Hunolt Sermons/Volume 12/Sermon 65

St. Bernard was a wonder: 1. Of innocence; 2. Of penitence. Preached on the feast of St. Bernard.

"He hath done wonderful things in his life." (Ecclus 31:9)

By the wonderful things the saints have done in their lives are generally understood the signs and miracles they wrought. Thus St. Gregory, St. Antony of Padua, and, in our own times, St. Francis Xavier are surnamed thaumaturgs, or workers of miracles. The same title, my dear brethren, could also be given with just reason to our St. Bernard; for where is there a place in Europe where he has not been, and which has not had experience of his wonderful power? The mere fact of approaching Bernard and receiving a blessing from his hands was to the blind the means of regaining sight, to the deaf it brought hearing, to the lame the use of their limbs, to the sick their health, as we may read in detail in the history of his Life; and this can be testified to by the surrounding country, by the city of Treves, by this sacred place in which we are assembled, which he formerly sanctified by his presence, and which still bears his name. But why should I seek for a motive of praising him from things that were done outside of him, and that were the result of gifts bestowed on him by God gratuitously gifts that are common to all the saints? Bernard himself, when I consider his person and mode of life, seems to me the greatest wonder of all. And this thought was suggested to me by his own words, which he often said to others, and wrote, as well: " My monstrous life calls out to you." Bernard, thou didst say that out of humility; yet thou saidst the truth at the same time,, if thou hadst only changed that doubtful word monstrous for another more suitable to thee, and said as I now change instead of thee: My prodigious life calls out to you. Truly, thy wonderful life calls out to us, and will call out as long as the world lasts. Since the whole day would not be long enough for me to relate all the wonders of his life, I will now, my dear brethren, content myself with bringing to your notice two wonders only. I find in him two qualities and effects united which must justly excite the astonishment of every thinking mind, namely:

I find in him the greatest innocence and the most severe penitence. There you have the subject of this panegyric. St. Bernard a wonder of innocence; the first part. St. Bernard a wonder of penance; the second part. Both together: innocence repenting, the greatest wonder; both to his undying fame and to our salutary confusion.

O wonderful St. Bernard, obtain for us, through the hands of Mary, whose dearest child thou wert always, and of whose praises thou couldst never speak without shedding the sweetest tears, and uttering words that flowed with honey, obtain for us the grace that, as we cannot imitate thy innocence, we may at least follow thy spirit of penance from a distance. Help us hereto, ye holy angels, who helped Bernard to preserve his innocence,

To begin to strive after virtue and holiness when the mind is wearied with sin and vice; to live chaste and pure alter having given a loose rein to the lusts of the flesh; to be temperate and abstemious after having indulged the palate without restraint; to sigh, weep, be contrite after having committed actions that are worthy of being deplored, is indeed a laudable thing, but not so wonderful as it is necessary in one who hopes to go to heaven. But for one who has lived long on earth, and that in the midst of dangers and occasions of sin, to preserve the first innocence and purity received in baptism, and to bring it untainted and uninjured to the grave and into eternity oh, that is indeed an extraordinary and unusual effect of the mighty grace of God! What a small number of such men there are in the world! I may venture to say even: What a small number there is among the elect in heaven who can with truth boast of having accomplished that feat!

My dear brethren, St. Bernard was a wonder of innocence of this kind. As Ribadeneira tells us in his Life, he was born of noble parents (mark well all the circumstances which render his innocence all the more surprising); he had inherited by nature strong passions, a profound and quick understanding, and a most lively spirit; he was moreover endowed with unusual comeliness, and a gracious manner which won the hearts of all. Be sides these excellent gifts of mind f and body, he was entitled to the greatest honors, riches, and worldly prosperity on account of his noble birth and great abilities. My God, what dangerous circumstances in which to preserve innocence! Truly, it is a rare thing with such gifts as these not to allow the heart to be enslaved by the attractions of the world and its vanities, and to preserve purity untainted; for the beauty of the body alone always fights most strenuously against the purity of the soul, as St. Augustine plainly says: " What is very beautiful soon falls." Consider, too, his young and tender years. Who knows not that youth, through want of understanding, weakness of nature, the impetuosity of untamed passions, thoughtlessness, and the itching to know everything, is the time in which we are most apt to sin, and the most dangerous of our lives! How many are able to confirm this by sad experience!

Now when in addition to all this there are not wanting occasions, temptations, allurements, and snares inciting to sin, who could venture to say that he would escape them all unhurt? In his youth Bernard was surrounded by those occasions on all sides. His companions tried to induce him to lead a freer life, and by their bad example to tempt him to commit unbecoming actions; he was assailed by shameless and wanton women, who tried in every way to gain his affections; the devil never ceased to assault his imagination with all kinds of impure images. Nay, he had to suffer from his own friends, relations, and brothers, who spared no efforts to lead him from the path of virtue, and to persuade him to indulge in sinful pleasures.

