SPEAKER_00: Today the church gives us one of the great spiritual masters of the Christian tradition, Saint Bernard of Clairbaux.
SPEAKER_00: And if you want to understand Bernard, begin with one word love.
SPEAKER_00: Not sentimental love, not emotion.
SPEAKER_00: Bernard spent his life asking a much deeper question.
SPEAKER_00: What happens when the human heart actually falls in love with God?
SPEAKER_00: Bernard was born in France in ten ninety into a noble family.
SPEAKER_00: He could have pursued comfort, status, and influence.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, as a young man he entered the monastery at Seitaux, and he did not go alone.
SPEAKER_00: His conviction was so powerful that family members and friends followed him into monastic life.
SPEAKER_00: Eventually he was sent to establish a monastery at Clerbaux, and from there Bernard became one of the most influential Christians in the twelfth century.
SPEAKER_00: Popes sought his counsel, kings would listen to him.
SPEAKER_00: He intervened in disputes throughout Europe.
SPEAKER_00: He preached, he wrote, he helped reform monastic life, and the church would eventually name him a doctor of the church.
SPEAKER_00: But here's what's fascinating about Bernard.
SPEAKER_00: For all his brilliance, he understood that Christianity cannot remain in the head.
SPEAKER_00: You could study God and still not surrender to God.
SPEAKER_00: You can know all the theology and still have a heart of stone.
SPEAKER_00: You can know the commandments, receive the sacraments, say your prayers, and still keep God at a safe distance.
SPEAKER_00: Bernard wanted something more.
SPEAKER_00: He wanted the heart to belong completely to God.
SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly what Ezekiel gives us today.
SPEAKER_00: God says, I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you.
SPEAKER_00: And then this extraordinary image, I will take away your stony heart and give you a heart of flesh.
SPEAKER_00: Notice who does the work.
SPEAKER_00: God says, I will cleanse you.
SPEAKER_00: I will give you a new heart.
SPEAKER_00: I will place my spirit within you.
SPEAKER_00: You see, Christianity begins with what God does in us.
SPEAKER_00: We do not perform spiritual surgery on ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: God changes the heart.
SPEAKER_00: But then if we look at the gospel, it gives us the other side.
SPEAKER_00: A king prepares a wedding feast for his son.
SPEAKER_00: Everything is ready.
SPEAKER_00: The invitation goes out, and people refuse to come.
SPEAKER_00: One goes to his farm, the other one has business elsewhere.
SPEAKER_00: Others simply ignore the invitation.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine that.
SPEAKER_00: The king is inviting them to a feast and they are too busy.
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps that's one of the great spiritual dangers of our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Not that we openly reject God.
SPEAKER_00: We're simply too occupied for him.
SPEAKER_00: There's always something else.
SPEAKER_00: Lots of noise, lots of distraction, work, appointments, messages, deadlines.
SPEAKER_00: I got my own plans.
SPEAKER_00: We don't we do not necessarily say, God, I don't want you.
SPEAKER_00: We don't say that, but what we do say a lot is, well, maybe not now.
SPEAKER_00: And the not now repeated long enough can become a life without God.
SPEAKER_00: But then Jesus adds this strange detail about the wedding garment.
SPEAKER_00: The king opens a banquet to everyone, good and bad alike.
SPEAKER_00: The hall gets filled.
SPEAKER_00: But then one man arrives without a wedding garment, and he's cast out.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Well, because God's invitation is free, but is not meaningless.
SPEAKER_00: God welcomes us as we are, but he loves us too much to leave us as we are.
SPEAKER_00: Grace is not simply an invitation to enter the room.
SPEAKER_00: Grace changes the person who enters.
SPEAKER_00: That's the wedding garment, a transformed life, a new heart.
SPEAKER_00: And this is where Saint Bernard becomes such a powerful teacher.
SPEAKER_00: Bernard understood that the Christian life is the gradual transformation of what we love.
SPEAKER_00: At first, we often love God because we need something.
SPEAKER_00: Oh Lord, help me.
SPEAKER_00: Can you heal me?
SPEAKER_00: Can you protect me?
SPEAKER_00: If you could fix this, or can you give me this or grant me this?
SPEAKER_00: And God receives us there.
SPEAKER_00: But Bernard says that the heart must grow.
SPEAKER_00: Eventually I begin to love God, not simply because of what he gives me, but I begin to love God because He is God.
SPEAKER_00: That's spiritual maturity.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's the question Saint Bernard puts before us today.
SPEAKER_00: Do I love God or do I mostly love what I want God to do for me?
SPEAKER_00: Because God wants more than occasional attention.
SPEAKER_00: He wants the heart.
SPEAKER_00: Not because God is needy, but because he knows that every other love in our lives becomes properly ordered only when He is the first.
SPEAKER_00: That's why Bernard's spirituality remains so important nine hundred years later.
SPEAKER_00: The great crisis of the spiritual life is not always that we stop believing in God.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we believe in him while our hearts belong elsewhere.
SPEAKER_00: So today's prayer, Ezekiel's prayer, says this, Lord, take away the heart of stone, the heart that has become distracted, the heart that has become cynical, the heart that goes through the motions, the heart that knows all the right words but has forgotten how to love you.
SPEAKER_00: Give me a heart of flesh.
SPEAKER_00: Saint Bernard spent his life discovering that God does not merely want servants who obey him, he wants sons and daughters who love him, truly love him.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because the banquet is ready, the invitation has been sent out.
SPEAKER_00: God is not asking you merely to show up, he's asking you to give him your heart.
SPEAKER_00: And if your heart has become hard, tired, or divided and distracted, do not be afraid.
SPEAKER_00: You do not have to manufacture a new one.
SPEAKER_00: God has already promised I will give you a new heart.
SPEAKER_00: And if you hell if you let him, he'll do just that.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.