St Bernards School - Crusader Yearbook (Gladstone, NJ)

Page 28 text:

Meanwhile, there was no relaxation of the Work of God. The Capitular Mass, the Divine Office, the Noviciate, the study of Holy Scripture in its moral and in its mystical bearing were all scrupulously maintained. lf guests arrived, everything was postponed to their due reception. New members arrived to follow the leadership of Bernard. From 1118 to 1153, sixty-eight daughter-houses were founded during the abbacy of Bernard of Clairvaux. They were scattered in all directions, in Flanders, England, Wales, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Sardinia, Sicily, Sweden and, the comparative majority, thirty-eight in France. The moving spirit of this phenomenal development was an un- worldly monk of delicate health, whose later years were burdened by invalidism and who died at the age of sixty-three. In the year 1133, Bernard was already deeply immersed in international affairs. The healing of the schism in the Papacy, and the recognition of Innocent ll, was a masterpiece of statecraft on Bernard's part. lt was the work of eight years. His motive for handling this world-wide disaster, a crisis which shook western Christendom to its very foundations, was entirely irreproachable. The protection of the Holy Places at Jerusalem was a matter of great interest to Bernard. He had taken a leading part as early as 1128, in the formal foundation of the Order of the Temple. The Order was charged with the duty of policing the Holy Places and the roads leading to them from the coast. As an exhortation to this religious knighthood Bernard wrote a treatise in 1132, entitled In Praise of the New Warfare. lt sets a high and exacting standard of Christian warfare. On Palm Sunday 1146 before a throng of distinguished ecclesiastics and notables of the kingdom, Bernard preached the Second Crusade. And now his energy was unrestrainable, stirring the enthusiasm of princes and people. He won over the stubborn Emperor, Conrad Ill, and King Louis Vll offFrance. Two hundred thousand men were on the march. But Bernard's absence, because he disclaimed any right to military leader- ship, proved to be a disaster of world-wide magnitude. l ' Bernard was buoyant and fearless. He now worked to repair the evil. In fact, at every stage he had been the driving force of the conscience of Christendom. He fought racial preiudice against the Jews, and dealt with those in error, so that they would receive the word of God with icy. Bernard took no pleasure in theological controversy. For him the first step to be taken towards understanding the Faith was to believe it. After receiving at his own request Extreme Unction and Holy Viaticum, Bernard died on Thursday, August 20, 1153, at the age of sixty-three. His fitting epitaph could well be his own words: God's business is my business. His life was a life centered in God, a will ever studious of conformity with the Divine Will. His greatest miracle was himself. He was the teacher whose words were honey to the human mouth and to the human heart, the Mellifluous Doctor. E241

Page 27 text:

ERNARD was born at Fontaines-les-Diion in the year 1090. His parents were Tescelin the Sorel and Aleth de Montbard, descended from the ducal family of Burgundy. The third child of a family ultimately seven in number, he had a most remarkable mother. She was a great lady in the social sense, but her dignity was most evident in her beneficence toward the sick and the poor. The implied spirit of self-dedication to the work of God was renewed in her domestic life. Bernard was nurtured in the discipline of simplicity. His emphatic characteristic was urbanity, like Moses he was a proper child , and he never lost his child-heart. Thoughtful, submissive, gracious, somewhat silent and reserved, he grew into a singularly attractive youth and was capable of responding to congenial friendship. Fair in color, of transparent complexion, of moderate height and spare of body, he was not robust, and the severities of his later life were destined to drain his physical strength. When Bernard was about eight years old, his mother sent him to the school of the Canons Secular of St. Vorles, long famous for its educational value. Here, after a solid grounding, he read widely and with keen enioyment the Latin Classics, especially in Cicero and in the poets. His conscious purpose was to make them and anything which he might learn from the study of the Greek philosophers, subservient to his knowledge of the Sacred Scriptures, and through them of God. He was sixteen years old when his mother died. It was a crucial moment to find himself out of that noble lady's tutelage. His intellectual gifts were a rich endowment and it was contemplated that he devote himself to further study at some great seat of learning. But Bernard wanted God and conditions in which to find God. He decided to enter Citeaux, a vast space of solitude and silence, with its New Monastery of a few impassioned enthusiasts resolved, to establish afresh the standard of the Order of St. Benedict on an exacting scale unknown for generations. At the end of March 1112, thirty kindred and friends led by the twenty-two year old Bernard were welcomed by Abbot Stephen Harding, the English monk who ruled Citeaux. Faithful to the spirit of St. Benedict, the Cistercians were keen agriculturists, but Bernard, frail of body, made him a poor harvester. By prayer and spiritual absorption he was learning the great secret of his future influence, how to estimate true values. Much of his time was spent in studying the Bible and the writings of the Latin Fathers. ln June 1115 he was despatched from Citeaux, with twelve monks under his abbatial rule, to found the Abbey of Clairvaux with which his name is immemorially associated. In a valley grim enough for its solitude and desolation, reputed to be a den of thieves, yet possessing a wild beauty of its own, down which a stream ran into the River Aube, the young pioneer chose his site. The chief donors were Hugh of Troyes, and Jasbert, a kinsman. The buildings, erected by the monks themselves, were on a modest scale. The fare was meagre beyond words, the bread was made of some unspecified ingredient, less costly than oats. The only relish was in summer the leaves of trees, in winter roots. Cloth, leather and money were scarce. Some of them complained that they must return to Citeaux, and persisted until in answer to Bernard's prayer money came in. God, in Bernard's view, held his money and dispensed it as seemed best to Him. i231

Page 29 text:

FIFTH FORM Fronf Row: Harold Lunn, Eugene Lezgus, Beverly Walter, Lee Terhune, John Stein, Charles Kull, Jay Perkins. Rear Row: Edward Dunning, Terry Correll, Ronald Kerr, Mr. Warren Rohrer, Jr. CClass Adviserj, Michael Crombie, Arthur Ward, Howard Oliver labsentl. FOURTH FORM Front Row: Jeffrey Stansbury, Royal Disley, Kit Southward, James Young, Joel Hall, Donald Ripley, John Jacquemot. Rear Row: Arihur Williams, Laurence Weymouth, Donald Spindler, Peler Randall, Booth Taggart, David Walkden, Donne Colion, Mr. Harold D. Nicholls fClass Adviserj. i251