Welcome to St. Bernard's
802 8th Street
Ione, Washington 99139

Mass Celebrated on the 2nd and 4th Sundays of each month at 8:00AM (usually)

St. Bernard

Saint Bernard, one of the most illustrious Christian teachers and representatives of monasticism in the Middle Ages, was born at Fontaines, near Dijon, in Burgundy, in 1091. The son of a knight, Bernard may have felt for a time the temptations of a military career, but the influence of a pious mother and his own inclinations towards a life of meditation and study led him to the cloister. While still a youth he is said to have been "marvelously cogitative" and the ascendancy of his mind and character were soon shown. He joined the small monastery of Cite aux in 1113 when twenty-two years of age, and such were the effects of his own devotion and eloquent enthusiasm in commending a religious life, that he drew after him not only his two younger brothers, but also his two elder ones, Guido and Gerard, both of whom had naturally taken to soldiering, and the elder of whom was married and had children. The effect of St. Bernard’s preaching is said to have been that mothers hid their sons, wives their husbands, companions their friends," lest they should be drawn away by his persuasive earnestness.

St. Bernard’s aim was to restore the Benedictine rule to its original simplicity and give a new impulse to the monastic movement. No amount of self-mortification could exceed his ambition. He strove to overcome his bodily senses altogether and to live entirely absorbed in religious meditation. Sleep he counted a loss, and compared it to death. Food was only taken to keep him from fainting. The most menial offices were his delight, and even then his humility looked around for some lowlier employment. St. Bernard loved nature, and found a constant solace in her rocks and woods. "Trust one who has tried it," he writes in one of his epistles, "you will find more in woods than in books; trees and stones will teach you what you can never learn from masters.

St. Bernard led a band of devotees who issued from Cite aux in 1115 in search of a new home. This band, with Bernard at their head, journeyed northwards till they reached a spot in the diocese of Langres - a thick-wooded valley, wild and gloomy, but with a clear stream running through it. Here they settled and laid the foundations of the famous abbey of Clairvaux, with which St Bernard's name remains associated in history.