‘A new book on Saint Bernard. And we mean new, not simply in the sense that it is another book, but that it is a book capable of communicating the bernardine good news in all its freshness, in the newness that inspired the abbot of Clairvaux in the twelfth century.

This work by Father Charles Dumont will be helpful to all of us who want to read Saint Bernard’s works fruitfully. Still more, reading this work will nourish and motivate a generous self-giving and will enlighten and guide the offering of our life. The author knows how to put the permanent values presented by St Bernard alongside our present-day experiences. He knows how to distinguish what is obsolete from what is enduring and he has re-translated the abbot of Clairvaux into a contemporary idiom to help us understand it.

Charles Dumont is a Cistercian monk of Notre-Dame de Scourmont Abbey in southwestern Belgium. Already well known for his work on the spirituality of another of the Cistercian Fathers, Aelred of Rievaulx, he shares in this volume a lifetime of reflection on the doctrine of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux.’

• from the Preface