start immediately without any further explanation for my presence here. I say that I was asked to give some lectures and Cistercian Fathers give a sort of introduction to the study of our fathers in the American region. We have a secretary for ongoing education or something like that, and so they ask some I was trying to organize some studies, and instead of sending students outside monasteries, I found it was more prudent, which is not very absolutely certain, to send the teacher outside monasteries. So the teachers are going around

[01:04]

And Fr. Edmund Mickes, who is a historian of the Cistercian Fathers, started and I went last spring in the west monasteries and this time in the east coast monasteries. And since I was in this part of the country and that Fr. Martin sometimes asked me to come and being with you, I accepted and I was very glad and I am certainly very glad to be here. We have a booklet, perhaps it would be interesting to explain first of all what this booklet means. We are not going to read all that here together. It's just an idea. I want to have some text that you would have some text in hand so that I could just to give quotation, long quotation, and read together passages of important text, actually basic text, I think, of St.

[02:14]

Bernard, St. Hilary of Riveau, and one sermon of Gary Covigny. And you will see it's quite easy. And, you know, to not simply give quotations, which are very often misleading, I want to have the context and the result that you have this booklet which has been produced by HMSC. we shall read the text of the two basic treatises of Saint Bernard on the love of God and on the steps of humility. That's page 1, 8 and 9, 15. And tonight I just wanted to give a general introduction to the Sisters and Fathers in a very simple and general way. One of the reasons why people everywhere now in all monasteries find it necessary to go back to the sources, precisely because we have been, since the Council and since all the Argumento and adaptation and changes and all that,

[03:36]

Sometime now, we don't exactly, some people don't know where they are, where they stand. I don't know what you have done, but I suppose all the monastic order don't do the same thing. They've been very quick to change and drop things and adopt other things without a clear picture of the whole. And therefore, we have been, in a way, disrupting the harmony of our life, basically. What many people feel nowadays, you know, monasteries. Now, monasticism can be defined, and monasticism is something which has been always present in the West and even more in the East. But there is nothing, you cannot have monasticism without tradition.

[04:43]

Monasticism is not a revelation, it's not an invention of today, as some people would sometimes tend to do. Some kind of new monasticism, brand new. Everything which is new, of course, is improved, as we see on all the products in the kitchen. But it's not necessarily true for spiritual things. And there is nothing in our orders. You are Benedictine and we are Cistercian. And these are orders. We are very old, very ancient. There is no way for us to know what we are but through a reference to history and to the origin. And there is a great need to know what we are. Because if we don't know what we are, it's absolutely impossible to adopt things or to see what we need.

[05:55]

You have to know what you are. In scholastic terminology, you have to know what the substance is in order to know what accidents can be acceptable. And if you change the substance, then there is no way to know what we are. So that's a bit, in that idea that everywhere now we feel the need to go back to the sources, to the origin, to the founders of our order. Now when you study the history of monasticism, You can, well, you know, that monasticism has always consisted in reforming. We have all been reforming somehow, as well as Benedictine order, as the Cistercian order.

[06:58]

And reforming because I suppose there were deformations somehow. What we, every time, every century, want to try to find was precisely to recover to the very first idea. And after all, even in our time, if you are sincere and if you want to be monk, we are trying exactly what during all down the centuries monks have been trying to do, to be monk. And that is a very simple thing. And perhaps the best way to know what a monk is to read Rulus and Benedict, and eventually it can be summed up in two words, to see God. That's all. Now, to see God in a monastic way means

[08:02]

immediately setting an organization, main principle, separation from the world, society, a certain amount of silence, quiet, organization of the day, a balance of work, prayer, study, reading. After all, all the monastic orders, all the reforms and so on, have always been trying to find a balanced way for men in order to be able to give him the opportunity to seek God in complete sincerity and with the best means you could find in human condition and in the Church.

[09:11]

Also, all the Reformation down the century and various periods have always been very much determined by the time, by the civilization, by the culture of the time. and that also has to be clearly seen in order precisely to know what today we have to do. If we have to do exactly what our predecessors did when they tried to perform, to adopt, or to adapt their monasticism to the time, their own time, we have to know exactly also what is the requirements of our time. Sometimes I believe, I don't want to make generalization, but sometimes I feel that we have not started yet the argument, despite all the fuss we did, we haven't started yet.

[10:20]

Because we much too much think that the external things we need are satisfactory. And very often the mistakes we made, when you speak for institutions, was to think that Adaptation to the present time or form of the order had to be secularization, to be more in contact of the world, to do as everybody else, not to look conspicuous, strange, in the margin and all that. It was a feeling that we are going to be left, you see, and progress go on, essentially, and we've just been dropped in the margin as a sort of guilty bystanders.

