Through Bernard, the Virgin Mary blew a powerful wind over the embers of medieval combativeness.
Newsroom (24/08/2022 11:45 PM, Gaudium Press) Saint Bernard of Clairvaux appears as a fascinating figure, who distinguished himself in his time by having taken the Cistercian reform to its maximum expression. Dr. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira describes him thus: “I imagine him quite tall, almost slender; clear, with regular features and rigorously shaven hair; firm, transparent, piercing eyes, capable, however, of an unimaginable sweetness. He must have been eloquent, like a flame of fire rising from the snowy purity of his body, clad in a very clean tunic. An aura of silvery whiteness surrounded him, adorning him with respectability.
“Saint Bernard was a man who emitted the supernatural in a thousand ways; a kind of continuous ‘flash’ for those who knew him. A man all made of the supernatural, I imagine him praying with an emphasis pierced with affection, but with a touch of polemic: ‘Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that it has never been heard of…'”
The Abbot of Clairvaux was a soul privileged by grace, with whom Our Lady established an alliance of special kindness and trust, as if she saw in him an alter Christus to whom she revealed the secrets of her Immaculate Heart. Receiving the intimate confidences of the Queen of Heaven enabled the holy monk to have a very close spiritual relationship with Her, to the point of making a vow to love Her always. His life was animated by great desires, mostly crowned by colossal failures, permitted by the Mother of Mercy to make him more like her Divine Son.
He had an eagle’s heart, eager to fly in the wide horizons of contemplation. This did not prevent him, however, from promoting noble institutions on earth, such as the Order of the Knights Templar, to which he dedicated one of his writings: De laude novæ militiæ. In it Our Lady established with the holy abbot praises the warrior monks for being ministers of God “for the vengeance of the wicked and the praise of the good.
Through Bernard, her beloved son, Mary spread throughout Christendom a renewed fervour for her maternal mediation and blew a powerful wind over the embers of medieval combativeness. In this way, Christian pugnacity showed its most striking face in the Orders of Chivalry, whose beneficial influence on the Crusades is recorded in the annals of history.
By Msgr. João Scognamiglio Clá Dias
Text taken from the book Maria Santíssima! God’s Paradise revealed to men, v. 3.
Compiled by Teresa Joseph