All the same, it was Saint Bernard who put the image of the Virgin Mary, the nurturing Mother of God, at the center of the Catholic faith and who made the loving human heart the key to exploring religious truth—even the key to discovering God.13 Even more than Augustine, he is the first great religious psychologist—therapist, almost. Bernard’s goal was to lay bare the deepest recesses of the soul and bring man to a spiritual simplicity and humility. Looking forward, his theology prefigures the teachings of the most tenderhearted of medieval saints, Saint Francis of Assisi. Looking backward,
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