St Bernards High School - Bernardian Yearbook (Fitchburg, MA)

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MOTHER of DIVINE GRACE, to you | a ue 3 a oun we dedicate our BERNARDIAN: of a | : And the angel said unto her: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee .... Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found grace with God. ‘ 7 Luke 1.28.30 May it give greater glory to your Divine Son — and draw us ever closer to Him! What is this grace of which the angel spoke to Mary? Webster's dictionary says that grace is the un- merited favor and love of God toward man. Our religion books define grace as a supernatural gift of God bestowed on us for our salvation. All that we have—our very existence, our natural powers, the good things of life—are God's gifts to us, or graces and favors received from Him. But far exceeding all these natural gifts, and through the goodness and love of God for us, we have been called to a supernatural end, a destiny out of all pro- portion to our human nature and which we could never attain by our own natural powers. God, our loving Father, made us to be happy with Him in heaven for all eternity, and He furnishes the means, His Divine Grace, by which we may fulfill this lofty purpose for which we were made. What did Mary, the little teen-ager of Nazareth, do, to merit such an abundance of graces that she should be chosen to be the Mother of God? In the eyes of the world she was a nobody, living a most commonplace life—a drab, colorless existence without glamour or publicity. But in the eyes of God, she was the loveliest of His creatures. It was in and for God that Mary lived and per- formed every duty, no matter how small and trivial. God's life in her was a reality and her soul was truly His temple in which He dwelt and operated. Cornelia Hayes

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Presenting the (gies Class of “56 Se A Brief Introduction as Philfp Roddy puts the flash on— Betty Robideau, Beverly Progin, Catherine Fischer, Janet Testa- grossa, Robert Kelly, Marie Ber- mingham, Bob LaLancette.

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é od’s ¢ Great Gift to Us— His Divine Grace heme of 1956 BERNARDIAN After St. Bernard had made the statement that all good owes everything to God's grace, one of his monks asked him, If grace does everything, what will be our reward, where our merits? To this St. Bernard replied, in the words of St. Paul: God has saved us by His grace, and not by works of justice, which we have done.'' He also quoted the words of Jesus, You can do nothing without Me. To answer more completely the question of what becomes of our free will and our merit, Bernard wrote a treatise upon ''G race and Free Will,’ in which he said that every good action supposes the cooperation of our free will with divine grace. Our wl must be free to accept or reject God's ly action performed without this free and rain i | consent of our will is without merit, re-