[John] emerges as a lively and original commentator, writing sensitively from a deep experience of the spiritual and monastic life. Carrying on where his great predecessors, including Saint Bernard, left off, John knows grace and its counterpart, humility, are central to all christian spirituality; he also has an exceptionally keen awareness of the church as a body whose members share in each other's treasures and rejoice in each other's blessings Simon Tugwell OP, Cistercian Studies Quarterly.