A Path Through . . .

( St. Bernard of Clairvaux - found here ) “...It is essential to qualify what we mean when, in the context of faith, we speak of becoming free. That is what [St.] Bernard [of Clairvaux] does when he comments on the verse: ‘For he has freed me from the snare of the hunters and from the bitter word.’ For Bernard it is evident that true freedom is not ‘natural’ to fallen man. What seems natural to us is to have things our way, to satisfy our desires and realise our plans without interference, to flaunt and be vaunted for our own brilliant lights. Bernard, addressing man in this state of delusion, is deliciously sarcastic: ‘What do you fancy yourself as, you smatterer?! You have become a beast for which captors’ snares are laid.’ The fact that we are so easily tripped up, that we keep falling into the same old snares, though we know so well where they lie, is to him proof good enough that we are unfree, unable on our own to make steady progress towards our life’s true goal, delivered inst...