{"id":6437,"date":"2006-08-20T08:52:03","date_gmt":"2006-08-20T08:52:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/speaking-of-bernard.html"},"modified":"2006-08-20T08:52:03","modified_gmt":"2006-08-20T08:52:03","slug":"speaking-of-bernard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/speaking-of-bernard.html","title":{"rendered":"Speaking of Bernard"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, during his Angelus address, the pope spoke of St. Bernard of Clairvaux:<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u201cThe urgency of important and complex missions in the service of the Church\u201d should be harmonized with \u201csolitude\u201d and \u201cquiet\u201d: this call to prayer and contemplation has become a constant in the reflections of Benedict XVI. And he underlined it again when recalling the saint whose feast is marked today: Bernard of Clairvaux, Doctor of the Church, who lived between the XI and XII centuries. \u201cThe dedication to silence and contemplation,\u201d said the pope, \u201cdid not prevent him from undertaking intense apostolic works.\u201d<\/p>\n

The effectiveness of St Bernard, said the pontiff, lay in his ability to \u201cput forward truths of the faith in a manner so clear and incisive that it fascinated the listener and prompted the soul to meditation and prayer.\u201d But this was the fruit of a personal experience of \u201cdivine charity, revealed fully in the crucified and risen Christ\u201d. The pope continued: \u201cThe echo of a rich inner experience, that he managed to communicate to others with amazing persuasive ability, is found in each of his writings. For him, the greatest strength of spiritual life is love.\u201d<\/p>\n

Benedict XVI also recalled a text that the saint dedicated to Pope Eugene III, his pupil and spiritual son, the De Consideratione<\/em>, based on the fundamental theme of \u201cinner meditation\u201d. \u201cOne must guard oneself, observed the saint, from the dangers of excessive activity, whatever the condition and office covered, because many occupations often lead to \u2018hardness of heart\u2019, \u2018they are nothing other than suffering of the spirit,  loss of intelligence, dispersion of grace\u2019 (II,3).\u201d It is likely that Benedict XVI was making this emphasis with himself in mind, being so taken up by countless commitments of his work. He said: \u201cThis caution applies to all kinds of occupations, even those inherent to the government of the Church.\u201d And he cited Bernard\u2019s \u201cprovocative\u201d words to Eugene III: \u201cThis is where your damned occupations can drag you, if you continue to lose yourself in them… leaving nothing of you to yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Michael notes St. Bernard’s importance to someone around here.<\/a><\/p>\n

More on Bernard of Clairvaux<\/a><\/p>\n

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In other news, A telegram was sent from the Vatican appealing for the release of a Chaldean priest kidnapped in Iraq last week.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, during his Angelus address, the pope spoke of St. Bernard of Clairvaux: \u201cThe urgency of important and complex missions in the service of the Church\u201d should be harmonized with \u201csolitude\u201d and \u201cquiet\u201d: this call to prayer and contemplation has become a constant in the reflections of Benedict XVI. And he underlined it again when…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nSpeaking of Bernard - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/speaking-of-bernard.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Speaking of Bernard - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Today, during his Angelus address, the pope spoke of St. Bernard of Clairvaux: \u201cThe urgency of important and complex missions in the service of the Church\u201d should be harmonized with \u201csolitude\u201d and \u201cquiet\u201d: this call to prayer and contemplation has become a constant in the reflections of Benedict XVI. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6437\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}