[11:20]

This title I just mentioned is precisely a challenge, because Thomas Merton really wanted to be a bystander. In order to be very present to this time, as a monk. That's precisely the paradox. So perhaps that the real Giacometto is going to be in the future, perhaps I will not see it, but some younger will realize it, will be more modern man, men of his time, with not only the clothes, the jeans, but I mean, it's a mentality. Mentality has to change. You have to be thinking in the modern trends of seeing the universe.

[12:32]

How we see the world. That's most important. And that is only the young people will be supposed to be capable of doing that. But at the same time It will be an emphasis on a more drastic monastic life, more significant and perhaps more absolute. Otherwise, if we are not really what we should be, monks, we shall simply dissolve. And some are already dissolved. And they announced that 10 years then, well, all monasticism will be completely dissolved. There wouldn't be any monk left. So prepare yourself to find a career quickly. But that's not true.

[13:37]

That's not true. I am not a futurologist like Leclerc, but I'm sure that even if the monastic form we have today disappears, well, there will be something, somebody, something else. Because there will be always more men in any tradition or great religion who will feel the need to find a way of life which will be basically the same as it has always been from the very beginning of monastic life. It's very difficult to see the basic element. One is certainly the most important is the separation from the world in a very general meaning. Not that the world is bad, but that we want to find another way of living. because we want to be free from obligation and so on, and pressure and ties, simply because we want to be free to see God as the only occupation or the main occupation of our heart and of our soul.

[14:56]

Now, at any great renaissance, So very often at the time of renaissance, the spiritual life or monastic life takes another look. many more renaissance than we usually think. It's not only the 17th century renaissance, but the 12th century renaissance, and the Carolingian time renaissance, where we always... And we are perhaps in a time of renaissance today. Hopefully we are. But it's never been very clear When you are in a time of renaissance, what's going to happen? What is renaissance? It's coming, but we are in the growing process, and that is very painful for me, because we don't know what we are going to be.

[16:02]

Certainly there is a crisis in our world, which is quite comparable with the great crisis of the history of the past, the fall of the Roman Empire, the 10th century, or the time of the Formation. This is to say that one of the characteristics of a renaissance is that it forms a new idea of man. A new idea of man means also and chiefly a new idea of his relation with his fellow men and with God. The Renaissance of the 12th century has quite very definite characteristics. And it's good to give some since we are going to read authors of the 12th century.

[17:04]

It may be interesting to point out that historians, we have nothing to do with monasticism, but even with history of the church, say that two main characteristics of the 12th century mind of people, attitude of people, was where intense curiosity, intellectual curiosity, and that the authority was questioned. That makes us very close to the 12th century. This intense curiosity for new ways of life, new ideas, new forms of looking at the world or at the future. really effervescent time.

[18:06]

You know, those who know a bit history of the Church knows that in the way of theology, for instance, you have Abelardo starting, he's the first, he's said to be the first modern man starting this new theology, this new theology. And you have in architecture the beginning of the Gothic, which is a great revolution in building churches and in many other fields. And you have... And this idea of man is also always a new balance or a new equilibrium, way of connecting activity and contemplation. Those are the two main characteristics of man. So, ideas and activity.

[19:13]

And also, for monks, that means a new way of balancing, arranging, adapting the ascetic life and spiritual life. Now in this 12th century was therefore a time of changes in the social life too, very much so. The social and even economic life from feudalism to the first towns, first communes, and also the first university instead of the local cathedral church, first university. which is sort of breaking the parochialism and having a sort of more open world, exchange of ideas. It may be interesting to quote a text of Hans Selm of Avelberg.

[20:24]

It was a premonstration of the 12th century and it was a German and he was quite a famous author. And he just says something which could be found in a conservative Catholic paper of our day. Why are so many innovations in the church? Who wouldn't call the Christian religion, subject to so many diversity, destroyed by so many inventions, overturned by so many new laws and customs, tossed about amid so many rules and regulations, invented nearly every year? What is prohibited today as sacrilegious, suddenly is authorized as holy and salutary. So, say, it's been always the same thing.

[21:27]

Or changing, mutation, always had a reaction of this kind. One of the important traits of the anthropology of the 12th century with reference to men, you know, topology is always referring to men. Two main traits are the discovery or a new sense, a keener perception of liberty and conscience. And of course we can say that today there's a new also perception of what liberty and conscience means, especially in the phenomenology or the existentialism philosophy. Saint Anselm started that, Saint Anselm of Canterbury started this new idea or perception of the value of conscience, but the 12th century developed it very much.

[22:35]

Abelard's special value of personal. And when you speak of liberty and conscience, obviously you speak of a greater perception or notion of personality. The person began to be more aware of its liberty and its own value as person. And it's one of the reasons, probably, why the Cistercian monks wanted to have a certain amount of freedom in their organization. When we speak of structure today or establishment or constitution and all that, we tend to minimize the value of this legislative organization, external, social, organization of monasticism.