Yet in those dangerous circumstances, which are the occasion of ruin to thousands of souls, in the midst of temptations that the holy David in his old age and the wise Solomon acknowledged themselves too weak to overcome, Bernard's innocence remained in its pristine vigor. I have read the whole history of his life most carefully in order to see whether I might not detect some trace of those faults that even the holiest are wont to commit; but I could not find the least indication of his having been wanting in anything, except in mere outward appearance, as we shall see farther on.

Hardly had he attained the use of reason when he made it his first and most important business to know God, to love God, to be united with God in constant prayer, so that while still a child he was honored more than once by a visit from the Child Jesus and the Blessed Virgin, the Queen of heaven, who taught him in a special manner how to pray internally and to meditate on heavenly things; hence he never after found pleasure in any thing except in the thought of God and heavenly truths. To his elder brothers he was a perfect model of obedience and submission to his parents; his control over his tongue was an indication of the wonderful silence he afterwards introduced among his religious; his love of solitude was so great that he could not be induced to go into company, as if he had been born for the religious and solitary life. The money given him for his pleasure belonged, not to him, but to the poor, to whom he gave it all, without keeping the least part for himself, and so great was his charity as well as his humility that he did this only in secret, so that no one could see him. His love of truth, his modesty and reserve made him resemble an angel more than a human being. The world and all that the world loves was in his sight only a worthless rag. As it seems to me, he dealt with it almost as Moses did with the land of Egypt; before that holy lawgiver left Egypt he, by divine inspiration, deprived it of its treasures. Even so Bernard was not content with leaving the world, and devoting himself completely to the service of God, for he brought away from it with him all that he had most precious and costly, namely, his own relations his brothers and sisters, nay, even his father, all of whom he persuaded to join the religious life either with himself or afterwards.

From this, my dear brethren, I leave you to judge of the life that he led in after years - I argue in this manner: If, while still a child, a youth, he had such a distaste for the world and its joys and goods, and such a desire and longing to devote himself to divine and heavenly things, how must it have been with him afterwards, when he became a man, and was taught the most sublime mysteries by the Almighty? If he remained free from sin in the midst of filth; if he suffered no loss of innocence in the deceitful world, and amid temptations, occasions, and dangers, how must it have been with him in the walls of the cloister, in the religious life? Certainly if virtue and innocence have a favorite place on earth it is in the religious state. And therefore I repeat that if in the world, where he lived for three and twenty years if in the world, where there are so many foes to virtue, where innocence is secretly and openly attacked, he still managed to keep it untarnished, Heave you to imagine how much more innocent, holy, and perfect he must have become in the cloister. The history of his life, which there is no time now to refer to, shows that. See now what a wonder of innocence Bernard was. But at the same time behold in him a wonder of penance, or of repenting innocence, as we shall see in the

Here I might well make the same confession as St. Gregory makes when speaking of the penitent Magdalene: " When I think of the penitence of Mary Magdalene I am more inclined to weep than to speak. " I may say the same of the penitence of Bernard. This angel, so far removed from the shadow of sin, so pious, so holy, nevertheless treated himself as harshly, as severely, and as unmercifully during his whole life as if he were the greatest sinner in the world; nay, he could not have been harder on himself if he had in reality surpassed all sinners in wickedness. I will not return to his youthful years and recount the austerities he then practised. As soon as he entered religion, and devoted himself altogether to the divine service, he began to practise towards himself what he afterwards recommended to his novices as the very foundation of the religious life; he told them that they should leave their bodies outside the gates of the monastery, and enter with the soul alone, that is, they must once for all renounce all bodily comforts, and treat their flesh as if it were their worst enemy.

To realize this in himself Bernard crept away from all society of men, into a most savage and solitary wilderness, and he used to say afterwards that here his councillors, advisers, and masters were the oaks and beeches. He never allowed the least satisfaction to the outward senses; he kept them so well in check that one might say of him what Our Lord said in quite a different meaning: " Having eyes, see you not? and having ears, hear you not? " He had eyes and saw not, ears and heard not, a tongue and spoke not. For a whole year he lived in a room, and did not know at the end whether it was vaulted or ceiled with boards. He was always of the opinion that the church in which he used to pray had but one window to admit the light. After having wearied his body the whole day with hard work, he did not permit it to rest at night; his sleep was so short that it seemed impossible for him to preserve life with it.

