Volume III, Treatise II, Chapter VII

A Continuation of the Same Subject

St. BERNARD wishing to comprise in a few words the advantages of a religious life, says that “she sanctity and purity of religion causes him who is engaged in it to live more purely, to fall less frequently, to rise sooner, to walk with greater precaution, to be refreshed more frequently with Heavenly comforts, to repose with greater security, to die with greater confidence, to be sooner purified from his defects, and to be more gloriously recompensed.

Your profession”, says’he, speaking in another place to religious, “is most sublime; it is higher than the heavens, it is equal to the angels, it resembles angelical purity, because you have vowed not only all kind of sanctity, but also the perfection of all kind of sanctity, even the highest perfection. It is for others to serve God, but for you to be united to him; what name, therefore, shall I give you that is worthy of you? Shall I call you Heavenly men or Earthly angels? For though you live upon Earth, your conversations and your thoughts are in Heaven”— Ep. ad Frat. de Monte Dei. ‘For you are no longer strangers and pilgrims upon Earth, but fellow-citizens of the saints, and domestics of God” (Ephesians 2:19) You are like the blessed spirits whom God gives us to be our guard, and who so exercise themselves in their employments that they never lose the sight of God. Behold here the life of a true religious: his heart is in Heaven while his body is upon Earth: all his entertainment, all his conversation is either of God or of things belonging to God;

and he may truly say with the apostle, “Christ is my life” (Philippians 1:21) And as in the world it is said of him who loves hunting extremely, that hunting is his whole life; and of him that very much loves his study, that study is his life; so the apostle says here of himself, “that Jesus Christ is his whole life”, because he gave himself to nothing else but to Jesus Christ, and was entirely consecrated to him. A religious, also, is consecrated to him in the same manner, and consequently may say the same thing.

The same St. Bernard applies to a religious life these words of the Canticles: “My bed is all covered with flowers”—(Canticle of Canticles 1:16) He says that amongst the things of the world there is nothing conduces more to repose than a bed, so in the Church of God there is nothing more coriducive to tranquillity of mind than religion, and that it is a kind of bed, where the soul, disengaged from all the cares and disquiets of: the world, reposes continually in God. ’ We daily experience in the society the advantage it has pleased God to give us herein, superiors taking such particular care to provide us with all things that are necessary for life, for clothing, for studies, for journeys, for sickness, and for health, that we want not at all the help of our parents, nor need we think of them any more than to recommend them to God. For whether they are dead or alive, whether they are rich or poor, the society, and these superiors it gives us, are to us in place of father and mother, and with a tenderness which even exceeds that of a father and mother, provide for all our necessities, in order that, having no trouble about temporal things, we think of nothing else than of the end for which we embraced religion, which is to labour for our own spiritual advancement and for that of our neighbour. Clement of Alexandria says that God having put man in the terrestrial paradise, delivered up the possession of all things into his hands, that there being nothing more he could desire upon Earth, he might raise his thoughts and desires to Heaven. The society uses the like method with us. It charges itself with the care of all things we stand in need of, that being freed from the care of Earthly things, we may continually raise our thoughts towards Heaven.

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