Hunolt Sermons/Volume 12/Sermon 66
SIXTY-SIXTH SERMON
ON ST. BERNARD AS A DESPISER OF THE WORLD,
Subject.
1. St. Bernard left everything to follow Christ; 2. We, too, should leave everything to follow Christ into heaven. Preached on the feast of St. Bernard.
Text.
"Behold, we have left all things, and have followed Thee." (Matt 19:27)
Introduction.
Is it then such a great exploit to leave all things? Sometimes even heathen philosophers did that, as St. Jerome says of the gospel from which I have taken my text: This was done by Crates, the philosopher; and many others despised riches." Yes; but mark, my dear brethren, how in the words of my text St. Peter does not merely say: We have left all things, but he adds: We have followed Thee. That the heathens did not do; they left earthly goods through vanity and love of praise, in order to be admired and esteemed by men; but, as St. Jerome says, to leave all things and follow Christ, to walk in His footsteps, " is the mark of the apostles and the faithful." St. Bernard could say with truth of himself these words of St. Peter, as I now mean to prove in this panegyric.
Plan of Discourse.
St. Bernard left all things to follow Christ; the first and longer part. We, too, should leave all things to follow Christ into heaven; the second part. The first to the undying praise of Bernard; the second to the use and profit of our souls.
great servant of God, St. Bernard, obtain this latter grace for us from God, for whose sake thou didst leave all things; we expect it through the hands of the Blessed Virgin, whom thou didst love most tenderly in a wonderful manner. Help us here in you, too, holy angels.
There are two kinds of goods that we mortals can leave in this world: the first are external, the second are within ourselves. The external goods are described by Our Lord in to-day's gospel: "Every one that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands." In a word, to this class belongs everything that man can possess, or gain, or appropriate to himself for his support, or advantage, or amusement. The internal goods that belong to us are body and soul, freedom, understanding, memory, our natural inclinations and desires, the use of our eyes, ears, tongue, and other senses and powers of our body. There we have all that man has had placed in his power by the Creator. Now if Christ has pronounced blessed, and prizes so highly one who has left only some of the outward and less valuable goods, such as house, or lands, or broth er, or sister for His sake, so that He is willing to give him a hundredfold here, and life eternal in heaven, how highly must He not value, what a great reward, honor, and glory must He not give to him who once for all leaves, not some of those things, but everything for His sake!
Such a generous and faithful follower of Jesus Christ was St. Bernard, my dear brethren. There was nothing in or outside of himself which he did not completely, without the slightest exception, and in the most perfect manner, leave and give to his God forever. First, he did not keep for himself any of his external goods, but everything that had the name of a temporal good that belonged to him, or that he could hope for, or gain in future, he left forever; nor did he, like St. Peter, wait to do this until he had arrived at man's estate, and was called by Christ to follow Him; but in his early youth, as soon as he came to the use of reason, and was able to understand the interior voice of the divine inspiration, when he had hardly begun to taste the first enjoyment of worldly goods, he already resolved to relinquish them once for all; and this resolution he carried into effect, not being deterred from it by any difficulty, hindrance, temptation, persecution, although his brothers and relations did all they could to prevent him; nor was he easy in his mind until he could say with Peter: Behold, I have left all things house and home, gold and money, father, brothers, sisters, friends, relations, and acquaintances. Good-bye to all of you! I will go to the desert; God alone shall be my refuge.
And what kind of a house and home did he leave? If Peter had a home of his own to leave, I can find in it nothing in the shape of worldly goods, as St. Jerome says, speaking of this gospel, except a poor fisherman's garment, a few nets, hooks, and other fisher's gear by which he managed to earn his bread. "And yet, continues St. Jerome, " he says with confidence: We have left all things." Of what kind was the house of Bernard? As Ribadeneira tells us, it was that of a noble and rich family. On account of the wonderful keenness of intellect and great mind and ability of which Bernard gave promise in his early youth, his brothers were not at all willing that he should enter religion, a rare thing among brothers and sisters; and the children of the family were seven in number. From this we can judge what a rich inheritance he left; otherwise his brothers and sisters would not have taken such trouble to prevent him from entering religion; besides that, his personal comeliness attracted the attention of many of the opposite sex, who tried to gain his affections. From all this, my dear brethren, you can easily imagine what prosperity Bernard had to expect, what honor he could have enjoyed, and what pleasures awaited him had he remained in the world and lived according to the usages of the world.
