Saint Bernard

Extract

All over the world in this year of grace 1953 the figure of St Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, has stood out in great prominence. The immediate cause of this sudden limelight was the eighth centenary of his death; but a deeper reason must be sought in the fact that today men are turning to him and his Cistercian movement in a way that can hardly be equalled since the twelfth century in which he lived. He is the saint for today. It is surely more than a coincidence that the men of the U.S.A. are flocking to his standard in numbers as great as those of the saint's own lifetime. The unexpected popularity of the American Cistercian, Fr Thomas Merton, is not explained by the presence of an accomplished journalist within the silencebound walls of Gethsemane Abbey, as though he happened there by accident.