[23:44]

Well, it has great importance because it reflects the desire, the tendency of the time. And obviously a reform doesn't start by new laws, but new laws are immediately, quickly necessary. It's very interesting, for instance, to see Taizé. Taizé started just like that, just a sort of group of young Lutron monks, Lutron students of theology from Geneva. It's free, of course. They didn't want any rule, anything like that. Very, very quickly, in ten years' time, they had covered practically all the rules and the vows of the traditional monasticism. It's very typical.

[24:46]

I asked one day one of the brothers of Thésée to write me an article on the institution at Thésée. It was brother Pierre-Yves Emery, who has very good children, one of the first founders. So he wrote me an article. All the followers in the organization, the traditional way of monastic life has been discovered by these men who were not based on any tradition, only on the gospel. And he told me that when he showed his article to the prayer, he said, institution? What are you talking about institution? We don't want institution. Well, I say, read the article first before you say, we have all the institutions. It's done. It's too late.

[25:47]

They don't want to write anything, but they have the institutions. It's very strict. Obedience, celibacy, poverty, it's extremely strict, you see. Well, this is to say that from the 12th century, I'm not going to develop very much that, but they wanted to break away from the cloniac organization, which were very oppressive as a girl to be organization. And they wanted to be free, not to do anything they like, but precisely to be free to develop their own spirituality in a group of men, a real community, which would be free to develop it under the guidance of a master, and have a certain continuity. The community then became very autonomous.

[26:53]

Ito was a very autonomous community, and by the chart of charity they managed to to give to the houses which were immediately founded quickly the same autonomy by a system of visitation and of general shelter. There is no other authority in a monastery than the abbot. And it's the abbot who gives his own spirituality. He interprets the rule of Saint Benedict himself for his own community and in reaction of his local community, of actual presence, real monks, not in a sort of ideological theory. And then you have the control of hesitation and the general chapter. So you can just see that they wanted to have this feeling of respect, this

[27:59]

notion of personality. And Saint Bernard and Saint Hervé de Rivaux, great spiritual masters, would not have existed as auteurs, spiritual masters, if they had not this freedom of developing a school of spirituality with permanent stable community life. And I believe that it's absolutely, it's very important today. It's been going on for days. I don't know if I will be able to say something about that in general chapter. I'm not there as an abbot. But if I can say something, I will just try to do that. Because, you know, modern, I don't know how it is in this Benedictine order, but in modern system, we tend, again, to have sort of general or to refer to commissions or regional meetings and considering generally and all that.

[29:07]

So the local superior and the community, of course, because local superior cannot do anything without a responsive community and collaborating. The Heidi would be lost. and we would then have direction from the central authority and that would just be waste. A reform never came from the top or from a general chapter or from any organization. A reform as much as well as in the Benedictine or the Gauls or as in the Cistercian, the Trappe and so on, always started from one local community. You cannot reform an order. But you can start something with a community of united people, family, and a spiritual master. And that is possible. And then it spreads.

[30:07]

And then eventually the chapter is sued. That's good. Then make laws, make an institution and constitution. But it's always start from a local. real living community, inspired. I don't think the Holy Spirit inspires the crowd. Holy Spirit inspires men. living in unity, in charity. Yes, in the 12th century there was some ideas. In the In this whole movement of effervescence, of research, of thought, of movement of all kinds, there is something which is important to know, which is the creation of the 12th century, and it is called, in the history of literature, the virtuous love, l'amour courtois.

[31:15]

That is an invention of the 12th century. And it has some importance It is important to know that because this style, Roquecourtois, the Troubadour, has a direct influence on the style, and even more on the style, on the way of thinking of St. Bernard and his school. Now, if you want to read something Excellent on that. Can read C.S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love. It's the first chapter, which is titled Courtly Love. It gives you exactly the best thing that's been written. Now, the thing is that this kind of notion of love, the notion of love we have today when we speak of being in love, love which you see in the movies,

[32:21]

fiction, theater, romantic love, all that started in the 12th century. We are so much used to it that we cannot imagine that it was all the way before. Obviously, there are people who married before, but the question of being in love, like we speak of that, didn't exist. You can even today find the same thing. It was told that in India, if you ask a simple person, a man who has not been influenced by the Western civilization, somebody told me that it's a missionary of... Oh, I read it, I forgot. But if you ask him if he's in love with his wife, if he's still in love with his wife, he doesn't know what it means. He's kind to his wife, he gives her everything she wants, but the idea to be in love doesn't register and doesn't mean anything.

