Yesterday we end by this commentary, the short commentary of Saint Bernard on the Saint John verse, when we shall see him we shall be like him and we shall be like him because we shall be seeking him and then he ended by saying this vision This vision, this likeness is charity. This is very typical of the school of St. Bernard. This vision is charity and therefore this vision is not only for the heaven but as we have seen by degrees. become more and more like him, and therefore we, by degrees, enter in this vision, this knowledge, through charity, through love, which grows in our heart.

[01:14]

Reading the same doctrine on the image in Saint-Hilaire, we shall even see even more clearly how charity is really this progress of the soul. And if you read immediately, start immediately on page 57. Page 57 is the opening of the Mirror of Charity, chapter 1, the first book, and it is a very beautiful text. It's almost a lyrical text. It's an opening which is very poetical. I shall not read the whole of this text, but sometimes I wish that it could be read in church, because it's very beautiful. like a tent, O Lord, you stretched out your heavens and placed in it stars to light this dark night in which forest creatures roam and lion cats roar after they pray.

[02:33]

His image is taken from the psalm, stretch your heavens like a tent and it's The idea is skin, tent of skin, and most probably this idea came, or this image came to the mind of Alred because when you start, when you start to write book in the 12th century, you stretch the skin. It's a parchment or the skin in which you are going to write. It's very, it was stretching the skin before writing on the manuscript. So, let your voice sound in my ear, which is my heart, my soul, the very inner parts of me.

[03:42]

Teach them to love you. Then, the bottom of the page there, It is the palace of the heart. There is a palace of the heart savoring you who are sweet. Savor, the savor, the sapo, sapiensia. It's all doctrinal wisdom that you taste. You know, the doctrine of the five senses, five senses has been applied by origin to the spiritual world, and each sense has its own function and has its own dignity, but for the situation, Saint Bernard, Saint Albert, this sense of taste is really the expression of the realization of the spiritual, the spirit in you or the union with God.

[04:50]

The eye seeing you who are good, the place able to capture you who are most high, He who loves you captures you, captures you as much as he loves you, for you are love itself, for you are charity. The doctrine is very clear. Captures as much as you love. The next page. Let me experience the least foretaste of that longed for, of that desired heaven, the heaven for which I pant in this pilgrimage of my soul. Let my very anger be that foretaste.

[05:54]

My very thirst be that quenching. So the experience, we have been talking very much of experience this last time, as much as the Benedictine chapter, the experience of God, and we are preparing a chapter in Rome, that in three weeks we shall try to have this experience of God, hope some Habots will have the experience of God. But you never know, it can happen. Anyway, a lot of talking in many directions have been going on in many meetings and so on. And the notion of experience, as we realize, has been extremely confused. And everybody has tried to clarify this notion of experience, and the confusion increased. So, in the text of the conference, written before the Congress of the Benedictine Abbots in Rome, which has been published by Monastic Studies in English, noticed, too,

[07:13]

very good articles by Ernest de Vaugue, who says that in the rule of Saint Benedict there is no experience of God, mystical experience. The experience is to seek God, and Father Nossan, Don Nossan of Maretsu, In his article, as one line goes like this, the very experience of the monk is the seeking. You have it here. That may be anger, be that for taste, and that is the experience of the monk. Though we can have some kind of experience, the very experience of the monk or the Christian East seeking, based on St. Bernard's famous words which has been repeated by Pascal, I would not seek you if I had not already found you.

[08:19]

So St. Herod says, well, this immense sweetness revealed to those who love you, even for those who fear you, then that this inestimable craving shall be satisfied fully in heaven. Interim, meanwhile, I shall seek you, my Lord, and I shall seek you by loving By loving you, since he who grows in love of you truly seeks you, and he who loves you perfectly, Lord, he it is who has already found you. And what is more, just than that one of your creatures should love you. One of these creatures who has received from you the power to love you yourself. The other creatures are insensible, irrational, cannot love you.

[09:23]

It is not in their nature. The nature of man is to love God. To be sure, they have their own nature, their own form, their ways, but this gives them no happiness, nor can they love you. Now, you are the Augustinian basic doctrine that love and happiness Happiness is really union with God. It's the doctrine of happiness. The beauty, good, and well-ordered ways which proceed from you are to the glory of those who are capable of happiness. Man is capable of happiness, therefore capable of God, because they are capable of loving you. So the equivalence of the attitude of happiness and love. Now, after this, Saint Hilary goes on to Trinity, or Trinity of the image in men, which is borrowed from or taken from the De Trinitate, the Treatise on the Trinity, by Saint Hilary.

