Saint Bernard of Clairvaux

With his burning love for Christ and Mary, he breathed new life into the Cistercian Order and made this reformed order one of the great spiritual forces of the Middle Ages.

He was called the “Mellifluous Doctor”, Doctor Mellifluus, because his words on the love of God, spoken and written, flowed as sweet as honey, softening cold, dry hearts and leading thousands into union with God.

From his youth, Bernard received a thorough education in letters, rhetoric and Scripture at the school of the canons at Châtillon-sur-Seine. He was handsome and brilliant, a spellbinding speaker with a soul alive to the beauty of poetry.

One day, riding across the fields to an army camp, Bernard stopped at a small roadside church and threw himself down in prayer, weeping.

Bernard was so persuasive and so on fire that he won over, one after another, four of his own brothers, his uncles and like-minded friends. It is even said that mothers with sons, and young women with sweethearts, grew nervous whenever Bernard appeared, in case he talked their loved ones into leaving home for the monastery.

They settled in a wild, overgrown valley in Champagne, infested with robbers, which the local people called the “Valley of Wormwood” or the “Valley of Darkness”. By clearing the land and praying the Divine Office day and night, Bernard and his monks turned that dark valley into Clairvaux, Clara Vallis, the “Valley of Light”.

At Clairvaux, Bernard was blessed as abbot at twenty-five. He lived a very austere life: he ate the plainest food (wild greens boiled with salt, black bread), slept very little on hard boards, and worked with his hands as hard as any poor peasant. The excessive penances of his early years ruined his digestion, and he suffered stomach pains for the rest of his life.

Yet out of that austerity grew a love as tender as a mother’s. He taught the monks a lesson in balance: no one was to undertake penances beyond their strength without the superior’s permission, and the foundation of all asceticism must be brotherly charity.

The fame of Clairvaux spread throughout Europe. Thousands of young men from every walk of life came asking to enter. From 1135, a large building project turned Clairvaux into a vast monastic complex, at times home to as many as nine hundred monks and lay brothers. In thirty-eight years as abbot, Saint Bernard himself founded sixty-eight daughter houses, and when he died the Cistercian Order had more than three hundred and forty monasteries across Europe, bringing great spiritual and economic renewal to medieval Europe.

In 1130, a painful schism broke out in Rome when two Popes were elected: Innocent II and Anacletus II. Bernard put all his moral authority and eloquence to work, traveling across France, Germany and Italy to persuade emperors, kings and the faithful to return to communion with the legitimate Pope, Innocent II, and so kept the Church from splitting apart.

In 1140, at the Council of Sens, he stood up to debate and refute the dangerous rationalism of Peter Abelard, who tried to explain the supernatural mysteries of faith by human reason alone and so reduced them.

In 1146, at the command of Pope Eugene III, his former disciple and once a monk at Clairvaux, Bernard set out to preach the Second Crusade at Vézelay. His fiery voice moved tens of thousands of knights and common people to tears, crying with one voice: “God wills it!” When the Crusade later ended in disaster through the quarrels and greed of its commanders, Bernard patiently bore the bitter criticism that followed, accepting it as a cup of penance for the sins of the world.

In his famous Eighty-Six Sermons on the Song of Songs (Sermones in Cantica Canticorum), he carried the theology of God’s love to great heights: the bond between God and the soul is not that of a tyrant and a frightened slave, but the ardent love of Bridegroom and Bride. He set out four degrees of love: beginning with selfish love, loving oneself for one’s own sake; rising to self-interested love, loving God for His gifts; entering pure love, loving God for His own sake; and reaching the summit, loving oneself and all creatures only for God’s sake.

Above all, Saint Bernard is one of the greatest singers of Mary’s praises in history. He loved her with the whole heart of a devoted son.

He left us unforgettable words praising her as the “Star of the Sea”, Stella Maris:

“When the storms of life toss you about, when you are driven among the rocks of trial and temptation, look to the Star, call upon Mary! With her guiding you, you will not go astray; with her protecting you, you will not fear; with her supporting you, you will not grow weary; and with her blessing, you will reach the harbor in peace!”

It was he who added the last three tender cries to the Salve Regina:

“O clement, O loving, O sweet, holy Mary, ever virgin!”

Seeing the tears of his spiritual children, Bernard was deeply moved and said:

“I am torn between two longings: on one side the desire to go to Jesus, on the other my boundless love for you, my brothers... May God’s will be done!”

On January 18, 1174, Pope Alexander III solemnly canonized Bernard of Clairvaux. In 1830, Pope Pius VIII declared him a Doctor of the Church with the title “Mellifluous Doctor”. The Church celebrates him on August 20 each year.

In Vietnam, Saint Bernard’s contemplative monastic spirit is vividly present in the Cistercian monasteries of the Holy Mother congregation such as Phước Sơn, Châu Sơn, Khiết Tâm and Mỹ Ca, where hundreds of monks quietly pray and work day and night in the remote countryside.