Introduction
Writings of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
On Loving God
Sermons on the Song of Songs
Role of homilies in spirituality with reference to Saint Bernard’s writings.
Love as Reverence or worship
Serve to instruct
Penetrate the scriptures
Function as communication images and language
Bring pure and easy intuition
Temper the intensity of the Scriptures facilitating understanding
Discussion prompt 1: Cistercians (Later Benedictine traditions)
The Role Homilies Play in Spirituality.
The commentary or spiritually based reflection that comes after the reading of scripture is referred to as a Homily (Jacobs 1). Homily is derived from homilia, a Greek word meaning to have communion (speaking with) or to have a verbal intercourse with an individual. The homily explains sacred Scriptures and evolves the spiritual meaning of scriptures. A homily is considered by many people to be a sermon. However, a sermon is a discourse or a lecture that provides inculcating moral behaviour or religious instructions (Jacobs 1).
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux’s On Loving God delves into four types of love experienced by Christians as the develop in their relationship with God: selfish love, loving one’s self, loving one’s self in God and loving God as God (CCEL 1). God gave us life, and he offered himself to us. He deserves our all, and He deserves our love for He first loved us and sacrificed his son so we may be saved from sin. Jesus took up a carnal body because He wanted to recapture the love of carnal men by drawing them to the salutary love of His humanity first and then raise them to His spiritual love. We are indebted to God for His sacrifice and love. We should not only love God because he deserves it but because it has a reward. When we love God it is to our advantage for He blesses us with a heavenly Fatherland state which knows no sadness or sorrow (CCEL 1).
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux wrote sermons on the Song of Songs to interpret the love between the soul and God. He believes and develops the notion that the relationship between an individual and the divine word is a spiritual marriage between the human bride and the heavenly bridegroom. God desires our love since he is deeply in love with us. The love between God and the soul is the most likely intimate love that can exist. Saint Bernard’s central focus was love, and his mysticism had such a sacramental humanness that it shaped Christian mysticism, piety and spirituality from his time to this (Egan166-179).
In his first sermon, Saint Bernard talks about teaching spiritual things the way the Spirit teaches and not in the manner that philosophy is taught. He emulates Saint Paul’s way of teaching, giving milk to those who are children spiritually and a nourishing diet to those that are spiritually enlightened, when he talks of giving instructions in a different manner than he would to those in the world. This first sermon is entitled “On the title of the book”.
In the second sermon, Saint Bernard is perplexed and stung with shame and sorrow over the frigid unconcern and lukewarmness of people in his time. He is miserable because people are not filled with joy or burning with desire as the patriarchs did for the return or incarnation of Christ. The second sermon is titled “Various meanings of the kiss”. Sermon eight three talks of “the bridegroom loves first and more strongly, the bride must love with her whole being”. Saint Bernard had spent time showing the affinity between the soul and the word and here he shows the value of this affinity. He talks of the spiritual marriage and fecundity. The Word takes the soul as His bride, and the two come to be one spirit.
Homilies serve as reverence to God. Saint Bernard considered love as the greatest form of reverence or worship that we could give to God, who not only loves but is love. When we offer our love to God whole heartedly, no matter how inadequate it seems, it is enough since it is our all (Gill 1). When we pray and live a life of self-denial, holiness, humility and worship God is not only honored and respected but He is also loved. In everything we do we should remember Christ in order to imitate Him. Our love for God should be tender and intimate so that we can rid ourselves of the enticements of a sensual life. The spiritually proficient, love God with a rational and spiritual love. The soul’s bridegroom (the word, God) only reveals himself to the bride with the uttermost desire, intense devotion and sweetest love. God through the sacred scriptures offers us knowledge and revelation that lights in us the fires of love.
Saint Bernard shows us that homilies serve to instruct and not to confuse the believers in the word of God. These instructions nurture and develop the spiritual lives of all those that hid to them. He believed that everything in scriptures was meaningful if only approached with love. Saint Bernard’s homilies were appropriate and simple to understand for the target audience. The manner in which these homilies are delivered was creatively different and insightful. He spoke with such clarity, fluency and ease making the hidden sense flow from the sacred scriptures that he was referred to as Doctor mellifluous (Gill 1). His homilies, commentaries, penetrated the scriptures extraordinarily and with such an artistic power to describe and communicate with people effectively that he describes as “the last of the Fathers, and not inferior to the earliest”.
Bernard shows us that the sacred Scriptures should be translated into communicable images and language (Gill 1). Homilies serve to bring the purest intuition from the Sacred Scriptures, full of divine wisdom, closer to the eye of the soul for contemplation. They enable us to be able to perceive the word of God which sometimes we cannot be able to do face to face (by only reading the scriptures). Homilies temper the intensity of the divine scriptures and hence serve as an aid to understanding the scriptures with the swiftness of a lightening flash. However, it is vital not to let these homilies which are inspirations be leaden with evil suggestions due to misinterpretation of the scriptures, addition or subtractions from the Holy Scriptures.
Works Cited
Christian Classics Ethereal Library, CCEL. On Loving God by St. Bernard of Clairvaux. ccel.org. Web. 29 June 2015. <http://www.ccel.org/ccel/bernard/loving_god.html
Egan, Harvey D. An Anthology of Christian Mysticism. Collegeville, Minn: Liturgical Press, (1991): 166-179. Print.
Gill, Katherine. Bernard of Clairvaux: Sermons on the Song of Song. people.bu.edu. Web. 29 June 2015. <http://people.bu.edu/dklepper/RN413/bernard_sermons.html >.
Jacobs, M. Richard, Villanova University. The difference between a homily and a sermon. villanova.edu. Published 2001, Revised October 07, 2012.Web. 29 June 2015. <http://www83.homepage.villanova.edu/richard.jacobs/homilies/homily-sermon.htm>.
