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Holy Cross Abbey

901 Cool Spring Lane Berryville, Virginia 22611

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A Word from Our Cistercian Fathers

December 2, 2022 by Fr Joseph

As for me, as long as I look at myself, my eye is filled with bitterness.  But if I look up and fix my eyes on the aid of the divine mercy, this happy vision of God soon tempers the bitter vision of myself, and I say to him: “I am disturbed within so I will call you to mind from the land of the Jordan.”   This vision of God it not a little thing.  It reveals him to us as listening compassionately to our prayers, as truly kind and merciful, as one who will not indulge his resentment.  His very nature is to be good, to show mercy always and to spare.  By this kind of experience, and in this way, God makes himself known to us for our good.  When a man first discovers that he is in difficulties, he will cry out to the Lord who will hear him and say: “I will deliver you and you shall glorify me.”  In this way your self-knowledge will be a step to the knowledge of God; he will become visible to you according as his image is being renewed within you.  And you, gazing confidently on the glory of Lord with unveiled face, will be transformed into that same image with ever increasing brightness, by the work of the Spirit of the Lord. 

Bernard of Clairvaux, On the Song of Songs II, Sermon 36 “The Acquiring of Knowledge,” verse 6 (CF 7, p. 179)

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