St Bernard
As a young abbot, Bernard was aflame with ‘a maternal love for all mankind’. He saw what urgent work there was to do in the Church. He eagerly wanted to perform great things. Thereby ‘desire and humility were at odds’. Not only did he overestimate his own strength; he asked too much of his brethren. Such was his aura that ‘he frightened away almost all those among whom he was coming to live as abbot’. Instead of feeling drawn to him as to a source of life, they felt repulsed. Bernard, whom grace had preserved from some of the heart’s most devious temptations, was horrified to learn of the squalid inner battles many monks had to fight. He spoke to them harshly, to the point of ‘[seeming] to sow seeds of despair in men already weak’. Like Adam in Eden, he presumed that a graced state of pure divine gift was somehow his by right, entitling him to judge less favoured men. With time, though, transformation came upon him. It was wrought by his brethren’s fidelity.
