St. Bernard of Clairvaux led a life of struggle and prayer. As he drew his last breath, Our Lady came for his virginal soul.
Newsdesk (25/05/2023 10:38, Gaudium Press) After his victorious battle against heretics in the South of France, the man of God returned to Clairvaux; however, another arduous mission presented itself to him. The Archbishop of Treveris arrived at the Abbey and, after prostrating himself before Saint Bernard, explained to him the serious problem he was facing.
Metz and Trier were at war and 2,000 people had already died. The archbishop added that only Bernard could achieve peace.
The saint was 63 years old and suffering from various illnesses. Moved by love of God and neighbour, he accompanied the archbishop on this painful journey in January 1153.
On their arrival, the two parties were face to face on the opposite banks of the Moselle River. St. Bernard talked at length with the leaders of both factions, but they would not enter into an agreement; they only thought of resorting to arms.
While waiting for a solution, many sick people were brought to the Saint who healed them all. Divine grace touched the belligerents who embraced each other and made peace. Then, the man of God began his journey back to Clairvaux. This would be his last journey.
At the abbey, though greatly weakened, he prayed, attended to the monks and gave dictations. There was no diminishment in his brilliant intelligence. To an abbot who wrote asking for news of him, he dictated a reply in which he said that sleep had fled from him, all solid food caused him terrible pains in his stomach and that his legs and feet were swollen. [1]
Covenant of loving-kindness and trust with the Virgin
On August 20th, 1153, after receiving the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick, the Abbot of Clairvaux died in complete serenity. At the moment when he expired, says the chronicle, the very merciful Mother of God, his special patroness, was seen to appear at his bedside; She had come to seek the soul of Blessed Bernard.[2]
Crowds flocked to the funeral. Miracles multiplied at his tomb. The Cistercian Abbot, to whom the monks of Clairvaux were subordinate, ordered Saint Bernard to stop performing miracles.
Innocent II, Pope from 1130 to 1143, a great admirer of St. Bernard, had called him “the impregnable wall that upholds the Church.”[3]
So much did he mark his epoch that “we shall have no inconvenience in qualifying the twelfth century as the ‘century of St Bernard‘, much more legitimately than when we refer to the centuries ‘of Augustus’ and ‘of Louis XIV’.”[4]
He was a soul privileged by grace, with whom Our Lady established a covenant of special benevolence and confidence, 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 longings, mostly crowned with colossal failures, permitted by the Mother of Mercy in order to resemble him more closely to her Divine Son.”[5]
An excellent writer of great literary flights
He wrote several works about which Dr. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira said:
“Saint Bernard is an exquisite writer, of great literary flights, a remarkable polisher of the French language, under the impulse of whom new aspects of that language were explicated from its original genius.“[6]
To a cardinal who sent him a letter saying that he was leaving the cloister to disturb the Holy See and the cardinals, the Abbot of Clairvaux replied, “The discordant voices which disturbed the peace of the Church seemed to him to be those of the noisy frogs with which the cardinal or pontifical palaces were filled.”[7]
He is the author of 14 treatises, 332 sermons and over 500 letters. We quote some of his works:
– Life of St. Malachy. This Saint was born in Ireland. His parents belonged to the highest nobility and were the greatest potentates of that nation. He visited Clairvaux and, having become seriously ill, died there in 1148. In the biography, St. Bernard makes no reference to the well-known “Prophecy of Malachy,” in which the names of Popes are referred to.
– Commentary on the Canticle of Canticles, a fundamentally mystical work.
– The Knowledge of God, where he shows that before understanding and explaining dogma one must live it.
– Grace and Free Will
– In Praise of the New Knighthood, in which he praises the chivalric Order of the Knights Templars.
– De Consideratione. This is the most important of his books, written for Blessed Eugene III at his request. Its purpose is to indicate to the Pontiff a kind of examination of conscience, which applies to ecclesiastics and even to every Catholic. “In language that is sometimes a little vivid, St. Bernard denounces all the abuses that the weakness of the popes tolerates within the Church, and especially the Roman curia.”[8]
St. Bernard provided extraordinary growth for the Cistercian Order. Clairvaux reached 700 monks among whom were a son of the King of France Louis VII, several princes and feudal lords. Most of them were ‘converse’ brothers who went about their business in the countryside in complete silence; only the sound of their work tools could be heard.
Over the years, some 350 abbeys dependent on Clairvaux sprang up in Europe, even in Sweden, Denmark and Hungary. The French Revolution dispossessed Clairvaux and in 1808, under Napoleon Bonaparte, it was turned into a prison…
In 1830, Pius VIII proclaimed Saint Bernard a Doctor of the Church, and he came to be called the “Melifluous Doctor”, that is, one who spreads honey.
Let us ask St. Bernard to help us fight against the relativism, impurity and egalitarianism prevailing in today’s world. And to increase our devotion to the Blessed Virgin, crusher of all heresies.
By Paulo Francisco Martos
From: Noções de História da Igreja
[1] Cf. DARRAS, Joseph Epiphane. Histoire Génerale de l’Église. Paris: Louis Vivès. 1879, v. 26, p. 590.
[2] DANIEL-ROPS, Henri. A Igreja das catedrais e das Cruzadas. São Paulo: Quadrante. 1993, v. III, p. 133.
[3] Idem, ibidem, p. 134.
[4] Idem, ibidem, p. 132.
[5] CLÁ DIAS, João Scognamiglio, EP. Maria Santíssima! O Paraíso de Deus revelado aos homens. São Paulo: Arautos do Evangelho. 2020, v. III, p. 82.
[6] CORRÊA DE OLIVEIRA, Plinio. Oh, Igreja Católica! In Dr. Plinio. São Paulo. Ano XXI, n. 239 (fevereiro 2018), p. 31.
[7] DANIEL-ROPS. Op. cit., v. III, p. 133.
[8] DICTIONNAIRE DE THÉOLOGIE CATHOLIQUE. Paris: Letouzey et Ané. 1910, v. II-1, coluna 748.
Compiled by Roberta MacEwan
