So just an announcement or two before Father Michael begins. This is the first time we're together since I'm back from the trip. I bring greetings, first of all, to Father Jensen in Vancouver. He's healthy and happy and continuing on in a certain way of life, very zealously. And we have some greetings to all of you. And Father Mitsu also has very warm memories. He's here with us. He invites me to bring his greetings to each of you and to all the brothers there. Finally, at a council meeting, I gave my report. trip there and Steve added ten minutes of the meeting, so I don't have much to add.

[01:02]

Too bad, except to say that they all do want to be remembered to you and appreciate the support that you've received from us up to now. reader, and you are becoming eventually a deacon this summer. We hope that you'll be already a deacon in August. So yes, Institute of Persecutory Elements, AgLife. And it's a speech story. So Father Michael is known, I think, to practically everyone here.

[02:04]

This is his third time here. And he'll be with us these days talking about St. Bernard and the year that we're commemorating the 900th anniversary of his birth. So we're very happy to welcome you here and appreciate you coming as far as New York. You've been on the boat for several months now. I'll see if I can disengage myself from them. Much more comfortable. One of the things that I notice when I'm moving around and talking to monks, and even more surprisingly to nuns, is that There are a lot of people, when you come to speak about St Bernard, who put their arms in their sleeves and look at their knees and endure what you have to say with good grace, especially if you spice it with a few jokes.

[03:12]

But there's one thing that they are quite determined is that nobody, but nobody, is going to get them to read the man. And if you address this kind of preoccupation, well, it all comes tumbling out. It appears that either of their own lofty mystical ambitions as novices, or because they got it for Lenten reading, they did read St Bernard once, and got as far as the 27th sermon on the Song of Songs, and that was it. That was enough for at least three lifetimes and they've never actually been back since. That's one scenario. Another is that they had a novice master or an abbot or somebody in the community who was so enthusiastic about St. Bernard that it was enough to put the rest of the community off for life.

[04:15]

You know, I've been in one community in particular where this is the case, and it was there I was coming in to talk in favour of the bubonic plague or something. And several people came to see me on the first day and said, well listen, we're not going to be, you know... So, the point I'm trying to make, I suppose, is there is a bit of a problem. It's all very well to be quite pleased about St Bernard being a saint and all that, and you get a halfway decent meal on the 20th of August, and this year, with a bit of luck, it'll be better than ever. But the question we've got to ask ourselves is, do we read him? How do we read him? Why do we read him? And all those kind of things that he himself would ask. Because there really is a problem. And if there's not a problem, there's a problem, if you know what I mean. We should experience a certain degree of difficulty in reading somebody like Bernard.

[05:21]

It's the most normal thing in the world. And it's one of these, I won't say it's a sophisticated taste, but it's a taste for which we need something by way of education to be able to appreciate it. And it helps also if you, some people, some personalities tend to appreciate him more than others. I'd like just to begin with my celebrated theory of filtration. that I suppose you all know how water is filtered, that ordinary water comes in the top, river water or whatever, and you have a series of filters, each of a different size, which take out a different sort of dirt out of the water. And so that by the time the water comes out, it's clean.

[06:27]

And what's really happened to Bernard is that the real man, the flesh and blood human being, has been put through a process of filtration. And what comes out of the other end is not only clean, but also sterile. And not only sterile, but in fact the other thing that water does, it not only takes out the dirt, but it also decreases the volume. So that at the other end you get a bit of a drip, huh? And so, for a lot of us, when we first start reading Bernard, if we're not these kind of weird people, like myself, of whom there's a kind of instant rapport, most of us, it seems, have to work pretty hard to try and say, what was this character? Who was this character that people were so enchanted by in the 12th century, who had such a following?

[07:34]

we'll say for our own purposes, among monks of the 12th century, whose works have been copied and printed and distributed for centuries after his death. I don't suppose there's anybody here, is there, that intends celebrating his ninth centenary of his birth. Not just yet at any rate, but most of us will be well and truly forgotten Yet, not only is Bernard remembered to some extent because 900 years after his death, his own monastery is remembered, a whole lot of other people are more or less remembered because of him. And so I think one of the things that we've got to do is when we begin to evaluate Bernard, evaluate, you know, we've been in three weeks and already we're saying whether Bernard is completely sound, whether it comes to monastic values, you know, we do this sort of thing. But when we evaluate him, it's important that we don't start looking at the drip.

