Fr Paul Gooley reads from the Gospel of Matthew (19: 23-30) in which Jesus tells his disciples that with God ‘all things are possible’. Afterwards, Fr Paul shares a little about the life of St Bernard or Clairvaux whose memorial we celebrate today.

Fr Paul says Bernard was born near Dijon, in France, in 1090, into a noble family. In 1112 he joined the new monastery at Cîteaux. This had been founded fourteen years before, in a bid to reject the laxity and riches of the Benedictine Order and to return to a primitive poverty and austerity of life.

Bernard arrived in the town with four of his five brothers and two dozen friends. Within three years he had been sent out to found a new monastery at Clairvaux, in Champagne, where he remained abbot for the rest of his life. By the time of his death, the Cistercian Order had grown from one house to 343.

Bernard was a man of great holiness and wisdom, and although he was often in very poor health, he was active in many of the great public debates of the time. He strongly opposed the luxurious lives of some of the clergy, and fought against the persecution of the Jews. He was also a prolific writer, of an inspiring rather than a technical kind.

He died in the year 1153.

On this day, Fr Paul invites us to ask, ‘St Bernard of Clairvaux…pray for us!’