Oh, truly, it requires a great fight in the human heart, an heroic and difficult act of self-denial, to renounce all those things of one's own free will, and leave them forever! How was it with that young man of whom we read in the Gospel of St. Matthew. who, through a desire of saving his soul, had most carefully ob served all the commandments from his childhood, and with all eagerness presented himself to Our Lord, and asked Him: " Good Master, what good shall I do that I may have life everlasting?" I have kept all the commandments from my youth. ff What is yet wanting to me? " " If thou wilt be perfect," said Jesus to him, " go, sell what thou hast, and give to the poor; and come, follow Me." Alas, what a hard saying for this young man, well-meaning though he was! " And when the young man had heard this word," says the Scripture, "he went away sad." Why? "For he had great possessions." So difficult it is to separate one's self from worldly goods when they are possessed in abundance. And this was what Our Lord said to His disciples after the young man had gone away: "Amen, I say to you, that a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven." 1
And yet how did Bernard act in similar, nay, more difficult circumstances? Great as was the wealth to which he could justly lay claim, attractive as were the comforts and pleasures that awaited him, high as was the position promised him by the world, he cast it all aside and turned his back on it to follow Christ. And where did he go to? Mark, my dear brethren, the perfection with which he left all. We still praise and admire the obedience of the Patriarch Abraham when God commanded him, saying: "Go forth out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and out of thy father's house." He obeyed at once; but he did not leave all; for, as the Scripture says, he took with him Sarah, his wife, and Lot, the son of his brother, "and all the substance which they had gathered." Besides, he was promised a far better and richer land, where God was to give him abundance of blessings and goods, and to make him the father of an innumerable people. It is not hard to leave one's country on such conditions. But it was quite different with Bernard; he did not bring the least iota with him, except that his father, brother, sister, and some of his nearest relatives, persuaded by his example and exhortations, left the world and joined the banner of Christ. The place to which he fled was a wilderness, abandoned by men; there his home was the desert, his possessions extreme poverty, his bed the hard earth, his clothing a rude garb of penance, his food boiled beech leaves, his company hazel and beech trees, as he himself tells us. In a word, of the whole world he had nothing but room enough in which to pray, watch, fast, and praise God. " Behold, we have left all things;" that is the right way in which to renounce the world.
Many men of the world cannot understand the ideas of religions, and look on it as a strange thing to abandon all temporal goods; some, in fact, go so far as to condemn this mode of action as opposed to nature and reason; but their astonishment and condemnation are the result of gross ignorance, for they know not how to distinguish between transitory and true everlasting goods. Bernard could see much farther ahead; all that he left he looked on as toys, and it seemed to him that in giving to God his external goods he had given nothing at all, and therefore he gave himself, with body and soul, and all that he was and had.
So that after renouncing all things he completely detached himself from them. He renounced his body, and he used after wards to say to his novices that they should leave their bodies outside the door of the monastery, and enter with the soul alone; and in fact he treated his body as if it did not any more belong to him, but was the property of some malefactor that merited nothing but to be daily scourged and chastised; and he was as unmerciful, cruel, and severe towards it as I have described on. another occasion, when speaking of his wonderful penance. He abandoned the use of his tongue, which he condemned to a perpetual silence, so that he never allowed it to speak a word, unless to praise God and announce His glories. He abandoned the use of his ears, for he separated himself from all society of men, and took no interest in anything that occurred outside him self; nay, even the pleasing song of the birds was an annoyance to him, so that, as is well known, he caused the nightingales in Himmenrodt to become dumb because they disturbed him in his prayer and intercourse with God; and those birds are dumb in that place to this day. He abandoned the use of his eyes, which he so mortified and chastened by long self-denial that when they beheld any object he took no notice of it. He lived a whole year in a novice's cell, and when he came out he did not know whether the cell was vaulted or had a boarded ceiling. In the church that he visited daily he thought there was only one window in the choir, although there were three of them. For a whole day he travelled once along a lake, and did not remark it, or take any notice of it, or remember that he had seen it; for when the religious began to speak of this lake in the evening he asked where it was. He abandoned the use of his taste, for he was so emaciated by his long and severe fasts that he could hardly take enough nourishment to preserve his life, and at last he lost all taste completely, and could not distinguish one kind of food from another. For many days, one after the other, he ate raw blood that had been set before him by mistake, and drank oil instead of water, without in the least noticing what he was eating or drinking. It would take too long to relate all that is written in his Life of similar traits of his.
