SOURCE: Smerillo, G. L. J. “Caritas in the Initial Letters of Saint Bernard.” In Saint Bernard of Clairvaux: Studies Commemorating the Eighth Centenary of His Canonization, edited by M. Basil Pennington, pp. 118-36. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1977.

In the following essay, Smerillo explores the idea of Deus caritas est–God is love—as presented in Bernard's first twenty-one letters.

This essay has as its intent the explication of one idea found in a small number of texts, an idea that is fundamental to the whole of St Bernard's thought. Its basis is 1 John 4: 16: Deus caritas est.

St Bernard's concept of caritas in the first twenty-one Letters is an explanation of his ecclesiology. Indeed, the Letters as a whole are the selected notes of a man of the Church. In them we may discern a theology of the Church that is as rich and as moving as Bernard's Sermon...