[33:30]

So it's very curious. This is courtly love, this is love in the head, you see. His romantic love was started by this very mysterious, people, scholars are still trying to find the origin and the first sources. The Arab influence is certainly also the Manichean or the Catas of the time. But the idea is that you are longing for a lady who is far away. And the farthest she is, the best. And the more you are longing for her. And that idea was easy to transpose in spiritual world. It's easy to transpose because love of a Christian is also for an object which is very far, an object of desire.

[34:38]

and remains of object design, never possessed God. And therefore, all the mystical message or mystical sermon of Saint Bernard the Canticle was inspired in its language by this this language of the Troubadour. After all, they were men of their time, they had usually 25, 30 years old and had been hearing all these songs and read all this literature. So, it's important to know that when you read the literature of Saint Bernard de Fortou, beware of this new sensitivity which is being suddenly used by these authors. One of the main difficulties for us, especially for young people, we train in critical knowledge of the scripture, critical reading of the scripture, is precisely the use of the scripture by the Cistercian fathers,

[35:49]

in terms of the past, the allegorical use of the scripture. This can be very, very difficult, very irritating, and sometimes forbidding. I've been sending a very long time to the young men before I accepted the way that they are not using scripture. Now, this has to be again understood in the way they were using the scripture or commanding the scripture in antiquity, in the Middle Ages. But, as you know, Fr. Ludwig Beck wrote a huge volume, a huge work of four volumes, Les Exerges Médiévales, Les Quatre Sens de l'Écriture, the Four Senses of Scripture. I don't know if anybody read that. I think there is an English resume of that title, The Essential of... I forget.

[36:57]

Now, this way of reading the scripture according to four senses was traditional in the church for 16th century. origin up to Erasmus and the Renaissance, even later it was the Fourth Census. So you have to know this technique. It was technique, it was a way of teaching. All the doctrine of the chair has been exposed, has been given, taught from origin, uneven, according to the Fourth Census. We may perhaps come to that sometime in a week. The language is a monastic language, which is traditional, patristic, and also liturgical. And then, during this week, reading the text, we shall especially be attentive to the anthropology, the anthropology of St.

[38:16]

Bernard, especially, what you could call a theological anthropology, anthropology of men directed to God, of course, in grace. I may perhaps introduce it just now in order to be a bit... start. Two main themes. First theme is the theme of love, which is St. Bernard is a theologian of love, Dr. Amoris. All his doctrine is based on the affectus, on passion in man, one of the most dynamic, I say the dynamic power in man, love, understood in a very general meaning. And the other theme or other main point of this doctrine is the doctrine of men created at the image and likeness of God.

[39:24]

And the two are very much related, and we shall probably see that in the text. I shall try to see the actuality of this theology, not in order to make them, make Saint Bernard a man of the 20th century. That's not at all. That would be very wrong. But there is in history sometime affinity between two periods. And as we gather the 12th century and the 20th century, there is quite a number of affinities of perhaps due to this drastic change in society, way of living, and especially a way of looking at the world, sort of phenomenology, or you see the world, or you see reality, or you see the whole destiny of man.

[40:27]

the praise of man in the cosmos and so on. And one of these affinity between 12th century and old century is the notion of experience. See, and best definition I know of the Cistercian, or St. Bernard, theology, or spirituality, is in definition very short, three lines. In the dictionary, the American Dictionary of Runes, you may have here, Dictionary of Philosophy, it's a dictionary, and it's the article Scholasticism. curious to find the best definition there. Anyway, when he comes to present this station, he says, juxtaposed to the dialectic, syllogistic, and rationalistic tendencies of this age, was a mystical movement headed by St.

[41:46]

Bernard. This movement did not oppose itself to dialectics in the uncompromising manner of Peter Damien, who was refusing absolutely any intelligence or any refusal of dialectic, but sought rather to experience and interiorize truth through contemplation and practice. This is a perfect definition and you have there in these four words the whole idea, the whole success also of this course. Experience and interiorize the truth through contemplation and practice. The main purpose of reading this text is precisely to try again to find a connection between practice and theory.

[42:51]

It's been always the way of unifying our life. And that's where we are very uneasy today. We have many observances, a way of life and all disciplines of kind, and we don't see very often how they are connected or that their purpose is purification of our soul or to help us, to lead us to the union with God, to seeing God. That's perhaps the main task today, to find again this purity, beautiful harmony we had, the monks of the past had. Because it's the only way to be happy in our life, to find it beautiful, harmonious, really one, making one thing. There is no beauty except in unity and harmony, and so for life, and so for the way of thinking or interior life should be connected and harmoniously adapted or resolved of the exterior life.

[44:13]

And it's not a way of thinking only or rationalizing these things, but simply to live, but to understand it by experience and interiorization.

[44:27]

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