Saint of the Day: St. Bernard of Clairvaux

Abbot and Doctor of the Church (1090-1153)

His life

+ Bernard was born near Dijon, France, and entered the Cistercian abbey of Citeaux in 1111. 

+ Chosen to serve as the first abbot of a new foundation at Clairvaux, Bernard was called upon to settle disputes between various Cistercian houses, to combat schisms threatening the Church, and entrusted with the task of promoting the Second Crusade. He came to be regarded as one of the most influential spiritual and political forces of his time. 

+ Remembered for his many theological and spiritual works, especially his eighty-six sermons on the Song of Songs. 

+ Saint Bernard of Clairvaux died in 1153 and was canonized in 1174. 

+ Honored as a Doctor of the Church in 1830, he was granted the title “Mellifluus Doctor” by Pope Pius XII who regarded his teachings as being “sweeter than honey.”

For prayer and reflection

“With my lips I recite / all the edits you have spoken.

I find joy in the way of your decrees / more than in all riches.”—Psalm 119:13-14

Spiritual bonus

On August 20 we also remember Blessed Georg Häfner. A priest of the diocese of Würzburg, Germany, he was arrested by the Nazis and sent to the concentration camp of Dachau, where he died on August 20, 1942. He was beatified in 2011. 

Prayer

Gracious God, O God, who made of the Abbot Saint Bernard a man consumed with zeal for your house and a light shining and burning in your Church, grant, through his intercession, that we may be on fire with the same spirit and walk always as children of light. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.

(from The Roman Missal)
Saint profiles prepared by Fr. Silas Henderson, S.D.S.