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Wednesday 21 August 2013
Tuesday 20 August 2013
St Bernard and the non-scholastic East
Solemnity of Saint Bernard 20th August 2013
Extract from Article in the Bernardine archive.
With acknowledgement to the author.
Sobornost vol. 14:2 1992
http://www.sobornost.org/other-pubs.html
 |
Bernard "Like a towering cedar" |
With acknowledgement to the author.
Sobornost vol. 14:2 1992
http://www.sobornost.org/other-pubs.html
4.
St Bemard of Clairvaux and
the tradition of the Christian East
G.L.C. FRANK
The suggestion
that there is a relationship between St Bernard of Clairvaux
(1090-1153) and the Eastern Christian tradition may at first seem somewhat contrived.
Bernard was indeed a church-man deeply embedded in the Latin religious world.
He was an ardent papalist and a staunch defender of the Western dogmatic
tradition, concerned to preserve both the Church's unity centred in Rome and
her received Latin understanding of the Christian mystery. Moreover, he seems
to have been oblivious to or uninterested in Byzantine Orthodox theology and
spirituality. Bernard was born thirty-six years after the mutual anathemas of
pope and patriarch and so lived in a Church already canonically separated from
Eastern Christianity.
Despite the
ecclesial separation of East and West and despite Bernard's clear commitment
to Roman theology, I would suggest that in a fundamental way his concerns and
his responses to the problems he faced reveal a theological mind which still
had much in common with the Orthodox East. One should not be unduly surprised at this
suggestion since the formal canonical act of breaking eucharistic communion between
Rome and Constantinople did not necessarily mean the breaking apart of the
catholic ecclesial mind shared by both East and West. St Bernard was,
as Dom Cuthbert Butler puts it, a 'child of the patristic age that was passing
away', and the 'last of the Fathers'. 1* These descriptions rightly place Bernard
within that delicate moment in the flow of church history when both Easterners
and Westerners could still recognise in each other their common catholic
tradition despite their separation, had they been willing to do so. It was precisely during the
immediate post-schism period, however, that the Orthodox East and the Roman Catholic
West were both experiencing a new phase in theological development which was
to further exacerbate the division between them and which was to break down
even further what remained of their common ecclesial mind. This situation
constitutes the context for understanding the relationship between Bernard and
the Eastern Christian tradition. I would suggest that St Bernard was one of the last
major Western medieval theologians who theologised in a manner similar to that
of the Christian East. He was, of course, a westerner, living in and thinking
out of the Latin Christian tradition, but it was precisely his adherence to the
received Latin tradition with its universal dimension which linked it and him
to the experience of Eastern Christianity in its Byzantine form.
. . . . . . . . .
...[natures and the Fathers and rote repetition of their words does not lead one to the knowledge of God and enable one to speak and discourse about God. These things are not
possible without observance of the commandments and the light of the Spirit which leads to the mystical knowledge of God.26 The heart of Symeon's theology is his attempt, like that of Bernard, to
hold together personal experience and orthodox dogma and to assert the necessary place of experience in Christian life and theological reflection:
Believers receive this teaching through signs of many kinds: by enigmas [ ... J, through ineffable mystical
energies, through divine revelations, through contemplation of the reasons of creation, and by many other means [ ... ]. In addition, through the sending and the presence of the Holy Spirit, God
gives them the same assurance as he gave to the apostles. They are more perfectly enlightened and learn by this light that we cannot
conceive of God nor name him [ ... ] that he is everlasting and
incomprehensible. Indeed, all knowledge and discernment [ ... J, the adoption as sons l ... ], the apprehension of the mysteries of Christ and of the mystery of his divine oikonomia
toward us, in short, all the things which unbelievers do not know but we are able t~
know and utter after receiving the grace of faith, are all taught by the Spirit. 27
In his Catecheses,
Symeon expressed it this way:
It is heresy when someone turns aside in any way from the dogmas that have been defined concerning the right faith. But to deny that at this present time there ae some who love God, and that they
have been granted the Holy Spirit and to be baptised by Him as sons of God, that they have become gods by knowledge and experience and contemplation, that wholly subverts the Incarnation of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ.28
St Bernard and
the non-scholastic East
Bernard of Clairvaux, I would suggest, breathed
the same theological air as that of Symeon the New Theologian and the Orthodox
East. This is not to say, of course, that he was like the Eastern theologians in
all respects. His writings, for example, display little of the apophaticism which
dominated Eastern theology from early times. The writings of pseudo-Dionysius,
which popularised apophatic theology in the West, did not enter into the Latin
theological tradition until the twelfth century, although they had already been
translated into Latin in the ninth century by John Scotus Erigena. Nor does Bernard
seem to have had a place for the physical body's experience of and participation
in God - something clearly maintained by St Syrneon and later emphasised even
more strongly by the Eastern hesychasts and St Gregory Palamas (1296-1359).29*
In this sense, Bernard's mysticism seems to reflect and to be more heavily
indebted to platonic philosophy than was the Eastern Chritian spiritual-doctrinal
tradition, which - while influenced by platonic ideas - nonetheless also
continuously criticised platonic philosophy and developed an anthropology with
an emphasis on the whole human being and the participation in God of the body
as well as the soul. Nonetheless, St Bernard's fundamental approach and method
of theologising was the same as that of the Orthodox East. Both emphasised the
intimate connection between reason and experience. Both approaches gave logic
an allotted place in theology, but were fundamentally experiential in
character. Both theologies had the Church as their context and so were moulded
by ecclesial life rather than by an academic and speculative environment.