[10:40]

Nature, appearance, or forma, and purpose. Nature, beauty, and usefulness. Now, God has distributed among his creatures three things in common. Nature, appearance, form, beauty, and purpose. Nature, by which they are good. Everything which is, is good, that's not a question. And therefore, evil doesn't exist, there is no real being in evil, because everything which is, is good. Appearance, by which they are beautiful, and purpose, by which they will do a particular ordained thing. He who made things to be also made them to be good, beautiful, and well-ordered. And so on. We shall read, if we have time today, another sermon where he develops this trinity.

[11:49]

But immediately we shall go to the Augustinian system which he develops here in the beginning of the Treatise on the Mirror of Charity. On page 60, He repeats there, in creating the universe, God gave man not only being, nor as with others, simply to be good, beautiful, and well-ordered. Above this, he gave them a capacity for happiness that has no creator as the cause of its own being. God is the beauty of all the beautiful and caused all being, so no one is the cause of his own happiness but receives such from him who is happiness and through this the happiness of all the blessed. Only the rational being is capable of this happiness because it is created in the image of his creator. The soul is capable of adhering to him whose image it is.

[12:55]

Now you have here clearly the doctrine of adherence. And if you remember, this adherence is precisely the consciousness that you are in a dynamic relation with your model, with your exemplar, to adhere to the model, to the exemplar. This is the only good for the rational creature, as David says, but it is good for me to adhere to God. Clearly, this is not a thing of the flesh, but of the spirit. That is, a union through those three qualities which the author of nature gave to the soul. Now, the nature has three qualities, which is the three faculties of the soul, and which allow it to partake of divine eternity, to share his wisdom, and to taste its sweetness.

[14:03]

And these three faculties are memory, intelligence, and love, or will. These three qualities, which form the nature of the soul, the three faculties of the soul, we lost one of these faculties due to the Scholastic and Saint Thomas, who just dropped memory. And this is very regrettable. Because memory is a very, very important faculty and Modern philosophers are slowly now discovering the importance of this memoria, memory, under different names, under different systems. Professor Gilson, Étienne Gilson, was the first to point out that memoria in St. Augustine and the Cistercian theologians

[15:06]

was corresponding almost very closely to what we all today call subconscious or unconscious, which is the imprint of God in the soul. In this context of St. Augustine, it is a Platonist idea that we were contemplating God before, or that our soul was or is in the mind of God, you see, before we are, because the soul animates the body. Anyway, this imprint of God in man or in humanity is rediscovered by Jung, for instance, with all the archetypes of the collective unconscious and all that sort of thing.

[16:16]

Well, this is memoria, and it's a very important part of the consciousness of man. And of course, all these treaties is built, all these theories built on the image of the Trinity now in the soul. Since man is created that the image of God, what St. Augustine says, we must find a Trinity in man, since God is Trinity. These three faculties are memory, intelligence, and love. Through memory, man can contain the eternal. Through intelligence, he can grasp wisdom. And through love, he can experience sweetness. Now, Elred will put the emphasis on this experience.

[17:21]

Claudius three attributes man was made in the likeness of the Trinity. His memory retained God without forgetting the beginning. And you see very well all the process of the ascesis, the reformation of the mind, of the soul of a monk, all is directed toward this restoration of this memory, which eventually, more or less, or progressively, by degree, recover this faculty of retaining God without forgetting. God will be more and more in the soul or in the consciousness of man, of the monk. And seizing prayer, is that a word? Seizing prayer. the ideal of the monk, having God present all the time in his memory.

[18:27]

Remember God. His intelligence knew him without error and his love embraced him free from the desire for any other thing or to prefer another thing. See? There was no conflict. There were no concupiscence, no greed. This is happiness. If happiness is therefore truly acquired through these three faculties mentioned above, it is through the third, love, that man is able to taste this happiness. It's very clear now. Scholastic would not say that. Saint Thomas would never say that. the mass which leads the soul through the intelligence. Then you say, well, intelligence unites the mind and therefore the mind can follow and love this realized truth.

