St Bernards School - Crusader Yearbook (Gladstone, NJ)

Page 8 text:

THE REVEREND ROBERT L. CLAYTON RECTOR OF ST. BERNARD'S SCHOOL H946- j E41

Page 7 text:

The Managing Editor Peter Randall Literary Editor Jeffrey Stansbury Historians John Jacquemot Donald Ripley Athletics Donne Colton David Walkden Activities Laurence Weymouth Keith Hyer Crusader THE STAFF Editor-in-Chief HAL GREEN Business Manager J. Everett Hall Advertising Manager David Wnrcl Albert Hart Treasurer Booth Taggart Art Edward Simpson Plaotograplay Kit Southward Circulation Robert Speck Faculty Advisor Mr. john C. Gunzelman ST. BERNARD'S SCHGOL GLADSTONE, NEW JERSEY June-1952 l5l

Page 9 text:

Ihr ifKPrtnr'5 iliemmgv Today when a man wants to start talking about life he usually means that he wants to start talking about himself. He wants to speak of his hopes, his ambitions, and his fears. We say a man likes to look at himself so that he can evaluate himself. Any group of young men leaving school and entering more fully into the life of the world are almost certainly going to be thinking of themselves in the same way. The patron of our school, the great St. Bernard of Clairvaux in his De Considera- tione has left us a startling saying the profound depths of which many men and boys do not seem to grasp. We say we are afraid of what people may think of what we do and are. We say we are worried whether our friends will accept us warmly enough or not. ls this the real difficulty? St. Bernard says that it is not. Out of the whole multitude of the spectators there is no eye more troublesome to a man than his own . He tells us that sooner or later people will take us for what we know ourselves to be. We are a trouble to ourselves because you and l and only you and I know what we are and what we want. There is no hidden secret place which we do not know. Others may not know our iealousy, and our pride and our ambition. We do. And so does God. We have through the corroding forces of unbelief almost forgotten that despite man's feeble love for God, God loves man beyond measure. God is so mindful of us. When St. Bernard says that there is no eye more troublesome to a man than his own, doesn't he really mean that every man in one way or another knows in his heart of hearts that this is God's world and that his great role on the big stage is to live as the son of God with all the burning intensity and understanding that lies within him. If you will not serve God there will be trouble in your life and the life of the world. Treason against the Maker of the universe is no lighter matter than treason against the state. St. Bernard speaks plainly. But over and beyond this straightforward observa- tion, we know that as one man reminds us he was a singer. He could never express fully in praise and life the joy that welled up within him and yet he wrote and spoke with magnificence. Those who lived around him and those who lived after him have seen in him some of that peace and joy which passes man's understanding, the ioy and happiness which comes from God alone. V God grant that you, who this year leave our school to take unto yourselves the greater responsibilities of manhood, may forever know what it is to be a singer. God grant that wherever you may go, whatever you may do, you may know His peace. l5l