“Man’s greatest merit is to place all his hope in God” (Saint Bernard of Clairvaux).
These words of St Bernard turn the world view of the natural man on its head. We all have a tendency to base our worth on what we possess, what we know, what we achieve. It is not so easy to overcome this because we are surrounded by this mentality and we need a process until we can give our full consent to what St Bernard is telling us today.
What can help us in this process?
First of all, a simple reflection: our Father created us out of love and everything we do in our lives comes from Him. There is absolutely nothing that does not come originally from God.
All too often, however, we lose sight of this awareness and forget that everything comes from our Father. The deeper we sink into worldly life, the more this fundamental truth of our existence recedes into the background and we begin to put our hope in the visible. A certain forgetfulness creeps in. Some even go so far as to think that it is human nature that endows us with various gifts and talents.
This view causes a great spiritual disorder in life and a painful forgetfulness of God. In a sense, man denies the origin of his existence, ignoring or forgetting his beloved Father, Creator and Saviour.
If we meditate on the words of St Bernard, however, we will see how spiritual order is restored. The person who lives in this way glorifies God and acknowledges His supremacy. He lives in truth and puts his hope in the Lord.
This becomes his great merit, for in this way he bears witness to the love of God, who transcends all things, from whom all things proceed and who is the true hope of all humanity.