And what wonder was it? How could it be otherwise? All the senses of the body must lose their power when, as was the case with Bernard, the soul itself was, so to speak, abandoned, which, with all its faculties, memory, understanding, will, thoughts, and desires, was by night, during long watching, as well as by day, while he worked hard, always sunk in God alone, and, as it were, ravished out of itself. In a word, the life led by this wonderful man was more like that of an angel without a body or bodily appetites than that of a human being. No one," says the Abbot William, in the history of his life, " could, in my opinion, explain how he lived who does not live by the same spirit."
And even this solitude and intimacy with God that were so dear to him he left when the honor of God, the good of the Church, and the salvation of souls required it. He travelled through nearly every country in Europe, and visited the chief cities of Italy, France, and Germany, partly to combat the new heresies that were just cropping up, and partly to further important ecclesiastical business that was entrusted to him by different Popes. In these journeys he lost no opportunity of working countless wonders in his unwearied zeal for the honor of God, and that without in the least abating his wonted austerities, until at last, worn out and exhausted, more like a skeleton, as he says himself, than a living man, leaving all his remaining strength and vital spirits for the love of God, he resigned his valiant soul into the hands of his Creator.
"Behold, we have left all things, and have followed Thee. What, therefore, shall we have?" Such was the question asked by St. Peter, who had left only a few fisherman's nets. holy St. Bernard, what reward must then have been given to thee? Yet thou didst receive here on this earth the hundredfold. Didst thou not receive a hundred times more wealth, in the shape of illuminations and graces from God, than thou didst renounce in the world? A hundred times more honor and glory, too, before men, in every place where thy wonderful sanctity was known, than thou could st have hoped for in thy father's house? A hundred times more consolation, joy, and delight in thy intimacy with God than all the pleasures of the world could have given thee? Oh, what glory, happiness, and sweetness will now, Bernard, be thy lot in all eternity with God in heaven! This we cannot now understand; but we shall see it one day with thee, if we only now endeavor to follow the example of thy virtues, and for God's sake to renounce all things. My dear brethren, if we wish the first we must also do the latter. We, too, if we desire to follow Christ into heaven, should and must leave all things for God's sake. This is briefly the moral lesson of the
Second Part.
We, too, must leave all things. Hear this, ye married men! Go away, then, from your wives; leave house and home, shop, business, and trade! We must leave all things. Hear this, ye mothers; leave your children to themselves; to the desert with you! We must leave all things. Children, why do you tarry? You must take leave of father, mother, brothers, sisters, friends, and relations, and shut yourselves up in the walls of a cloister! We must leave all things. At once, ye peasants; give up your fields and lands and vineyards; they are no more for you; you are relieved from all work; abandon your homes and barns, and follow Christ, if you wish to go to heaven! But, you will say, what queer kind of preaching is this? Have we not received from God, by the apostle St. Paul, the express command: "But to them that are married, not I, but the Lord commandeth, that the wife depart not from her husband. And let not the husband put away his wife "? Are not all parents bound by God, under a grievous obligation, to bring up their children for God and heaven, to keep a watchful eye on them, and to direct them as well as they can? Does not the same apostle say: "Let every man abide in the same calling in which he was called "? a How can these commands be fulfilled if we have to run away and leave everything? And you are right! Remain, therefore, where you are, with your own, according to the requirements of your duty and state of life, and live in a Christian and holy manner as becomes you. Meanwhile it is true that all who wish to save their souls must leave all things, not indeed in act, but at least in heart, affection, and inclination. Of this the same apostle writes in the same chapter: "This, therefore, I say, brethren: The time is short; it remaineth that they also who have wives be as if they had none; . . . and they that buy as though they possessed not; and they that use this world as though they used it not." In this consists the detachment of the heart, that one does not allow his heart, inclinations, and desire to cleave to any earthly thing, and uses what is necessary only so far as is required for the service of God; and that one is always so disposed in his heart as to lose husband, wife, children, house and home, money and property, rather than for their sake to transgress any one of the divine laws. He who is not so disposed at heart, and does not in that manner and in affection leave all things, is not on the way to heaven.