[19:30]

So, Eldred says it's through the third that man is able to taste happiness. or miserabilities, therefore to seek happiness in evil when there is neither sweetness or joy to be found. For there is no love, there is no happiness. Where there is no love, there is no happiness. Therefore, the greater the love for the supreme good, the greater the delight and the greater the happiness." And then he explained. Let the memory bring forth many long-hidden concepts, and knowledge capture the deepest of notions. But there is no happiness unless the will itself does not turn toward these concepts and notions." It's not real, it's real knowledge after all. Real grasping of the truth and reality. If there is no love, if you don't love something, if you don't taste it,

[20:31]

That's a very common experience. You can accumulate knowledge and notions, and students do that. They accumulate knowledge, but they don't always love this knowledge. Accumulate knowledge to pass an exam, for instance. It's not much pleasure. Only truths which are tasted, which are loved, are really understood, are really realized, are really making one with you, come in you and form you and give you happiness. And this happiness is the reformation of this faculty of love or the restoration of love in us. And then we'll again take the history of what happened.

[21:38]

With the grace of God, our father Adam, under his free will, in loving God forever, could be happy in his memory, in his intelligence, and could have joy forever. But he could also focus this love of his, on some lesser object, and thus, in drawing himself back from the love of God, grow cold and do himself to misery. So to prefer something less than God was to grow cold, not grow cold as a long history, his expression of growing cold as a long history in patristic literature, and behind that it goes back to origin. It's based on a play on words.

[22:39]

It's about me to just refer to this little detail, but it's interesting to see, to point out these things which, well, if you read that, grow cold, that doesn't mean much. It has a very traditional meaning. It's an expression of precisely the soul turning away from the fire of God, the fire of the love of God. And it's a doctrine of origin which he gives in the Periarchon, in the first thing, the Principis, book the second chapter, the Hith, Now it's in Latin here and in Greek, that doesn't help much. So, the idea is based on, play on word, on suce, suce which is soul, the animal soul, the soul which animates the body, and sucro or suco,

[23:49]

to grow cold. It's two words. See? The verb su-ko is to grow cold and su-ke is the soul. Therefore, Origen said, the mind was a noose. See, the spirit contemplating the fire from God, but then when the mind turns away from God to seek its own ... it becomes sukhé. The noose becomes sukhé, and then enters the body according to the practice, for instance, but the origin is a bit vague there. Although he held the pre-existence of the soul, that's one of his heresies. But the mens, mens, mens in Latin is equivalent of the noose, the mens,

[24:51]

falling from its dignity becomes soul, animating a body, then cold. But if the soul is restored, if this sukhe is restored, it will become no sukhe, spirit again. That is the doctrine of this grow cold. So we have to get warm again, and that's the only way is to return to the fire, divine fire, by charity. Therefore, for the rational being, just as the only happiness is to be firmly attached to God, so the only misery consists in being estranged from God. Then he takes again this man being in honor does not understand all this thing we have seen in St. Bernard yesterday. Man did not understand that he who, in an ungodly way, debauched himself by pride, suffered in folly, and that he who through pillage disturbed the affinity to God, become as desperate as a cattle.

[26:09]

I don't know if the cattle is desperate, but anyway. Therefore, using his free will badly, Man turned his love away from the unchangeable God, unchangeable good, that's the Platonic or Augustinian idea of God, the unchangeable good, and blinded by an inordinate love of self. The inordinate love of self focused it on some lesser object. See, the whole is love. now directed to a lesser object than God. Withdrawing from the true good and defecting to that which was not good in itself, he chased after gain, but found only loss. Having loved himself falsely, he lost both himself and God.

[27:10]

It's the same Dr. Chastain-Bernard, it's very, very deep. He lost himself and God, in the same way in this. because he loved himself falsely. He should have loved himself rightly. It was a very just punishment for him who against God longed to be like God, that by his passion he should be dissimilar to God as he had wished to be similar by his unhealthy curiosity. Curiosity, that's a game. He wanted to be God by himself. He had this curiosity, trying to find by himself that curiosity, instead of obeying God, who wanted him to be divine, who wanted him to be like God, like himself. But he wanted to do it alone, to do it alone, to do it by himself, which is typical of men and of modern men, exactly, I think.

[28:13]

Speaking of Sartre and Nietzsche and all these people, they just want to do that. They want to be God by themselves. And to realize it by themselves. Because man is capable, I think, by his reason, to be self-sufficient. That's exactly the sin of paradise. To do it by themselves. and not according to the will of God, not according to the love of God. The image of God in him was therefore damaged, but it was not completely ruined. He still has memory, but it is tainted with forgetfulness. He has intelligence, but it is subject to error, and he still has love, but it is inclined to covetousness. However miserable it may be, the human soul keeps through this threefold faculty an imprint of the Blessed Trinity, which is engraved in its very substance.

