Today is the feast day of St. Bernard. I hesitate to say "one of my favorites" or "most loved" as I find it hard to become too attached to just one saint. Often times the saint I seem most attached to depends on my happenings in life at that time. But it is safe to say that St. Bernard of Clairvaux always comforts me in all situations. If you have not read much on this saint or you are looking for a GREAT book to read aloud to your children, you must pick up The Family That Overtook Christ (see link below). Also, a great introduction for adults is St. Bernard of Clairvaux from Amazon (below) or Tan.St. Bernard's writings are awesome. In his treatise On Loving God, he describes four degrees of love. We see clearly here why we learn and teach our children to know, love, and serve God. You must know before you can love and serve!
- First, man loves himself for his own sake due to his earthly nature
- Next, man sees that he is dependent on something and faith leads him to seek God and love Him because of his dependence on Him - a selfish love.
- Through the practice of our faith and worship of God, we learn of God's Goodness, and love Him not only for what He had done for us, but because He is God.
- The perfect love being a totally unselfish love, where man loves himself only for God's sake - a total abandonment to oneself and a total giving of oneself to God.As expressed in the Psalms: "I will go forth in the strength of the Lord God: and will make mention of Thy righteousness only" (Ps. 71:16)
3 comments:
I found this post really helpful and interesting so many thanks! I've written a little about it here.
i liked your saint of the day featuring St. Joseph Of Cupertino...
he's the saint who helped me pass many exams !
:)
Post a Comment