[08:37]

But that somehow or other we try to penetrate beyond these various filters to understand something about the man himself and how it is that we can make some contact with the man in order to make contact with his doctrine and so forth. And that's a very complex kind of task and I'm not going to look at all of it today. or even during these days, I want to get on eventually to his own spiritual doctrine. But first of all to say that it's quite impossible to appreciate the spiritual doctrine of Bernard in isolation from the personality, in isolation from the concrete man who was the source of the doctrine. Bernard was very influenced by Marshall McLuhan and It's not quite the medium as the message. Well, the message is reasonably important, but the whole thing was the actual, the whole package of Bernard, the man, his impact, his style, and the message.

[09:48]

Now, if we come along with our fussy little dustpans and start trying to sweep up just the message and to lead the rest astray, as if to say, well, you can wait outside, we'll read it, what you have to say in here. We're going to miss a whole lot, because in Bernard, a lot of the important impact of his work is not a matter of content, which, to be perfectly honest, apart from two points that I can count, is completely standard material. People who find brilliant originalities in Bernard are people who don't know contemporary literature in the 12th century. In general, there are only two points, as far as I can see, that are somewhat original in Bernard. In general, he just took what was fairly commonplace, or at least common, and made a fireworks display out of it, was able to sell it. He was in marketing rather than production. Not to say that he didn't experience it deeply, not to say that he didn't think these things deeply, but he put his own personal imprint on this doctrine in such a way that the two were married without any possibility of having recourse to divorce.

[11:12]

It's impossible to separate Bernard's own style and personality and the times in which he lived from his doctrine. And I'm not going to repeat here what I've said in another place about his personality and so forth, but we do really need to get to know what sort of guy he was. in order to be able to appreciate his doctrine. We also need to know something about the times in which he lived. The 12th century were quite extraordinary times. A time of great social ferment. And many of the things, for example, which the famous Cistercian propaganda machine attributes to the Cistercian order were in fact general to not only orders, but to the whole of society. All of societies in the... 12th century they had a population explosion and the whole of society was moving out to the frontiers, was breaking out of the cities.

[12:20]

And obviously it was a bit like the American West in the 19th century, go West young man kind of thing. People were moving out, obviously it was the younger guys who were doing that. particularly younger sons of families, the less settled in existing patterns. They were moving out to the frontiers, starting up a new form of life, which was somewhat rugged, which was somewhat demanding, but which brought out all sorts of inventive skills and levels of creativity as time went by. And it's only in the context of this social ferment that we can really appreciate what the Cistercian reform was doing, which was simply mirroring what was taking place in society as a whole. And it's only within that general context of a very exciting time in which to live that we can begin to appreciate something of Bernard, Bernard's own impact on his contemporaries, the fact that he was one of the exciting things that was floating about,

[13:22]

and also to appreciate the kind of special quality, the special dimension that this gives to his writings. I don't think I'll say anything more about that at this time, because we'll be coming up, when we're talking about some of the elements of his spiritual doctrine, some of these things will come up. A lot of Bernard's agenda was not dictated by an interior logic of his own. I have this message that he wanted to speak, but rather was dictated by what was in the minds of his audience, so to speak. was dictated by what they needed to hear and partly by what they wanted to hear. So a lot of the themes of Bernard's writings were very acceptable in general to his contemporaries. Not that his doctrine was completely predictable, but that he spoke about the things in which they're interested. In Australia, the Morris brothers every year run a

[14:26]

run a kind of a summer program for people that have left school four or five years ago. Generally, one of the aims that they have is to reconcile them to a more worthy face of the church than they are accustomed to, so they usually bring out a distinguished church figure like Cardinal Hume or Hilda Camara or Cardinal Arntz of Brazil. some fairly prominent official church person, but also the way that they get them in is not by advertising, we're going to have a week on drunkenness or anything like that. because they'd only get about three people that would come to that, but they tap into issues which the young people are interested to, like the environment, the question of social justice, for example, and particularly things like social justice with regard to Aboriginals.

[15:39]

or elements like that in which there's already an existing interest. And so they come flocking by the hundreds to a fairly demanding program. But once they get them there, they kind of lock the doors and they can't get out, morally speaking. But the thing is that they don't just tell them what they want to hear. but they tell them what they need to hear. Not only about this thing, but it's more about a whole philosophy of life in general. It's more about an experience of the church, an experience of the relevance of the gospel and all these kind of things. They come with one interest, they come with one issue, but they're exposed immediately to the whole. In other words, it's a real process of education because they're forced to break out of their own boundaries. And this is partly what Bernard did. you know, caught his fish first and then began to cook it. First of all, you know, you get people's interest, you address yourself to concerns which they already have, and then

[16:48]

you relocate these concerns in an ever-widening circle of meaning, an ever-widening frame of reference, so that then they're able to see their concerns as part of a more global thing, and you're really educating them. Instead of coming along with your own briefcase full of specific agendas which you want to sell to them, you see what they want to hear and start from there. And that's really the key to St. Bernard's influence in his own age, is that he was a contemporary person. and that he began at the point of their interest. And one of the programs I've been offering this time, which we're not doing here, is a study of the parables, which are the most marvelous pieces of spiritual doctrine in Bernard. It's easy as pie to understand because they're simple stories, exciting stories, stories told with a real emotion. If you can buy yourself a good reader, you can really feel that people are being stirred by these stories.

