Feast 20 August
Cistercian. Mellifluous doctor. Preacher of the Crusade and of the Name of Mary.
Sacred art
The portrait kept with St. Bernard of Clairvaux is the image this library has of Bernard. The honour goes to the person, and through the person to God. It is not a machine, and it is not a substitute for the life written below.
Died 1153. He could be wrong about Abelard and still be a doctor of love. The Memorare grew in his climate.
If it belongs to Bernard, it is here, with a door back into the story.
Leżajsk1578
A pious woodcutter, Thomas Michałek, sees Mary in the forest asking for a church. The image of Leżajsk is crowned, the basilica a Bernardine jewel of the Polish baroque, still a working pilgrimage.
Chimayó, New Mexicoc. 1810
A frontier chapel in a valley of the Sangre de Cristo, where a hole in the floor yields “tierra bendita” — holy dirt — that generations of Catholics (and others) have used in prayer for healing. Rome has not listed certified miracles; the road on Good Friday is a miracle of feet.
San Francisco de Cuapa, Chontales1980
A sacristan, Bernardo Martínez, sees Mary by an old tree in a war-torn Nicaragua. She asks for the rosary prayed well, for peace, for the first Saturdays. The bishop of Juigalpa approved the apparitions in 1994.
