Sermons for Advent and the Christmas Season

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) did not create a sermon collection solely in order to comment on the liturgical solemnities of the Christian year. He had a definite but very complex concept of the messages which he wanted his collection to convey: that the Word which once became incarnate in the historic Jesus is continuously present in the written words that speak of him-the word of the Gospels and also the words of preachers and writers; that the Word wants to be re-incarnate in the reader by means of the words being read. So it is that the sermons successively evoke the inner conversion of a human person who opens himself to the Word/words, external conversion in submission to the obedience of community life, and finally the personal recognition of the true nature of the divine Word.