Besides, we must also in reality leave everything at once that we cannot retain without losing our souls. Sinners, leave, therefore, by speedy repentance and amendment, the yoke of the evil one whom you have been serving hitherto; leave that unhappy state in which, if death surprises you, your poor souls will be condemned to the eternal pains of hell. Do this at once; there is no time to lose! You must leave everything that, so long as you retain it, keeps you from regaining the grace of God. You must leave that ill-gotten gain that you have hitherto had in your possession, and restore it to its lawful owner. You must leave that secret hatred, anger, and desire of revenge you have hitherto entertained against your neighbor, whom you could not bear to look at, or to speak a kind word to, and you must be reconciled to him from your heart. You must leave the proximate occasion of sin; that house in which, as you know by experience, you have sinned so often and grievously; that company in which you have done so much evil; that person with whom you have been united in the bonds of unlawful love. If you do not leave all these things all your confessions, communions, and absolutions are nothing but so many sacrileges. You must leave that bad habit of cursing, which gives so much scandal to your children and domestics; that habit of excessive drinking, which is the cause of so much sin; that habit of talking against charity, which so often injures the character of your neighbor; that habit of impure conversation, which is the occasion of evil to so many innocent souls. You must leave that perverse, scandalous, and unlawful worldly custom which cannot harmonize with the teaching and principles of the gospel. You must leave that devils pillow, that is, idleness, which is the cause of so much sin to yourselves and your children. You must leave that habit of gambling and paying unnecessary visits by which so much precious time is squandered, and which prevents the training of children from being properly attended to.
Further, we must leave all that might place us in danger of losing the grace of God by sin; namely, we must leave the too free use of the eyes, so that, like Bernard, we must close them, not only to unlawful objects, but even to those that are remotely dangerous; we must leave the too curious use of the ears, that we may not listen to uncharitable or impure talk; we must leave the too unrestrained use of the tongue, that we may learn to be silent about the faults and failings of others; we must leave the use of the feet, that they may not bring us into the dangerous company of persons of the opposite sex; and we must leave all carnal sensualities, and mortify our senses, often even in lawful things, for the sake of God and heaven. Finally, we must and will, with all our hearts, leave all that the providence of God has not given to us as well as to others who are richer, or that He has taken from us by misfortune and temporal calamities, or that He may in future deprive us of; so that, since we must in any case suffer the loss of those things, we may turn it to the profit of our souls by bearing it with Christian patience and conformity to the will of God, and with peaceful and contented minds for the sake of God and heaven.
Let us, with the utmost care, seek wealth and riches, but, with Bernard, let them be heavenly riches, that no thief, nor misfortune, nor adversity, nor death can deprive us of. Let us seek honor and esteem, but let them be that undying honor and glory that will be ours for all eternity. Let us seek pleasures and delights, but let them be those of which the Apostle speaks, that surpass all human understanding. Let us, as long as we are on this earth, abandoned by temporal prosperity and worldly pleasures, always keep our hearts fixed on heaven. Yes, so it shall be, Lord! But what reward have we to expect? Even those very goods, honors, and pleasures that we shall have sought in this manner; Thy grace and friendship, repose of conscience, the consolation of the Holy Ghost on earth, and eternal life with Thee in heaven. With that we shall have enough. Amen.