[17:52]

And yet stories which are so painless to swallow, yet which have very solid and even surprising spiritual doctrine in them. In other words, the success of Bernard was that he didn't speak down to people, but he spoke to them. He spoke to them where they were themselves. Spoke to where they were at, to use an unlovely expression. And that he was secure enough of himself to simply remain where he was and to build a bridge to where they were so that some communication could take place. What I'd like to do this morning, mainly by way of introduction, is just to look at some qualities of his writing. And there's no doubt that he was an excellent writer. Or we could say his writing went in three phases. He was a competent writer. which is much more difficult in those days than these days, which means more than you can scratch a hen's goose feather across papyrus or paper or vellum, whatever it might have been.

[19:04]

But he was a competent writer, which meant he knew all the rules of the genre, and it was very important in those days to write according to certain rules or preconceptions or expectations. But beyond that, his writing also had the quality of excellence. In other words, there would have been thousands of competent writers. There may have been scores of excellent writers. But that was the second level. He undoubtedly had an excellent literary style. And it's one of the kind of puzzles of history. Where on earth did he get it? I mean, we know he went to school and people make wise statements about it must have been a very good school, but there's been no other products from the school. You know, if it were a good school, generally you get a whole crew of people who write well, but there's been no others came from the school of Saint-Vau.

[20:08]

And yet, where did Bernard get it from? It must have been in his genes somewhere, or his own sort of quality of genius. But even beyond excellence, what really made him spectacular I think I suppose it's the same sort of thing that we find in Merton, is that beyond the quality of being able to write Latin, that gets 10 out of 10 as an excellent piece of prose. He had the capacity to communicate himself. so that the readers not only knew his message, but also felt that they knew him. And not only that they knew him, that they had him for a friend, or to go a little step further, which demonstrates that he was a spiritual master, that they believed that he was conscious of their specific situation, spiritually, and that was speaking to it. In other words, they could pick up one of his writings, so to speak, and look at it and say, gee, you know, he knows all about me.

[21:17]

I wonder who told him. And to feel that here is somebody who is revealing himself and who is really speaking to a very profound part of me. I think this is the quality that really makes Bernard unique in his age. You can compare a passage of Bernard with Peter of Seville, or Peter the Venerable, or Herbert of Torres, or something like that, and you can compare the language. What is completely different is this quality that one is actually meeting a rather real sort of human being. a fairly spectacular human being, but there's a real meeting going on, and it's not only a one-way street like television. You can sit in front of it and say, gee, isn't he wonderful? But this sort of sense that in some senses he understands my position. Here is someone at last who knows where I'm at. And I suggest if you need some kind of analogy to help you to get the point that the analogy with Merton is usually a good one.

[22:25]

You know, when he died, there were a lot of strange people all over the world who felt they'd lost a friend, although they'd never met him, although they'd never graced the inside of a church in the last 40 years or anything like that. But somehow or other, they felt that they were understood by him. And this is why they bought his books. And Bernard was more or less the same as that. But this is all, I'm asking you to some extent to take this on faith, that Bernard was such a great spiritual teacher and all this kind of thing, because perhaps when we open the book we find ourselves repelled by it, or we say, what's all this crap, you know, you're going on and on and on and on. And we go and, you know, go back to the comics, which... You know, it may not be too profound, but at least I can understand them and they don't go on and on about lilies and things like that. So the question is how do I read Bernard? You know, how can I approach him?

[23:31]

How can I approach him at a level which is likely to feed my spiritual life as distinct from simply cultivate my historical interests or get me a ticket on the speaking circuit for the next centenary or whatever it may be. But how can I read Bernard in such a way that I can find myself there, that I can deepen my own spiritual life. Not just get information about that. You get lots of books here. You get information about players of our time and so forth. You learn a lot from that. But this is sort of not outside the information, but information about our own sort of what's going on in our own spiritual gut. That's the question. Now, thank God I'm speaking in English. I had to speak in French last week and it mucked it all up. There are five aspects of Bernard's writings, conveniently beginning with A, B, C, D, E, and I don't know any words beginning with F, so that's all right.

