can do nothing.

4. The Third Degree of Love: Love of God for God’s Sake

In the first degree of love we love ourselves for our own sake. In the second degree of love we love God for our own sake, chiefly because he has provided for us and rescued us. But if trials and tribulations continue to come upon us, every time God brings us through, even if our hearts were made of stone, we will begin to be softened because of the grace of the Rescuer. Thus, we begin to love God not merely for our own sakes, but for himself.

In order to arrive at this we must continually go to God with our needs and pray. In those prayers the grace of God is tasted, and by frequent tasting it is proved to us how sweet the Lord is. Thus it happens that once God’s sweetness has been tasted, it draws us to the pure love of God more than our needs compel us to love him. Thus we begin to say, ​“We now love God, not for our necessity, for we ourselves have tasted and know how sweet the Lord is.”

When we begin to feel this, it will not be hard to fulfill the second commandment: to love our neighbor. For those who truly love God in this way also love the things of God. Also, it becomes easier to be obedient in all of the commands of God. We begin to love God’s commands and embrace them.

This love is pure because it is disinterested (i.e., not offered in order to obtain something). It is pure because it is not merely in our words that we begin to serve, but in our actions. We love because we are loved. We care for others because Jesus cares for us.

We have obtained this degree when we can say, ​“Give praise to the Lord for he is good, not because he is good to me, but because he is good.” Thus we truly love God for God’s sake and not for our own. The third degree of love is the love by which God is now loved for his very self.

5. The Fourth Degree of Love: Love of Self for God’s Sake

Blessed are we who experience the fourth degree of love wherein we love ourselves for God’s sake. Such experiences are rare and come only for a moment. In a manner of speaking, we lose ourselves as though we did not exist, utterly unconscious of ourselves and emptied of ourselves.

If for even a moment we experience this kind of love, we will then know the pain of having to return to this world and its obligations as we are recalled from the state of contemplation. In turning back to ourselves we will feel as if we are suffering as we return into the mortal state in which we were called to live.

But during those moments we will be of one mind with God, and our wills in one accord with God. The prayer, ​“Thy will be done,” will be our prayer and our delight. Just as a little drop of water mixed with a lot of wine seems to entirely lose its own identity as it takes on the taste and color of the wine; just as iron, heated and glowing, looks very much like fire, having lost its original appearance: just as air flooded with the light of the sun is transformed into the same splendor of the light so that it appears to be light itself, so it is like for those who melt away from themselves and are entirely transfused into the will of God.

This perfect love of God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength will not happen until we are no longer compelled to think about ourselves and attend to the body’s immediate needs. Only then can the soul attend to God completely. This is why in the present body we inhabit this is difficult to maintain. But it is within God’s power to give such an experience to whom he wills, and it is not attained by our own efforts.

6. Entering into the First, Second, and Third Degrees of Love

What are the four degrees of love? First, we love ourselves for our own sake; since we are unspiritual and of the flesh we cannot have an interest in anything that does not relate to ourselves. When we begin to see that we cannot subsist by ourselves, we begin to seek God for our own sakes. This is the second degree of love; we love God, but only for our own interests. But if we begin to worship and come to God again and again by meditating, by reading, by prayer, and by obedience, little by little God becomes known to us through experience. We enter into a sweet familiarity with God, and by tasting how sweet the Lord is we pass into the third degree of love so that now we love God, not for our own sake, but for himself. It should be noted that in this third degree we will stand still for a very long time.

7. Can We Attain the Fourth Degree of Love?

I am not certain that the fourth degree of love in which we love ourselves only for the sake of God may be perfectly attained in this life. But, when it does happen, we will experience the joy of the Lord and be forgetful of ourselves in a wonderful way. We are, for those moments, one mind and one spirit with God.

I am of the opinion that this is what the prophet meant when he said: ​“I will enter into the power of the Lord: O Lord I will be mindful of Thy justice alone.” He felt, certainly, that when he entered into the spiritual powers of the Lord he would have laid aside self and his whole being would, in the spirit, be mindful of the justice of the Lord alone.

