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Good Morning. Today the church celebrates the feast of a man whose words were said to be so sweet that he came to be known as the mellifluous doctor and even the patron saint of beekeeepers. This honey-tongued monastic even likened prayer to wine which ‘made glad the heart.’

St Bernard of Clairvaux was a 12th century Cistercian abbot from the vineyards of central France who used the language of the spiritual senses to help him understand our experience of God. A particular inspiration was an Old Testament book called The Song of Songs in which he reflected on an allegory of the love of God for his people - the spiritual marriage between God the bridegroom and our soul, the bride. Not for him a remote and disinterested divine power but a God who invites us to be intimate with him. Perhaps we feel too frightened or unworthy to come close to God but each of us is called unconditionally into a loving relationship with the One who created us and wants us to know him in a personal way through the sensory world.

‘I come into my garden, my sister, my promised bride,’ says the lover in the Song of Songs. ‘I pick my myrrh and my balsam. I eat honey and my honeycomb, I drink my wine and my milk.’ The language of God is not that of anger and retribution but the language of love, of fragrance, healing, of eating and drinking, of holy communion between the Lover and the Beloved.

So as St Bernard of Clairvaux prayed: High and Holy God, give me this day a word of truth to silence the lies that would devour my soul and kind encouragements to strengthen me when I fall. Gracious one, I come quietly to your door needing to receive from your hands the nourishment that gives life. Amen and Amen.