[24:37]

So there are five qualities of his writings, and what's more important is what's on the other side of the fence. And what's on the other side of the fence is if these are the qualities of his writing, this is what he's put into his books and so forth, then my reading of them needs to keep pace with them. I can also therefore speak about five qualities of reading. which need to be done. And if I don't do them, I mean, if I'm correct on this side, if this is what Bernard is actually, this is the sort of writing he's engaged in, then if I don't read him in such a way to be able to capitalize on the content and the style that he has, then I'll go astray. Then I'll reach a dead end. Then I won't get any profit out of it at all. I won't understand

[25:38]

either Bernard's spiritual doctrine or Bernard himself as a spiritual teacher, the way that he did it. The first thing that I'd like to look at is the fact that his writing must be considered to be artistic. There's another word with an A, it's aesthetic. Always get confused. That's the left, and that's the right, and then it's the left. So it's right brain, three R's theology we need. With regard to Bernard, it's not the sort of stuff that you're going to have to read as though it were a list of parts for a lawnmower. It's not the kind of reading that we do if we needed to wonder whether we have leprosy or tinea. It's not the kind of reading we do to find information about Goethe or Shakespeare or anything like that.

[26:45]

But it's very specific. It itself is a work of art. And I think this kind of demands of us a bit of a revision of some of our presuppositions about Bernard. That most of his writings are good. Some of them, many of them are excellent, and a surprising proportion of them can only be regarded as very highly aesthetic writings. Which means that we approach them in a special way. Let's just think a little bit about art. I remember a friend of mine was in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam on one occasion and one of your compatriots turned up. Not only turned up, but bumped into him in a corridor. He was running through the museum. And he said, where's the night watch?

[27:46]

You know, the big painting by Rembrandt of the night watch. Where's the night watch? Where's the night watch? I've got a taxi double parked, and I want to see it before I go to the airport. And he said, it's just around the corner. And so he kept on running. He got to the night watch. He looked at it for about 10 seconds, and then he ran off to his taxi and went home again. to the airport, presumably, if he wasn't struck dead on the way. But the point is, he had seen the night watch. Where were you last week? I was in Amsterdam. Did you go to the Rijksmuseum? I did. Did you see the night watch? I did. Next question. In other words, there is this kind of tendency, well, I mean, it's the archetypal touristy tourist, isn't it, to tick things off a list. But a work of art, you can't just simply stick your head around a corner and hope to get any kind of charge out of it, to be moved emotionally, much less to have your worldview shattered by it.

[28:52]

But rather, the only way that you can do it, and a few modern galleries do do it, is they provide you with a seat. You can just sit in front of a great painting. And you can spend an hour or two hours there if you like. Not, well, what are you doing? Are you listening to the inane comments of people who've walked past? That's one thing you're doing, I must admit. But you're also just simply exposing yourself to whatever comes. You're not saying, I will try and determine whether this is Flemish art of the 14th century or Picasso. I have certain strict ways of doing this, so I'm very clever, I can work this out. You're not trying to reach little conclusions or to value the painting. You're just saying, talk to me. You're just sitting there and allowing it to shine on you, allowing it to go in, allowing yourself, and this is the key word, to become spellbound, to be cast under a spell by it, to just enjoy it, to, we'll use a word here that I hope I remember, to be somewhat passive before it.

[30:08]

Let's take another example because I think it's important that we recognize that we are talking here about different skills. A piece of music, if you happen upon some Shostakovich or Katchaturian, for example, that you're not particularly familiar with and not even familiar with the style, Your first reaction is just to dismiss it and listen to something that's familiar, like the Blue Danube or whatever it might be. Something that you know well and follows familiar rhythms and tells you what you want to know. Something that doesn't challenge you. And yet, if your whole life is a tape recorder and on a radio, then you may live a very self-assured kind of life, but you're never exposed to anything that's new. You never stretch. Your own musical horizons always remain. We had a brother who died a couple of years ago, but he was an endless, a bottomless pit of songs of the 40s.

[31:15]

But, you know, it was like a time warp when you went down to the mechanic's shop. You'd be somewhere over the rainbow and all this kind of stuff that he'd always be singing or whistling, which only demonstrates just how ineffectual 40 years of Chapter of Faults are, because he must have been rebuked about 133,000 times for whistling, but he never did stop. And it was always the same things. And Tom Kevin used to claim that he knew what sort of mood he was in by the particular songs. He said he had a whole gradation. If he was singing some, he was in a good mood. And others, although the songs sounded all right, were really a warning signal, keep away. But, I mean, that's the danger, that we become locked in our own little preoccupations. And it's like these people that start, the first they start reading the book from the end to see if their own name is mentioned in the index, you know, and if it is, they only kind of look up their own name or perhaps their own problem in a book.