When we attain the fourth degree of love, then the net of charity which now, drawn through this great and vast sea, does not cease to gather together fish of every kind, when brought at last to the shore casting forth the bad, will retain only the good. Still, I do not know if we can attain this degree in this life. We live in a world of sorrow and tears and we experience the mercy and comfort of God only in that context. How can we be mindful of mercy when the justice of God alone will be remembered? Where there is no place for misery or occasion for pity, surely there can be no feeling of compassion. [summary by Carolyn Arends, Renovare]

3. Hymns

O Sacred Head Now Wounded

O sacred Head, now wounded,
with grief and shame weighed down,
now scornfully surrounded
with thorns, thine only crown!
O sacred Head, what glory,
what bliss till now was thine!
Yet, though despised and gory,
I joy to call thee mine.

 What thou, my Lord, hast suffered
was all for sinners’ gain.
Mine, mine was the transgression,
but thine the deadly pain.
Lo, here I fall, my Savior!
’Tis I deserve thy place.
Look on me with thy favor,
and grant to me thy grace.

What language shall I borrow
to thank thee, dearest Friend,
for this, thy dying sorrow,
thy pity without end?
Oh, make me thine forever,
and should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never
outlive my love to thee.

Be near when I am dying,
oh, show thy cross to me,
and for my rescue, flying,
come, Lord, and set me free!
These eyes, new faith receiving,
from Jesus shall not move,
for one who dies believing
dies safely, through thy love.

Jesus the Very Thought of Thee

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!

But what to those who find? Ah, this
Nor tongue nor pen can show!
The love of Jesus, what it is,
None but His loved ones know.

Jesus, Thou Joy of Loving Hearts

Jesus, Thou Joy of loving hearts,
Thou Fount of life, Thou Light of men,
From the best bliss that earth imparts,
We turn unfilled to Thee again.

Thy truth unchanged hath ever stood;
Thou savest those that on Thee call;
To them that seek Thee, Thou art good,
To them that find Thee, all in all!

We taste Thee, O Thou living Bread,
And long to feast upon Thee still;
We drink of Thee, the Fountain-head,
And thirst our souls from Thee to fill!

Our restless spirits yearn for Thee,
Where’er our changeful lot is cast;
Glad when Thy gracious smile we see,
Blest, when our faith can hold Thee fast.

O Lord, be Thou our strength and stay!
Make all our moments calm and bright,
Chase all dark thoughts of sin away,
Shed o’er us here Thy holy light.

1. A Sample of Bernard’s Contemplations

On Diversity of Meanings from a Single Text of Scripture

“I will not be condemned by a prudent person because of a diversity of meanings as long as truth is protected in each case, and the love which the scriptures should serve is more helpful to many the more true meanings it draws forth from them for its purposes. Why should what we experience time and again in using things bother us in the case of scripture? How many uses does water alone serve for our bodies? And so any single text will not be off the mark if it gives rise to different understandings that can be adapted to the diverse needs and purposes of souls.”

On Meditating on the Incomprehensible Christ

“[Christ] was incomprehensible and inaccessible, invisible and completely unthinkable. Now He wishes to be comprehended, to be seen, wishes to be thought about. How, you ask? As lying in the manger, resting the Virgin’s lap, preaching on the mountain, praying through the night, or hanging on the cross, growing pale in death, and also as rising on the third day, showing the apostles the place of the nails, the signs of victory, and finally as ascending over heaven’s secrets in their sight.

On the Superiority of Love

“Of all the motions, senses and affections of the soul, it is love alone in which the creature is able, even if not on an equal basis, to repay to its Creator what it had received, to weigh back something form the same measure.”

Spiritual Senses Yearning for God

In tears I ask, “How long shall we smell and not taste, gazing toward our homeland but not grasping it, hailing it from afar with sighs?”  O truth, homeland of exiles and end of exile! I see you, but caught in the flesh I cannot enter you—befouled with sins, I am not worthy to be admitted. O Wisdom, you reach mightily from one end to the other in setting up and maintaining things, and you arrange all things sweetly by blessing and ordering the affections. Direct our actions as our temporal need demands and dispose our affections as your eternal truth requires, so that each of us may confidently glory in you and say, ‘He has ordered love in me.’ (Song 2:4)