In the middle of the twelfth century, Saint Bernard wrote five sequential guidebooks for his disciple, Pope Eugenius III, describing what we might today call mindfulness. The books were not merely academic or scholastic, they were written to a friend facing the demands of the papacy. Sadly, the last of the five books seems to have been completed only in the year 1153, the year that both men died. The Pope would have had little time to implement the meditative practices that Bernard urged.

Meditation, Bernard emphasized, required “vigilance (taking custody of one’s thoughts) and self-reflection (recalling one’s thoughts from distraction) …” (2). The mental regulation promoted by Bernard (what Jean Leclercq, OSB labeled “spiritual therapy”) was not an end in itself. Rather, it was a skill set aimed at deepening one’s contemplation of God.

In Medication as Spiritual Therapy, Dr. McWhorter articulates two aims. The first is to summarize and situate De consideration within its Medieval monastic context, sifting its sources and influences. The second is to review its teachings from a modern psychological perspective.

McWhorter explains how Bernard blended an emphasis of biological health, spiritual health, and social health. Quoting Bernard:

[J]ust as health is natural to the body, so purity is natural to the heart. For God shall not be seen with a troubled eye, and the human heart was made for the very purpose of seeing its Creator… And because we are social animals, let us cross over from what is within us to those who are around us, so that if it be possible, as much as is [sic] in us, we may have peace with all persons. For this is the law of natural society.
(79) McWhorter terms this anthropological worldview “bio-psycho-social” (Ibid.).
In the second half of his book, the author adopts an admittedly anachronistic framework for assessing the continuing value of Bernard’s five guidebooks, that of contemporary “Catholic spiritual direction and spiritually-integrated psychotherapy” (199). This approach dovetails with McWhorter’s academic credentials; he is an Associate Professor at Divine Mercy University where his scholarship focuses on the integration of contemporary human sciences with religio-philosophical psychology.

A full-scale synthesis of a 12th century treatise with modern – and not infrequently secular – human science is a heavy lift indeed. McWhorter wisely chooses to focus on select issues, eschewing, for example, most modern literature on cognition and memory. In one passage, he compares Bernard’s exploration of the mind’s attention (acies mentis) with the distinction of the wise versus the rational mind proposed by dialectical behavioral therapy proponents (such as Richard Sharf and Lane Pedersen):

Bernard’s emphasis on attention is evocative of a distinction between ‘wise mind’ and ‘rational mind’ as proposed by theorists in dialectical behavioral therapy. Regarding one’s will as a capacity of one’s mind, the topic of volition reappears in some contemporary psychological theories in terms of perceived self-efficacy and agency. One approach to civil psychotherapy, in fact, is focused on the goal of supporting and increasing (but not determining) a client’s degree of volitional activity.(212-13).

These kinds of insights serve to underscore the wisdom and continuing relevance of Bernard’s urgings to his friend, the Pope. Concern for the human person cannot be separated from a concern over his or her union with the divine.  And meditation, Bernard and McWhorter remind us, is a necessary preparation for pursuing a healthy mind, heart, and social life by means of restorative grace.