By severe Eating and drinking, if we can call them so in his case, were with him unknown things; he had such a disgust for meals that when the time for them came he felt, as his Life says, as if he were going to the rack; the bare thought of food and drink was enough for him. And when, after long fasting, his emaciated body was in need of food to preserve life, his meal consisted of a draught of water and a piece of barley bread, which was so insipid that Pope Innocent II., when he saw a bit of it, began to weep with those who were with him, thinking it impossible for a man to live on such nourishment as that. The usual food of his religious were boiled beech leaves; if Bernard happened now and then to taste them he thought he had been partaking of a delicious banquet, although by constant fasting he had lost the sense of taste to such an extent that he could not distinguish one kind of food from another, and once, through inadvertency, drank water instead of wine. At last he was hardly able to take enough food to keep body and soul together.

Besides this fasting, watching, and labor, which did not seem penance enough for him, he tortured his emaciated body by a hair-shirt, which he never laid aside, and with iron girdles, scourges, and disciplines, as if he were minded to kill it altogether. And (mark this, my dear brethren) the holy man was so severe to himself that, although he was free from all internal maladies and pains, as well as from external diseases, from his first entry into religion, yet it is no wonder that he became so thin and worn that he looked more like a skeleton than a living man, and one could say of him what St. John Chrysostom said of St. Paul, the great apostle: " He was nothing but soul; " be sides his bones and dried-up skin he had nothing but his soul, which, according to the testimony of the physicians of the time, could not have existed had not his life been preserved specially by God that he might torture himself longer. This penitential life he never interrupted, although engaged in many important matters of Church and state; still practising these austerities, and animated by the love of his neighbor and his zeal for the glory of God, he travelled through all the kingdoms and important cities of Europe, bearing about with him everywhere, as he him self says, " the pallid image of his death."

What think you of this, my dear brethren? What could be more wonderful than the union of such innocence with such penitence? A very severe penance awakens horror even in the worst sinners, although it seems tolerable to some extent that a man should be hard on himself when he remembers that by his misdeeds he has often merited the pains of hell. What wonder is it that such a man should treat himself with a holy anger, and take a just revenge on the flesh that sinned so often? But for a man in whose life not the least fault can be found, whose conscience reproves him with nothing, to chastise himself in so terrible a manner, does it not seem as if we could regard that as an injustice, a culpable presumption, a cruelty? But holy people are wont to weigh their faults more accurately than others; let us hear, then, what was the fault in Bernard that, according to his idea, merited such severe punishment. I have found one.

Perhaps it was this, my dear brethren: In his early youth Bernard had once allowed his eyes to wander for a moment on a person of the opposite sex, although he immediately turned them away again. There you have all his sins together; I cannot find any more. innocent Bernard, is that the worst thing you have done? Is that the sin that deserved such a long and cruel penance? Was that the fault that had to be atoned for by such fasting, watching, scourging, and shedding your own blood? Oh, if so, wo to me! wo to all poor sinners! What ought I not to do, then, to atone for my many and grievous sins! Ah, quickly, Bernard, give me thy garb of penance, thy iron girdle, the rods and scourges with which thou didst arm thy hands. All the torments of the martyrs are not enough to atone for my sins if thy faults had to be punished so severely. And hadst thou not in thy youth done penance enough for them? Hear, my dear brethren, how he acted. As soon as he thought of himself after that incautious glance, and remembered that he had given way to curiosity, filled with contrition, he ran and threw himself into a frozen pond in the winter time to wash out that stain; there he remained up to the neck in water until he was drawn out, more dead than alive. And that this penance of his was pleasing to God is evident from the fact that from that time concupiscence was so extinguished in him that he never felt the least inclination to carnal lust, inborn though that inclination is in us all. But, I ask again, was this penance not enough for such a small fault? What necessity was there for such austerities during the remainder of his life? Ah, my dear brethren, this is the thought that fills me with shame! For that highly enlightened soul knew better what it is to offend the sovereign majesty of God, worthy of all love, even by a small fault only once; he knew well that the only way to heaven is the rugged way of the cross; he understood that he is not worthy of Christ who does not daily take up his cross and follow Him. Therefore Bernard embraced the cross, and in that position he is generally painted, and with the cross the instruments of Our Lord's passion, sighing forth constantly, like St. Paul: " With Christ I am nailed to the cross. " And in spite of all this he thought he was doing but little to merit heaven; for he wrote from his death-bed to the Abbot Arnold in the following strain: Now I am on the point of entering into eternity; pray for me to Our Saviour, who does not desire the death of the sinner, that He may receive my poor soul into favor.