[32:22]

And they never really expose themselves to anybody's thought as a whole, but they want to control what comes to them. And that's just the best way to stop growing. You know, if you want to stay in your present clothes and be what you are in 40 years' time, well, control your input. And then there's no surprise, there's no possibility of change, because change doesn't so much come from just grabbing things from outside, but discovering in our own selves what is mirrored in our attraction to things outside. So a new piece of music, for example, demands fundamentally that we take time to sit with it and allow ourselves progressively to recognize it so that we're able to dance along with it, in a sense, that we are able to conform ourselves with it. That word, I suppose you're all thinking of the Sanskrit translation, aren't you? That word for conformity is a very important one.

[33:24]

We're going to be talking more about it later on. But the thing, the key to a work of art is this ability to be conformed. If it's a work of art, it calls the shots. I just dance along, I just hum along. I go with my moods open and I sit in front of a picture and allow it to work on me. I remember once in Australia, one of our monumental follies was the purchase of Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles. But I happened to be passing by and spent an hour or two in a gallery that morning and there was a power failure. and all the lights went out and the emergency lights came on and so forth. But it was most interesting just to sit in front of a well-lit painting, for example, and all of a sudden all the lights go, for a while you can't see anything, and then gradually looking at something in twilight is completely different to seeing something in bright light.

[34:27]

But, you know, it's unanticipated and it has... But a painting or any work of art at all has a power of its own. Somebody gave us on permanent loan a very beautiful sculpture called the Anchor of the Dance, which is a whole... Nobody quite knows what it is in a sense. It's obviously a communitarian thing. It's a number of sort of figures around an anchor. It can also be regarded as Trinitarian. But the sculptor himself placed it, and it's placed in front of a shrub, and it hits you just as you come out from the church after the office. in our particular setup. And I remember, I've said to a number of people, I must look at that 15 times a day. And it's always different. I always see something different. And several other people in community have said the same, that it's just one of these things that it grabs you and twists you somehow, that makes you different.

[35:33]

Now, this is the kind of effect that art has on us, that art is a very specific kind of thing. It's a non-controlling thing. It's not the kind of knowledge of art or interest in art that enables you to buy pieces of art as an investment. But it's the kind of ability to be moved. Moved, eh? Very, very complex word, the word moved. It says, first of all, at the level of emotion, but it also has a very programmatic kind of practical daily behavior kind of things. You know, there are people who haven't moved since the year dot. Cardinal Nataviana's motto was Semper Idem, always the same. And there are a few monks and nuns, I think, who have the same one. But it's in other words, I will not be moved. I have my principles, you know. And so the whole business of what the hell is the use of reading anything or looking at anything if you won't be moved.

[36:40]

Movement starts at the level of emotion but eventually is expressed in life. The Sanskrit word that you're all probably thinking of is this word, temp. Wasn't it? Which means literally a mark on the stick, as in temperature, you know, that's the kind of thing. But it means more regularly a benchmark, something to be conformed to, something to be adapted to. One of the commonest things is a temple, for example. A template is another thing, you know, for drawing maps and things like that. You run your pencil around the template and it produces a copy. A temple is fundamentally a place on earth which reproduces the life in heaven. as in Stonehenge is an eminent example of that, reproducing the position of the heavenly bodies on earth.

[37:43]

And so in many of the Old Testament, Ezekiel kind of stuff, the thing is the temple must be built exactly as it has been shown to you. So the essence of a temple is that it's an area of earth which conforms to heavenly life. And so, the word we're going to look at is contemplative. Which means, it's a small c, contemplative. Contemplation is mainly a matter of, we'll see later on when we start talking about Bernard's mysticism, it's largely a matter of conformity of will. And when we talk about a contemplative reading, we don't mean you float three feet off the floor. That's only for more advanced people. But it means that we are contemplative. We cease to call the shots.

[38:45]

We are prepared to be spellbound. We are prepared to let the waves roll over us and our moods and our thoughts are controlled by it. Bernard, in one occasion, gives a little spiff on the divine office, which is very... And he absolutely condemns wicked people who are distracted during the office. And he lists various sorts of distractions. People who think silly thoughts, well, that's one class. And people who think busy thoughts, that's another class. And people who think holy thoughts, they're even worse than the rest of them. Yeah, because he says it's not your job to be thinking holy thoughts during the office. What you're doing is letting the text speak to you, being open. The whole purpose is not to carry in a sack full of holy thoughts and put them around you and sort of immerse yourself in your own pious world, but to be open to the Word of God and to what the Holy Spirit is saying to you at that time.

