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Updated: May 5, 2025
The rule enjoins severe devotional exercises, self-mortification, fasting, and prayer, and a constant attendance at matins, vespers, and on all the services of the Church, "that, being refreshed and satisfied with heavenly food, instructed and stablished with heavenly precepts, after the consummation of the divine mysteries," none might be afraid of the Fight, but be prepared for the Crown.
He taught that God used deceit with man when He judged it well for man to be deceived; that contemplation led to perfection; that self-mortification, self-denial, and prayer were necessary to a godly life; and that the Holy Spirit constantly made new revelations to the human beings prepared to receive them.
This community, founded fifteen years before, and now ruled by Stephen Harding, an Englishman from Dorsetshire, was exceedingly austere, keeping Saint Benedict's rule literally. Here Bernard's uncompromising self-mortification, and his love of, and communion with, Nature, showed themselves as the chief characteristics of his noble spirit.
During the last sickness of her husband she watched with unwearied assiduity at his bed-side, shrinking from no amount of exhaustion or toil, She survived her husband fifteen years, devoting all this time to austerities, self-mortification and deeds of charity. She died in 1720; and at her express request was buried without any parade, and with no other inscription upon her tomb than
These, therefore, must be slain by these three exercises, God's governance, our self-mortification, the hurt done to us by others; and so they must spiritually rest before God, and give Him room for His works.
But the attainment of liberation was not easy, and Siddhartha suffered long and practiced self-mortification assiduously, at length being rewarded; and "there arose within him the eye to perceive the great and noble truths which had been handed down; the knowledge of their nature; the understanding of their cause; the wisdom that lights the true path; the light that expels darkness."
The Brahmins, however, received him with suspicion, so he retired to a lonely country where, with five disciples, he devoted himself to deep meditation and self-mortification. In time he came to see that it was no use to torture and enfeeble the body, which is after all the abode of the soul, and accordingly began to take food again.
But his heart would not suffer him to enjoy this cruel luxury of self-mortification, and his horses' heads were turned to Richmond when within a stage of London. He had spent two days with the good old man, and those two days had so warmed and softened his feelings that he was quite appalled at his own dereliction from fixed principles!
But on this point, one important distinction needs to be made; and that is, between the self-denial which has no other aim than mere self-mortification, and that which is exercised to secure greater good to ourselves and others. The first is the foundation of monasticism, penances, and all other forms of asceticism; the latter, only, is that which Christianity requires.
He signalized his piety, it is true, by the most disgusting exploits of self-mortification; but, at the same time, he was strenuous in his efforts to reform the people and the clergy. He was praying in the ancient church of St. Germain des Pres, when, like Dauversiere, he thought he heard a voice from Heaven, saying that he was destined to be a light to the Gentiles.
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