[29:23]

images of the Trinity in the soul in men. I think he tried 35, 25 systems. Anyway, he was very, very keen on that, trying some three things in men. But he eventually reached this very beautiful, perhaps the most, most perfect man can have of The trinity. Because trinity, as we've been taught in the Catechism, one is three and three is one is simply absurdity. It's not trinity is something else and one is three and three is one. A man that blessed the office of the Blessed Trinity in the Gregorian, I don't know if you are the same, but we are repeating that for one hour and a half, he said, unum trinum, trinum, unum trinum.

[30:48]

Well, but we try to find, and then man, human mind tries to understand. But poor human mind is bound to images, special, spatial, temporal images. Even its most abstract ideas are rooted in the space and time. And you cannot get rid of images. Anyway. Kapadoshan tries several images, one of the most well-known is the rainbow, rainbow, rainbow, between light and various colors, which is material. Now, Saint Augustine here says that there are three faculties of the soul, and these three faculties of the soul are one. One, it's I. And these three faculties of the soul are interpenetrating, or transparent.

[31:52]

See, the activity of my soul is spiritual, and therefore is one. And when I remember, the soul remembers, knows, and loves. And it remembers, knows, and loves its memory. It loves, knows, and remembers it's intelligent and so on. Or you can say, I remember that I love and know. I know that I love and remember. And I love to know. And it's one activity. And it's a very beautiful symbol. I mean, probably not that, but something very close to an idea or approaching the, or at least some kind of a bit more subtle, idea of the Trinity. Therefore, in these three operations which we have mentioned, there is to be further unity of substance.

[32:57]

That's all. That's a commentary on the sound there, and a long note from this This young translator, very naïve, everybody knows that it's not in Hebrew and all that, but why should he use it to put all that? Anyway. Then after the coming of the Saviour, chapter 5, page 62, Then, through the man Jesus Christ, now let's remember that the restoration for a Christian is not, again, possible, but done only by the mediator. Through the man Jesus Christ, the one mediator between God and man, who took into himself the loneliness of human nature, and so on. The principalities and the powers to which divine justice has condemned us were despoliated and go the farther.

[34:06]

Being appeased by this one victim on the cross, which is the Anselmian doctrine, very unfortunate, but it's very rare that it appears in the Cistercian, but here it appears here. The appeasing of the wrath of God by the victim. Anyway, comes here, but it's exceptional. Memory was at least restored through the works of sacred scripture. I don't know if that's a good translation. Somebody suggested the words. Anyway, in the Latin it's the documentum, by the text. So the memory is restored by sacred scripture. It is very interesting that. Sacred scriptures reveal to us this imprint of God in the soul by the revelation. Revelation is simply explaining to man what is in him, what was God imprinted in him.

[35:11]

Intelligence through the mystery of faith, means the doctrine of the Holy Church, the Creed, And love is restored through the daily increase of charity. This increase of charity, it's a process of increase and again growing in charity and until the fullness of charity will be realized. So the restoration of divine likeness will be complete if forgetfulness does not dull the memory Error casts a cloud over intelligence and covetousness disturbs love. Beware, and when this will take place, this peace, this tranquility, this joy is to be expected in the Fatherland." Where and so on. Eternal and true charity, that is Augustine. Sort of canticle. Here is rest, here is peace, joyful peace, peaceful joy and all that.

[36:17]

So the next page. Meanwhile, interim. Lord Jesus, that's paragraph 55 there or something. No, the middle of the page. Meanwhile, page 63. Lord Jesus, in the nest of your discipline, I wish my soul be feathered to fill out its wing, to rest in the caves of rock, the old image of the canticle, in the hollow enclosures. Meanwhile, let my soul embrace you, you crucified." Well, well to see that the memory of God, memoria dei, which were the expression of Saint Augustine, becomes quite clearly now memoria of Jesus. memory of Jesus. According to the devotion of Cistercian to the humanity of Christ, of which we shall speak tonight, it's Christ now which attracts the memory.

[37:35]

And you have the beautiful hymns, unfortunately we don't sing it anymore in Latin, Jesu Dulcis Memoria, Dulcis Jesu Memoria, which most probably, according to Don Wilmer, has been composed by Alredo Frivo. It's almost certain. So Hervé de Rivaux was a composer of the Jésus-Dulcis, Dulcis Jesu Memoria. It's almost certain. Of course, it's not certain because a hymn, they were not signing hymns. But you cannot find a signature on it. But all the manuscripts which remains are around Rivaux. See, all the manuscripts now, the extant manuscripts are around Rivaux, and it's quite normal. So it's certainly in England, in the north of England, near Rivaux. conclusion is obvious, that it must be Elred of Livur. Only he would have been capable of doing that. And we know also that he was writing verses.

