The family that came to Christ

In The Family that Reached Christ, Raymond presents the family of Saint Bernard in the midst of its crises and its struggles among men. But he does not describe saints turned into petrified ghosts in niches, but simply the lives of nine people in their ascension towards sainthood. With this work, M. Raymond continues the trilogy entitled The Saga of Citeaux and composed of Three Rebel Monks, The Family that Reached Christ and Burning Incense. With the name "saga", the author expresses his intention to poetically trace the history of the primitive Cistercian Order that, in time, would receive from the monastery of La Trappe the name of Trappist, by which the white monks are known. In Nordic literature, the saga is a genre equivalent to the epic of southern and western Europe. But they usually lack an individual protagonist: the hero of the saga is a collective, a family, a tribe, a people. In telling the story of the founders of the Cistercian Order, M. Raymond used this ancient literary genre and, taking extraordinary events from real life, infused them with a poetic and legendary spirit of the highest emotional value. His intention, in composing the trilogy, was to divulge the history of the first European Cistercians of the 12th century, and that of the first American Trappists in the 19th century.

M. RAYMOND, O.C.S.O NÚ

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