O wonderful Bernard, wonder of innocence, wonder of penance! What glory for thee, but what shame for me and those like me! Can I, can any of you, my dear brethren, compare our innocence with that of Bernard? Let each one enter into his own conscience, and examine with me briefly the past years of his life. Years of my childhood, after I came to the use of reason, how was it with me then? Where is my innocence? Youth, and the years that have passed since then, what have you to say? Where is my innocence? Ye chambers and gardens, ye streets and lanes, ye pleasure parties, ye gaming-houses and taverns, nay, ye churches and temples, that have been witnesses of my past life, if you could speak what would you say? Where is my innocence? How often have I lost it alone by myself, how often in company, how often in thought and desire, in unlawful discourses, in songs, in shameful touches, in deeds and actions? Ah, innocent Bernard, lend me the words which thy humility forced from thee; they are better suited in their obvious meaning to me; the monstrous life I have led cries, not to men, who can not see the heart, but to the all-knowing God, who proves the reins, and says that as thou art a wonder of innocence, so I am a wonder of wickedness!

Meanwhile where is my penance? After a life spent in sin, while my conscience reproves me with so often having offended God, lost my soul, bartered heaven, and merited the everlasting fire of hell, can I imagine that I may lead a careless and an easy life and go to heaven on a bed of roses and soft down? My desires always tend to rest, comfort, good living, eating, drinking, and sleeping; I seek what pleases my eyes, delights my ears, tastes well to my palate; that I take when I can have it; but penance is a word that I do not wish to understand the meaning of. To yield to my neighbor, to forget an imaginary insult, to keep silent when a word of contradiction is spoken, is for me an insuperable difficulty; the least touch of adversity is enough to make me burst forth into curses, imprecations, and blasphemies, as if I had never done any wrong. In the daily crosses and trials from which hardly one on earth is free, in the little troubles sent to me that come from the hand of the heavenly Father, who means so well with me, I begin to murmur, through discontent, to complain against God as if I were treated unjustly, as if I were innocence itself. What is to be the end of this life of mine if the way to heaven is that by which the saints of God travelled? if the way to heaven is no other, even for innocent and just souls, than the way of mortification, of self-denial, of constant crosses and penance; the way that Jesus Christ has marked out for all the elect? Is there perhaps a different, a more comfortable and broad way for the sinner who has often and grievously offended God? Shall he perhaps have less penance to do in order to go to heaven than an innocent man?

Alas, where shall I creep to on that day when I shall see an innocent Bernard coming forward, armed with the cross, the rods, and scourges, followed by a countless multitude of his spiritual sons, and hear him speaking to the Judge in the words of the Prophet Isaias: " Behold I and my children, whom the Lord hath given me for a sign, and for a wonder in Israel." Behold, here I am (so I imagine Bernard speaking), and I have with me the children whom the Lord gave me to be a sign in the Church of God; who, after my example, united innocence with penance; for, generally speaking, they were taken from the dangerous world in the first bloom of their youth, and yet they spent the remaining years of their lives in this holy solitude, in many watchings, in fasting, and other austerities; their sole business was to praise God and love Him with unceasing prayers and hymns; their only profession was to learn nothing but to be crucified here with the crucified Jesus. What, then, shall become of me, I ask again, who have done so much evil and so little penance? Ah, my Lord and my God, what am I to do? Must I not begin at last to amend my way of life?

Yes, truly, I acknowledge it is high time to do so. It shall be done, Lord, with Thy grace, this very day! To-day shall my penance begin, and that by the most necessary penance of all; for I will first make a candid confession of all my sins, and especially of those secret sins that I have carried about for so many years in my uneasy conscience, that shame kept me from telling, so that I have never made a sincere confession, and have incurred the guilt of many sacrileges and unworthy communions; I will confess them now candidly and with a contrite heart. And in future my sinful eyes shall be kept from indulging in wanton glances, and, with Bernard, even from looking at things that are remotely dangerous. My sinful ears shall do penance, for I will close them to all unlawful and uncharitable discourse. My sinful tongue shall do penance, for it will never more indulge in that un-Christian, hellish speech common to all the reprobate, namely, that scandalous cursing and swearing. My sinful mouth shall do penance, for I will never more indulge in excessive drinking, which, as I know by experience, has been the occasion of many sins. My sinful feet shall do penance, for they will never more bear me to that person, that house, that company where I have found the occasion of sin. My sinful hands shall do penance, for I will this very day make restitution of ill-gotten goods, and never more stretch them forth to unlawful actions. My wanton flesh shall do penance by being forced to renounce even lawful amusements, since it has so often indulged in forbidden ones, contrary to the law of God. I will do penance my whole life long by patiently bearing all the annoyances that are caused me daily by my husband, my wife, my children, my neighbors, in any way whatsoever; by willingly undergoing all the contradictions that the Almighty may please to send me, humbly acknowledging that I have deserved far more on account of my sins; that so, with the penitent St. Bernard (since I cannot as an innocent penitent), at least as a penitent sinner receive in heaven the reward promised by a merciful God to all penitents. Amen.