[38:40]

It was forbidden for monks to write verses. It was a text of general chapter very early, in 1150 or 53, to forbid monks to write verses. That was simply to forbid monks to write curtly verses, which they were selling, I suppose. So they were also still allowed to write pious poetry. And one of his historian who speak of Elroy de Vriveau, he says that he was known to have written a canticle, a poem on St.

[39:46]

Cuthbert. And even his historian goes even further and say that he finished it, because he was held up on the other side of the channel in France when he was going back to England. So he had three or four days there to wait the favorable winds. He finished this poem. But Dulcis Jesu Memoria, is really an expression of all this doctrine. The dialectic of presence and memory. The memory longing to the presence. All this dialectic is going through Saint Bernard and Saint Hervé. You have sometimes Texts which are very shocking for many pious souls.

[40:49]

St. Bernard saying that we are not satisfied with the Eucharist. So the full presence is not yet realized. So people say, does he believe in the real presence? Of course he does. But it's not complete. It's not the fullness of the presence of Christ. It's still in sacrament. It's still a memorial. It's still memoria. We remember, but we are longing for the full presence. And it's always there. We are only this foretaste. Even the Eucharist is a foretaste. So that's, to let my memory be filled with your sweet remembrance and may oblivion never darken it. Other than that, of my Lord and of his cross, let me know nothing. Away from this strong faith, let no vain error sway my intelligence.

[41:54]

May your most marvelous love to all my affection lay claim, and may no worldly passion distract it. Oh, and this is beautiful, too, because now, it's very modern, too, he remembers his fellow man. Oh, but do I want those things for myself alone? Let the words of the prophet be fulfilled. All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord. He says, shall remember. And he means the following, that remembrance of God is hidden, but not forever buried in the mind of man. so that it is less a new encounter than an old truth which is restored in us. It is completely unnatural, unnatural, that wherever there is the least flickering of the human spirit toward the remembrance of God, the fool would say in his heart, there is no God.

[43:02]

That can be applied, hopefully, to so many people today who say there is no God. even in saying that. People say to Sartre, but why do you keep speaking of God? You speak of God all the time. You say He doesn't exist, but why do you still speak of Him if He doesn't exist? There's a play, a famous play, Le Diable et le Bon Dieu, which is a very blasphemous and scandalous play. There's always question of God. There's a man coming on the stage at one time, forgot who he was, and he say, hallelujah, I announce you doesn't, God doesn't exist. And that's the summit of the play.

[44:03]

Rejoice. Now, if it is evident, and I do not think I'm mistaken, that it is not physically, but through an inclination of the soul, that withdrawing himself from the supreme good and human pride festering in him, man tarnished the image of God in himself. Likewise, it is by an inclination of the soul, Human humility consenting to God that there shall be renewed in him the image of him who is his creator. This sentence is very beautiful. Human humility consenting to God. In Latin, mentis affectus, this inclination, the affectus. The affectus is a beautiful word untranslatable in any modern language, I think.

[45:11]

It's the affectus, it's to be affected, to taste, to be, it's almost happiness to enjoy this joy, this very intimate and profound joy which inclines, Tense, which attracts the soul. Human humility. The access to God through this human humility. Then, did not the apostle say, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind that you put on the new man which after God is created. But how will this renewal take place?

[46:15]

Again, if not in the new precept of love, of which our Savior spoke, a new commandment I give to you. Accordingly, if the soul covers itself perfectly with this love, there will surely be renewed in it those two faculties which we say have been done. It's gained by the faculty of love that the two others will be healed, will be renewed, namely memory and knowledge. It is therefore more profitable for us to find in this one precept joined together the shedding of the old man, a renewal of the soul, and a restoration of the divine image. Our faculty of love, infected with the venom of covetousness and miserably ensnared in the net of our passion, by its own weight, constancy pulls us down from one vice to another.

[47:20]

Charity, on the other hand, inspired from above and dissolving in its own heat, our natural torpor surged to other heights and shedding the old in dawn's denew. and then the image of the wings of Salman. The image here is borrowed again from the Neoplatonist. It's the image of a bird who is

[47:49]

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