[39:51]

It's a very interesting kind of approach to the thing, that we even have to put our holy thoughts, our habitual holy thoughts, can be as obsessive as anything else, and we have to put them aside to allow the Holy Spirit to call the shots. So, it's a general pattern which he recognizes, but also to read Bernard's stuff, it has to be contemplative. In other words, the people don't like I don't know why. It's probably very significant that they don't like. There's the word passive. Oh, no, no, no. Passive ain't anything, you know. But it means that we are prepared to be non-active. We are prepared to be responsive, if you want a more respectable word. We are prepared to be receptive. And so, okay, Bernard wrote artistic. That helps if you read in Latin, of course. But fundamentally, we need to approach him as we would read Homer, for example, in one sense, that it's not a historical work, it's not a novel, but it's a work of great artistry.

[41:03]

And we'll never get on to the specific level of why people have gone on reading the Iliad unless we realize that this is art, this is something you can lean back and enjoy. lean back and allow oneself to be conformed to it. So we approach Bernard as an artist. We approach his writings as an artist. And if we don't do that, we're liable to get all destroyed. We can come off with an arm full of good thoughts and pious quotations and interesting historical anecdotes. But the whole purpose of reading Bernard and why people get profit out of him, why I get profit out of him and how I get profit out of him, is simply by letting myself drift, which is very easy for me. Letting myself float. In other words, allowing it to speak to me. Allowing the text to jump up and punch me in the face. allowing it to control me, not me to control it.

[42:08]

I simply open the book, I simply begin the reading, the rest I try to keep myself attentive, I try to keep myself responsive, passive, contemplative, willing to be conformed, willing to follow where he leads. The second, B is for behavioral, with a U. Just to maintain my identity, huh? It's a behavioral reading. In other words, Bernard completely always comes down to the point that I'm speaking about morals here. Moralita alta, he would say. In other words, not morality, but morals. Which is to say, he's interested in our behavior. Interested in the way that we act. Interested in the bottom line, in other words. Okay, you can have all sorts of wonderful thoughts and half the crazies in the world do.

[43:10]

But the point is, how do you act? And what's your face like, for example? When he's talking about growing in charity. Well, you know, one of the key things is your face. What kind of image, what kind of love are you presenting to others by what's going on in your face? And he said, you can have all the words in the world, but your face is better and your actions are even better still. So what he's really concerned with is not so much giving us information, not so much filling in the time during which he has to preach a sermon, not so much in showing off his own skill, although when he was younger he liked to do that, but mainly in changing our way of life. I mean, how would you go with a speaker who comes in and sits down here and looks through his glasses and says, well, dear brethren, the thing that is most necessary in this community is that you change absolutely everything.

[44:15]

You must have a radical change of life. Can't say that to women, of course, but you must change everything. You know, you'd feel all the passive aggression, you know, just Well, in a sense, that's what Bernard is saying to us. If you're not willing to change, if you're not willing to think about changing everything, if you're not willing to have some question marks flung at all your principles and all your presupposition, what the hell is the use of reading? If you're not willing to start opening your behavior to say, perhaps there is a more evangelical way of living. Perhaps there is a more positive, less ambiguous way of living the gospel than I am living it at the moment. If you don't want to consider that possibility, then you're wasting your time reading Bernard. Because all he was interested in was getting our behavior online with the gospels. getting our behavior to be an object of conformity, not, as we'll see later on, not with a particular verse in the Gospels, which is my favorite, and so I live according to this verse, but with the totality of the Gospels.

[45:27]

He will say that one virtue is the most dangerous thing we can possibly have. Two is even worse. We need to have a whole lot of them. Because the danger is that we so congratulate ourselves with having one virtue that it becomes a vice in itself. And virtue exaggerated is vice. The only way that virtue can be real virtue is when we have the totality of virtues or complementary virtues. So he's really interested in behavior here. And if you want to know how to read Bernard, well, there needs to be a willingness to be converted. I've already been converted, I hear somebody saying. 15 times and it hasn't done me any good. But this willingness to be addressed, the willingness to be challenged, the willingness to be invited to transcend ourselves, if you like $15 language.

[46:34]

That sounds a bit flasher. You could have a weekend on self-transcendence and everybody would trot along. If you had it on a weekend on moral improvement, how many would you get? But it's more or less the same. He's interested in upgrading your rotten life. It's as simple as that. And if you don't, there'll be trouble. And so if you're not willing to be upgraded, if you're not willing to do something about it, then you're wasting your time reading it. It's also corporate writing. I've already mentioned the fact that Bernard had very few original thoughts and actually apologised on a couple of occasions when he offered his own interpretations of things. He wasn't trying to establish a new theology, a new school of Bernardine theology, but he was simply trying to represent, to make present the tradition of the church in as lively a way as possible.