In his dispute with Abelard, St Bernard
won the immediate battle but lost the basic theological conflict underlying the
battle. In the West, theology was eventually to develop into the queen of the sciences
and as a positive and speculative discipline. Bernard's attempt to maintain the
fundamental nature of theology as the mystical experience of God with its subsequent
reflection on that experience and on the mysteries of the faith gave way to a
scholasticism in which reason and logical disputation came to play the primary
role. Mystical theology was not, of course, repudiated entirely in the West. But
it came to have a subordinate place in the theologising of the scholastics and
it tended more and more to be separated from rational reflection in theology - a
tendency which continues to dominate the Western theological scene.
In contrast to this, it was the representatives
of mystical theology who won the conflict in the East. Symeon came to be
venerated as a saint, not Stephen of Nicomedia. And the Orthodox East perpetuated
the experiential theology of earlier centuries. This difference in the way
Westerners and Easterners theologised during the so-called Middle Ages meant
the further shattering of the early theological mind common to both East and
West. By the fourteenth century, if not before, Easterners saw in Latin scholasticism
a theology which they regarded as too naturalistic, too philosophical and too
much dependent on purely human methods of argument. In this regard, I have no
doubt that St Bernard would have concurred with them.
Monday 19 August 2013
COMMENT: Jerusalem reference in Biography
The Association of Gabrielle Bossis LINK has brief information,
"Didn't you understand that when you were in Jerusalem and prayed on Calvary", the quote places Gabrielle in Jerusalem during her 'grueling commitments in France, in Europe, Palestine, Africa '.
It will be worth following the dates in the months of August and September of 1948.
The table before compares the translations.
|
GABRIELLE
BOSSIS
.
Lexprience mystic
(1936-1950)
After thirteen years of ministry on stage, new light
led Gabrielle on top of the Great Pyramid that was his life, the beginning of
his spiritual journal, as if all that had gone before had been a rise to the
summit. At sixty-two years, in
1936, after many requests, Miss Bossis agrees to organize a risky tour in
Canada, across the Atlantic Ile-de-France . It
will be two months and a half uninterrupted appointments and travel,
performances and lessons to young actresses improvised meetings, parties and
emotions. Reading these first
interviews, it strikes us, Gabrielle related as if it were a fact now usual: the
outcrop of intimacy between her and one who speaks it.And it comes to ask if
it is really the first time Gabrielle hears this voice, how is it possible
that no emotion pierces her? His
mystical conversations they begin, as everyone believed in 1936?
The tour ends in Canada. Gabrielle returns home but the newspaper "two voices" continues, so spiritual. It will go with her life, becoming: Him and me . A divine interlocutor has crept into a land travel into the celestial journey.
While Europe rushes into the tragedy of the Second
World War, Gabrielle - ignorant as each upcoming events -. Still organizes
his tours but the newspaper says almost nothing
Forgetting obediently, it saves Now the witty dialogue, renouncing annotate personal facts that are not necessary to the understanding of the divine response. Only the mention of places and dates to track, at least in part, its grueling commitments in France, in Europe, Palestine, Africa ... Evidence of this period also help us. |
L'exp�rience
mystique (1936-1950)
Après treize années
d’apostolat sur scène, une nouvelle lumière conduit Gabrielle au sommet de la
grande pyramide que fut sa vie, le début de son journal spirituel, comme si
tout ce qui l’avait précédé n’avait été qu’une ascension vers ce sommet. À soixante-deux
ans, en 1936, après de nombreuses sollicitations, Mademoiselle Bossis accepte
d’organiser une tournée risquée au Canada, sur le transatlantique Île-de-France. Ce seront
deux mois et demi ininterrompus de rendez-vous et de déplacements, de représentations
et de cours à de jeunes actrices improvisées, de rencontres, de fêtes et
d’émotions. En lisant ces premiers entretiens, une chose nous frappe,
Gabrielle la rapportant comme s’il s’agissait d’un fait désormais habituel :
l’affleurement de rapports intimes entre elle et Celui qui lui parle. Et l’on
en vient à se demander : s’il s’agit vraiment de la première fois que
Gabrielle entend cette Voix, comment est-il possible qu’aucune émotion ne
perce chez elle ? Ses conversations mystiques commencent-elles, comme tout le
monde l’a cru, en 1936 ?
La tournée au Canada s’achève. Gabrielle rentre chez elle mais le journal « à deux voix » se poursuit, tellement spirituel. Il ne s’éteindra qu’avec sa vie à elle, devenant : Lui et moi. Un interlocuteur divin s’est insinué dans un voyage terrestre pour le transformer en voyage céleste.
Tandis que l’Europe
se précipite dans la tragédie de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, Gabrielle –
ignorant comme chacun les événements à venir – organise encore ses tournées
mais son journal n’en dit presque plus rien.
