It seems to me that you and I will not have a proper understanding of Saint Bernard without a reference to our particular form of monastic life. What "strict observance" is about stems mainly from the notion that we are not going to state the contemplative dimension of the Christian life, let alone attain it, without some sort of emphasis. Only so can we make an impact in the Church of God. So, we emphasize a quality, indeed we of set purpose overemphasize a quality, a character, a note of the life of the spirit  — the  innerness, the hidden, the quiet, the introvert side of the human scene in relation to God, religion, the spirit.

So, we do not get involved with parishes, schools, ministries, with the activity normally associated with those who serve God and the Church, lay or cleric. We are involved, of course, with ministry and service, as is inevitable, but we do them within the context of the cloister. And we learn in that context what we knew in the first place, that it is very difficult to maintain a balance between spirit and matter, body and soul. Maintaining that balance within the walls seems a major preoccupation of monks. Yet, what can be wrong with serving parishes and schools? Is making cheese somehow superior? Wrongness is not the point: the difficulty is that parishes and schools and so much else can so overwhelm you that the life of the spirit becomes minimal. But cannot that happen with cheese? It can. But you can more easily correct it for its absurdity.

In other words, like an artist we exaggerate, we overemphasize, we monks of this Order, by way of making a point: that contemplation is part of life, all life, a major part. We set up a very special context, a climate, a milieu to state that. We do not say that our environment is the ideal, the perfect. We simply use it to say something that needs saying. Something very hard to do in the midst of an active life. That is why we are here, for if we could have done it where we were, we would have. That is why men active in the ministry come here, even join us, to touch again that wholeness, or to be engaged in it permanently.

That is why we too might say of Saint Bernard, a saint of superb stature, that he was none the less, in the monastic sense, a flawed saint. He should have stayed in his cloister. John Paul II would surely tell him as much today. Political priests are out of their element. Then there is the further point: his being involved with the Crusades. Despite the fact that this is the worst of centuries, this age of death and darkness, this violent time of one major war after another, with worse yet in the works, we can still sit in judgment on Saint Bernard and tell him that war is not a weapon of the Kingdom. But he was all a man of his time.

Which brings us back to ourselves. How flawed are we in our sanctity, yours and mine? A good question. In answer to it, I ask a few:

 Are there any young suicides in your family, your kin, your friends?
 Suicide is the second largest cause of death among the young.

 Any of your kin into cocaine, in trouble with drugs? Many are.

 Two thirds of high school students regularly use alcohol. Any alcoholic
 youngsters in your family? Or adults?

 Any teenage pregnancies in your family, your sister's, your brother's
 girls, acquaintances? Forty percent of today's teenage girls will
 predictably be pregnant before they are out of their teens, not necessarily
 married.

 Any gays in your kinship? Any of your friends dying of AIDS? Or dead
 already?

 Any of your people married, divorced, remarried, in or out of the Church?

 Any of your kin left the Church, no longer function in it, have lost the
 faith? Any into satan worship, demonology?

 You have kin in the war business, manufacturing war material, not to
 say nuclear?

Do these questions concern you? Bother you? Do you worry about them? Do you have any grasp of them at all? The world you and I left ten or twenty or thirty years ago, even a couple of years ago, is not there anymore. Yet you and I are still part of it. Because if we are not, and these matters are of no concern to us — and the list is by no means complete even without mentioning normal tragedy like devastating sickness, accident and sudden death — then I would say that your spirituality and mine is definitely flawed.

For these are the signs of the times. Our monastic seclusion was never construed as a flight from concern. We bring the world with us and carry it with us before God. We redeem it with Christ. So this is no haven, no igloo, no spiritual disneyland.

Some logical consequences follow these observations. One is that we are as much the children of our times as Saint Bernard ever was. We have only to look at our personal relations. We lack an ability to dialog in depth, to exchange, to share. We do not relate well or easily on the feeling level, emotional level. We are rarely intimate. This is not personal choice, it is simply the way of the western male. Our kind bonds with other men in deep shared experiences: hunting, fishing, drinking, bowling, to war together — but that bonding has definite limits: it never gets too personal. And we simply continue that style in the monastery even though it inhibits our growth, as it does for all men, and hampers community development. We cannot help it for being men of our times. As Bernard was a man of his times. In any case, he was called on by higher authority to leave the cloister and become deeply enmeshed in political and ecclesiastical life. Gifted as he was, it is no surprise that his services were in demand, given the needs; and given the reaches of his holiness it is also no surprise that his activity did no hurt to his monastic life. It was all love.

Is love at work behind our ignorance? When we stay ill-informed because we are cloistered monks? Is the thinking: what we do not know will never hurt us? Why was it so very late in the day, very late, when the monks of Gethsemani finally got wise to the mess that was Vietnam? They did not know. Maybe they did not want to know. Maybe it was not their fault. Father Louis [Thomas Merton] was kept well informed by a host of friends and so very early, very early, with courage and vision he raised his prophetic voice and he was heard, even if not by the monks.

We need to be well informed because we need to know the world in order to love it. And to redeem it with Christ. You cannot redeem what you do not know. And I mean professional input, not just newspapers and popular news magazines. I am not talking about amusement and diversion.

So if we do better than Saint Bernard by remaining with the cloister, we can do worse when we misuse the privilege. Lots of people today envy that privilege, the pious, peaceful, serene life we have, materially and spiritually good indeed. Sometimes that envy loses its piety and turns to resentment — that we have it so nice while they have it so tough. And tough many have it. Fancy raising a family today!

Such resentment will never find root-room if the monks live in the real world, with an awareness that does not express itself in hand-wringing over how awful everything is, but in a compassion that drives prayer deep into the heart. There we enter wholeheartedly into the struggle of good and evil that goes on in those depths and is engaged there, and only there.

People like Saint Bernard are rare. So are Gandhis, and Dorothy Days, and Mother Teresas. And men like John Paul II. Whole, integrated, entire. They challenge us to be what we are, one hand in the hand of Christ our Divine Brother, one hand in the hand of our human brother.

I asked Bill Paulsell (*), who has high school/college daughters: "What is it like when your daughter is out some night with a young man and you are home with your wife and your books and at 11:30 the phone rings? Or you just get into bed when you hear a car drive into the yard, a door slams, and a minute later the door bell chimes?" He looked at me and said: "You realize, don't you? That it is terrifying."

Hold the world close to you, dear brother. And do so in Christ. As to Christ. Not as to a stranger you know nothing about. We follow Saint Bernard in that love for the world. In fact we must.   Amen.

(*)William O. Paulsell is pastor of North Christian Church in Columbus, Indiana and a friend of Fr. Matthew's and frequent visitor to Gethsemani. He has edited some of Fr. Matthew's homilies for publication in The Call of Wild Geese (Cistercian Publications, Inc. 1996)