+YOUR LIGHT MUST SHINE BEFORE OTHERS St Bernard 2025
Few person have ever made such an impact on their age and time as did St Bernard. The words we just heard from the book of Wisdom proved true in his life more than any of the Saints I know: “I prayed and prudence was given me; I pleaded, and the spirit of Wisdom came to me.” Bernard so deeply pleaded with God that he was filled with the Spirit, so much so that when about him, one sees the Wisdom of God reflected in almost everything he did and said.
So immersed was he in Sacred Scripture that it is hard to know at times when reading his works, if what you are reading is from him or the sacred page. We just heard from the gospel of today of how one does not “light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is put on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house.” St Bernard had a wonderful way of lighting up countless lives
An excellent description of St Bernard’s own inner life is beautifully described in his eighty some sermons on the Song of Songs. As Butler’s lives of the Saints points out, like the works of St Augustine, here:
“Bernard emphasizes the importance of self-knowledge, which should prompt the aware person to emulate Jesus’ own humility, selflessness, and compassion toward others until he or she understands more and more about the loving will of God. ‘Divinization’ means, then, our return to our true human nature: our remaking as the images of God that we were intended to be. Self-awareness and charity lead us ever closer to perfect harmony: to a state analogous to Christ’s eternal nature, to the accordance of what we are with what we ought to be.”
This, it seems to me is the whole goal of our Christian lives. So deeply did St Bernard allow this inner transformation to take place that he wonderfully fulfilled the words of the gospel we just heard, Jesus telling us we are to be the salt of the earth, a light that shines before others so that they may see our good deeds and glorify our heavenly Father.
In attaining this goal, St Bernard touched countless lives in the Church and society of his time. His wisdom touched all ranks of ecclesial and social statis and not without humor at times. He reminded the new bishop of Geneva: “The bishop’s throne for which you, my dear friend, were lately chosen, demands many virtues, none of which, I grieve to say, could be discerned in you, at any rate in any strength, before your consecration.”
He advised a nun who wanted to leave her convent: “If you are one of the foolish virgins, the convent is necessary for you. If you are one of the wise, you are necessary for the convent.”
He asked the archbishop of Sens if he thinks everyone is as lacking in any sense of justice as he is. Bernard had a way of lashing out, consoling, admiring, inspiring and asking forgiveness that allowed him to be a great source of unity and reconciliation. And isn’t this what we see to be so necessary today so urgently in need of living together in harmony and peace.
As happened in St Bernard’s life, we have many opportunities to be living examples of the life-giving and loving Word of God, to be daily witnesses of our Christian faith. Every act of love is transformative of our world, of the lives of all those with whom we live day after day.
Isn’t this the invitation of the Eucharist we are celebrating around this altar. Here, the very death and rising of Christ’s own life takes place that we might be so filled with his own life and love, become lights set on a lampstand in our homes, our communities, in our world of today. May St Bernard intercede for us all.
Wis 7:7-10, 15-16; Phil 3:17-4:1; Matt 5:13-19