St. Bernard's 3 tips to get wisdom (one will surprise you)
Wisdom is found, most of all, in knowledge whose source is love.
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Wisdom is found, most of all, in knowledge whose source is love.
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St. Bernard’s 3 tips to get wisdom (one will surprise you)
- Thread starter johnnypapa
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Wisdom is found, most of all, in knowledge whose source is love.
fide
Well-Known Member
This article is a good one in one sense, but not as helpful as it could have been. The author's last sentence is "So if we would be wise, don’t start with an academic book. Start with prayer and love." The fundamental problem with the author's "three tips" then, is how does one start with prayer and love? A life-long journey is called for -- thus how does one start in the journey of prayer, and how does one begin with and grow in love?
Prayer, wisdom and love are really found on the same journey - a path in stages. The author would have been more helpful, then, to suggest this fact and include a summary or reference to Bernard's "stages": what is the process toward which one can grow toward authentic prayer, and mature wisdom, and holy love?
St. Bernard's work On Loving God is on-line and free to read, and its Table of Contents includes three chapters describing each of his four "stages" of love (his chapters VIII, IX, and X). These three chapters describe, in terms of love (or holy charity), the stages of the interior life of prayer proceeding to the perfection of the Gifts toward wisdom, and the Virtue of Holy Love (or Charity).
Jesus, in His Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5-7), teaches a stunning absolute, in the context of and concerning love:
Mt 5:48 You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Perfect here means love pure, holy, mature - corresponding to the love with which God loves. This word of Jesus, taken seriously, ought to motivate us all to read this work of St. Bernard! His "degrees of love" develop toward love's perfection in his "4th degree". Here also is the fullness of wisdom.
Prayer, wisdom and love are really found on the same journey - a path in stages. The author would have been more helpful, then, to suggest this fact and include a summary or reference to Bernard's "stages": what is the process toward which one can grow toward authentic prayer, and mature wisdom, and holy love?
St. Bernard's work On Loving God is on-line and free to read, and its Table of Contents includes three chapters describing each of his four "stages" of love (his chapters VIII, IX, and X). These three chapters describe, in terms of love (or holy charity), the stages of the interior life of prayer proceeding to the perfection of the Gifts toward wisdom, and the Virtue of Holy Love (or Charity).
Jesus, in His Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5-7), teaches a stunning absolute, in the context of and concerning love:
Mt 5:48 You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Perfect here means love pure, holy, mature - corresponding to the love with which God loves. This word of Jesus, taken seriously, ought to motivate us all to read this work of St. Bernard! His "degrees of love" develop toward love's perfection in his "4th degree". Here also is the fullness of wisdom.
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