MYSTIC LOVE AND SUFFERING

Transforming our life and character in the likeness of God does not take place without self-sacrifice and suffering. This transformation cannot be achieved without discarding our old sinful self which loves itself rather than God and desires its own pleasure rather than God's Will. This can only be achieved through a rigorous process of mortification which, according to St Bernard, the monastic life of the Cistercians was designed to provide. Such purifying ascesis entails much bodily and mental suffering.

In his treatise On Grace and Free Choice, St Bernard distinguishes between three forms of freedom: first, the liberum arbitrium or radical inde termination of the will which is proper to our nature as human persons. This is freedom from necessity or compulsion, or the freedom to make choices. According to St Bernard this kind of freedom is in fact the image of God in us which cannot be taken away from us by sin. Sin does however destroy the Divine likeness in us which according to St Bernard consists of the other two forms of freedom, the liberum consilium and the liberum a miseria. The liberum consilium is the freedom from sin which enables the just to know God's Will and consistently choose to act in accordance with it. This kind of freedom can only be achieved by grace and not by nature.