S’oubliant docilement, elle n’enregistre désormais que les dialogues spirituels, renonçant à annoter les faits personnels qui ne sont pas nécessaires à la compréhension de la réponse divine. Seule la mention des lieux et des dates permet de suivre, au moins en partie, ses engagements exténuants : en France, en Europe, en Palestine, en Afrique... Des témoignages de cette époque nous aident également. |
Gabrielle, 'Did she make pilgrimage to the Holy Land?
YOU
AND i, Gabrielle Bossis
Question:
The location of
Gabrielle’s movements are rare. There the line, ‘Didn't you understand that when you
were in Jerusalem and prayed on Calvary’, may need some biographical details help.
1948
August
19 - In a moment of depression.
"Keep going.
Be steadfast."
September
6 - In the empty house.
"I am
always crucified before the Father, who sees all time in a single
instant. I am always the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
And since I am yours, why don't you offer Me more often to heaven from the depths
of your heart? It is always now. Didn't
you understand that when you were in
Tenderly offer your
sacrifice for the world. Aren't there others weaker than you? Can
they rise up without Me? If you wanted to save a person very dear to you
and this beloved person refused your help, how much you would suffer! I
want to help the world, and the world refuses My help. Speak to the
Father about His Son on the cross, so that He will let Himself be touched and
send light to these hardened ones who do not even look at Me. You know how
one speaks to a father who is watching his son die? Won't this father hasten to
carry out his child's last wishes? Remind Him of the words 'Forgive them
for they know not what they do.' It is always now.
And if He forgives,
what will He not do? Do you know the outpouring of any love like
His? A love as vehement, as faithful, as all - consuming, as full of
delicate and incomparable sweetness. A love that is all readiness. It is
now this love. It is always now."
Sunday 18 August 2013
Night Office Saint John Chrysostom 18 Aug 2013
TWENTIETH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME
SUNDAY
First Reading Ephesians 1:1-14
Responsory Col 1:17-20
Christ exists before all things, and all things are held together in him. He is the head of the body, the Church. + He is the beginning and the first-born from the dead, so as to be first in every way.
V. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.+ He is the ...
Second Reading From a homily by Saint John Chrysostom
In his great desire for the glory of his grace to be revealed, God the Father predestined us to be adopted as his children. This was his will and pleasure, says the Apostle, so that his glorious grace freely bestowed on us in his Beloved might redound to his praise.
Why does God wish to be praised and glorified by us if not to make our love for him more
fervent? His desire is not to receive service or glory or anything else from
us,
but
only
for
our salvation, and for this he
made the whole world. Being filled with praise and wonder because of the grace
bestowed on us will make us more diligent and zealous.
Imagine a man suffering from a repugnant and
infectious disease, and afflicted as well by old age, poverty, and hunger. Suppose someone suddenly transforms him into a comely young man, surpassing all
others
in
beauty, his cheeks glowing, his eyes shining more brightly than the sun; and suppose that having endowed him thus with the bloom of
youth, he then clothes him in purple, puts a crown on his head, and gives
him all the insignia of a king. Welt this
is exactly what God has done for our soul: he has made it beautiful, desirable, and lovable. The angels, archangels, and
all the powers of
heaven desire to look upon such a soul. So has he made us pleasing and desirable in his eyes. As the Psalmist says: The King will desire your beauty.
Consider the hurtful things we used to say,
and how full of grace are the words we use now. Think of the words spoken by the newly baptized. Could any speech be more
beautiful than that we use in renouncing the devil and swearing allegiance to Christ, or than the profession of faith that we make before and after our baptism? But let the thought of how many of us have been unfaithful to our
baptism fill us with sorrow, so that its grace may be renewed in us.
In his Beloved, says the Apostle, in whom we have redemption through his blood. The wonder is not only that God gave us his Son, but even more that he gave his Beloved to be sacrificed. There can be no greater marvel than this, that he gave his Beloved for his enemies. See how
highly he values us! If he gave his Beloved when we hated him and were his enemies, what will he not give us in the future, now that we have been reconciled to him
through grace?
Passing from the heights to the depths, the Apostle spoke first about adoption as
children, sanctification and purity, and finally about suffering. Not that he considers suffering to be of less
importance, for his subject matter is not arranged in an order proceeding from what is more
to what is less wonderful, but indeed the
reverse. Nothing is more astounding than the fact that God’s blood was shed for us; surpassing our adoption
as his children and all his other gifts is the fact that he did not even spare his Son. For it is a
great thing that our sins have been forgiven, but an even greater that they have been forgiven through
the blood of our Lord.
Responsory Ps 145:4-5.14
One age shall proclaim your works to another, shall declare your mighty deeds. +People will speak of your plendour and glory, and tell of your wonderful works.
V. The Lord supports all who stumble and raises all who are bowed down. + People will ...
John Chrysostom,
Hom. 1 sur L’Ephesiens: Bareillle 18, 176-178.
A Word in Season. Readings for the Liturgy of the Hours. VI, Ordinary
Time Year 1, pp.26-27. Augustinian Press 1995.
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