[47:43]

And you know that lively means live. It's the opposite of dead. A less dead way than tradition normally is. That means making tradition sparkle somewhat. Margaret Mead said that in her book on the general... When the past, when the tradition doesn't simply become coercive, doesn't simply become a straitjacket, but becomes something that helps us to understand ourselves, then you get the generation gap disappearing. And for a lot of people we have to say that tradition can be summarized in one word. No. The tradition is something that won't let us do what we think should be done. And I remember getting a letter from a nun of the order at one stage in which she was sounding off about something. And she said, in the beginning was the word and the word was no. And some people, that's their vision of tradition.

[48:49]

Tradition, the only thing that tradition ever does is say no. And that's why there's a, that's perhaps a misperception, but it is a perception. And so that's why we can understand what Margaret Mead is saying, that the past needs to become instrumental. It needs to contribute something to the present. It needs to help us face the future and not merely coerce it. We've always done it this way, brother. Have you ever heard that phrase? This is the way we've done it. This is the way we do it here. There are all sorts of variations on that, but that's coerciveness. And that only tends to drive a wedge between the present and the past. Whereas what we need to do is something about what Bernard was able to do brilliantly, is to make the past come alive, to make the tradition come alive, and to sparkle, to serve the present generation and also to contribute in going towards the future.

[49:52]

And so it's a whole question of a corporate experience which is inclusive of the whole faith of the church and which demands of us a kind of willingness for union, a desire to be united, a desire, I'm going to put this very, very rudely as I normally do, a desire to merge. You know, I know that's not a very good word, but it's a desire not to be distinctive. A desire, well, I don't want to use a silly word, singular, but the desire just to enjoy communion with the great mystery of our humanity and of the church, if there's any difference between that. To enjoy, to be merged, and not to be wanting to stand out all the time. Those of you who are a bit longer than the tooth will probably remember the old scholastic distinction between the individual and the person.

[51:02]

The individual is that which is distinguished from others. The person is that which has the capacity to relate to others. And you can say, are you an individual or are you a person? Are you a bridge builder or are you a wall builder? To use an image. Does most of your efforts, where do you put your bricks? Do you make bridges with them or do you make walls with them? If you make bridges with them, no matter, then you're a person. If you make walls with them, no matter what press releases you give out about yourself, then you're just simply an individual. You haven't started to exist as a person. And I think there's something here. I find it hard to express what I'm trying to say, perhaps because I don't understand it clearly. Part of it is mixed up with an axiom I remember reading in Carl Rogers once, that that which is most personal is also most universal. that if we really get down to our own depths, then there we find the basis to experience a great sense of communion with everybody else.

[52:16]

And the person who lives a superficial life, who hasn't gone down to the depths, is the person who says, well, thank God I'm not one of those. I won't be mentioned. because there might be somebody here who is a German or a Seventh-day Adventist or something like that and I might offend them. But, you know, when we say, thank God I'm not a, we're betraying a lack of self-knowledge. We could say with the poet Terence Hermanum, I'm a human being and nothing that is human do I consider alien from myself. And this is the kind of tendency that was common in Middle Ages, 16th century, when on the 1st of January they woke up and they found themselves all individualists. Around that time, you know, the separation of body and, you know, the loss of body sense, separation, the kind of dualism that emerged at that time, and its ramifications on the

[53:18]

on the body corporate, the emphasis on individual consciousness that's distinct from being. Middle Ages were all on being, on that kind of thing, objectivity. 16th century tended more towards individual consciousness, subjectivity and so forth, which had a very isolated, insulating, wall-building effect on people's lives. And so it can sometimes be very hard for us to go back to the 12th century and to find out, you know, how they conceived an individual and community. But, we'll have a bash later on, but it's important in reading Bernard that we recognize that this is not a celebration of individuality, but a celebration of communion. And to read him we have to be, in some senses, to desire not to lose our individual features in a kind of nirvana type of a featureless sort of way, but through melding or merging or communing with other persons.

[54:28]

The fourth quality that we find in Bernard, that it seems to me is important, is that his writing is unabashedly devotional. Most of it. And it has a great power, I think, which is to say it leads us to prayer. We must be willing to be led to prayer. I remember when I was doing my thesis on Donut, which occupied a lot of my spare time for about three years, I would be reading something for a technical purpose, you know, to find out how many adverbs are used in a sentence or something, and inevitably, as always happens with me, I'd start reading something on the opposite page or the page afterwards or whatever. But, you know, even though I was in the wrong space for prayer, in a sense, I, you know, I was counting up things or doing something fairly technical, The power of what he writes, you know, I don't say that I rose three feet above the floor, it was more like two feet, but it was a very powerful invitation to pray even in unlikely circumstances.

[55:45]

I think that particularly his monastic writings have a very strong capacity to lead us to prayer, even though when we may commence to read them, we don't have much intention of it. But we are led, we are struck dumb, as it were, by something which, and in that process, we find our own spirits rising in prayer. It's quite important, it seems to me, that in reading Bernard, we don't go with a search for knowledge or a search for novelty or whatever it may be, but we do really try to approach him in the kind of space in which prayer will be facilitated. Because the thing is, we'll only really understand the man when we allow him to work upon us. E is for experiential. There'll be exam tonight, we'll ask you what A, B, C, D, E means, and woe betide, as they used to say, I never knew what that meant, but woe betide anybody who doesn't know.

[56:59]

The experiential quality of Bernard's writings. Today we are reading in the book of experience. We're not talking about all these dusty old books around here. We're talking about the book which is your own experience. And so you better follow along in your own experience. So there's a very Bultmanian type of hermeneutic. that he's offering to us. He's telling us that when we read the Word of God, take for granted that it is already contained within our own hearts. When we read it, we need to be attentive to what our own experience is telling us. So that, to some extent, our reading, or any reading, and specifically the same applies to himself, to read Bernard we need to say, this is a monk who had, for all his external contortions, who had an excellent experience of most of the things in monastic life that we ourselves encounter.

[58:09]

And so, it's important for us to not only read the book, but to also read our experience, to bring our experience into play, to allow ourselves to recapitulate our lives. And Bernard will often say that. Now, he's getting stirred up about something, one of his Advent sermons, and he's saying, oh, I think it was about people wasting all of Advent preparing the Christmas meal. And then he's exaggerating, of course, so that everybody feels comfortable, because when he exaggerates, everybody leans back and says, well, at least I'm not that bad. But then he says, look at yourselves. He said, why did you come here? You know, what brought you here? You know, you had a reasonably decent life before this. You don't need a monastery to be happy. Now, what was it that comes here? So he's saying, get into contact with this spiritual principle which is at the basis of your own vocation.

[59:13]

Get into contact with that. And then look at that and say, does that lead you to this sort of conduct or to another sort of conduct? In other words, he's saying, don't listen to me. But get into contact with your own, with that reality, that spiritual reality within yourself and let it guide you, let it shape you. Let it do with thee whatsoever it wilt, as the cloud of unknowing says. Get into contact with that thing, with that odd reality within and then see what it, see what data it has for you. See what it has to say about the way you're living at the moment, about the way that you pray. And he does this repeatedly, get into contact, you know, invite people to not only to meditate on the mysteries of the faith, for example, or the liturgical year, but also to see how these mysteries are retold are experienced in their own lives.

[60:15]

And it's a very, very traditional kind of thing, that the events of Scripture are mirrors, as Saint Athanasius said, mirrors of what's going on in our own heart. So they're experiential. Bernard's writings are experiential, as he himself considered all monastic writings and readings to be, and so we read them with, I'm going to put the word recapitulate, for want of a better one, We read them in the light of our own experience. We remember, we reminisce about our experience and bring it to play. We don't simply read about how God worked in the past or what Bernard is saying how God worked, but we remember how he worked with us as well. Remember, it's a very deuteronomic kind of a theme. Reminiscing, reviewing, a sapiential review of our own life. Five qualities to finish with.

[61:21]

Five qualities of Bernard's writing. five elements of our response. And really, I think that you can see that it probably needs a bit of work in one area or another if we're going to get to build up the sort of response which will open us to reading Bernard on the level at which he's writing. That's the first thing. Then secondly, becoming a friend of Bernard. And thirdly, becoming something of a fanatic. But we need to encounter, he's kind of an addictive after a while. We need first of all to recognize that perhaps we have to block out an approach to make sure that we penetrate some of these filters. Some of them are more technical, they're historical sort of things, but at least some of them come from the way that we read him.

[62:22]

We read him not quite knowing what to expect, and as a result we sometimes impose expectations on the reading which are unrealistic. But we have to remember that it's a work of art that demands of us that we be quiet, contemplative, passive, that we allow ourselves to dance in tune with his music, If we want to play our own, we can do it at another time, but fundamentally to allow ourselves to be conformed, to be willing to be challenged at the level of behavior, not only by what's written, but by the impact that which this has in our own consciences. to recognize that it really is an exercise in bridge building and reconciliation and forgiveness and the recognition that truth is a corporate reality. That I will find others by being present to my own personal center and that by being present to others I will also find my personal center.

[63:30]

It's a bit of six of one and half a dozen of the others. We need to read with a willingness to be led to prayer, and we need to read with a willingness to engage our own experience and so forth. But according to the clock on the wall, if it's accurate, that signals us time up. And I don't know what you like to do about questions here, but we can work that out later. But I guess after an hour on a Sunday morning, most people want to be off. Okay, thanks. Not yet. Yeah.

[64:15]

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