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Saints Alive! | St. Bonaventure

For Bonaventure, the human person is a being with deep desires. These desires involve both intelligence and affection seeking out and enjoying the beauty of all things — being drawn towards others because of a desire for harmony. At the same time, Bonaventure sees this desiring person as someone who accepts the demands of the journey because of an intuition that what lies ahead has meaning. The human person knows that underlying the many and various ways by which the world is manifested, there is a unique and constant presence from which everything comes and to which everything returns. For Bonaventure, Jesus Christ represents the center point of the potential union of all things (Christocentrism), because in him everything has its origins and its fulfillment. In Christ, human desire also finds the path to the answers it seeks and longs for. Credit: excerpt from The Order of Friars Minor, a fraternity founded by St. Francis of Assisi; OFM.org. For more about this great saint, please click on the image. Peace be with you!

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Divine Office | Mystical wisdom is revealed by the Holy Spirit

In today's Office of Readings we encounter a reading from the works of St Bonaventure (1218 - 1274). Bonaventure was born at Bagnoregio in Etruria in about 1218. He became a Franciscan in 1243 and studied philosophy and theology at the University of Paris. He became a famous teacher and philosopher, part of the extraordinary intellectual flowering of the 13th century. He was a friend and colleague of St Thomas Aquinas. Let us pray for the Holy Spirit to inspire us, like St. Bonaventure, to love God with our minds as well as our hearts; and if we come across a fact or a teaching that seems to us to contradict our faith, let us not reject it but investigate it, for the truth that it contains can never contradict the truth of God. For a reflection, "Mystical wisdom is revealed by the Holy Spirit," please click on the image. Peace be with you!

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Divine Office | With you is the source of life

In today's Office of Readings we encounter a reading from the works of St Bonaventure (1218 - 1274). Bonaventure was born at Bagnoregio in Etruria in about 1218. He became a Franciscan in 1243 and studied philosophy and theology at the University of Paris. He became a famous teacher and philosopher, part of the extraordinary intellectual flowering of the 13th century. He was a friend and colleague of St Thomas Aquinas. Let us pray for the Holy Spirit to inspire us, like St. Bonaventure, to love God with our minds as well as our hearts; and if we come across a fact or a teaching that seems to us to contradict our faith, let us not reject it but investigate it, for the truth that it contains can never contradict the truth of God. For a reflection, "With you is the source of life," please click on the image. Peace be with you!

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Divine Office | From the knowledge of Jesus Christ flows the understanding of the whole of holy Scripture

In today's Office of Readings we encounter a reading by St. Bonaventure. Bonaventure was born at Bagnoregio in Etruria in about 1218. He became a Franciscan in 1243 and studied philosophy and theology at the University of Paris. He became a famous teacher and philosopher, part of the extraordinary intellectual flowering of the 13th century. He was a friend and colleague of St Thomas Aquinas. At this time the friars were still a new and revolutionary force in the Church, and their radical embracing of poverty and rejection of institutional structures raised suspicion and opposition from many quarters. Bonaventure defended the Franciscan Order and, after he was elected general of the order in 1255, he ruled it with wisdom and prudence. He is regarded as the second founder of the Order. He declined the archbishopric of York in 1265 but was made cardinal bishop of Albano in 1273, dying a year later in 1274 at the Council of Lyons, at which the Greek and Latin churches were (briefly) reconciled. Bonaventure wrote extensively on philosophy and theology, making a permanent mark on intellectual history; but he always insisted that the simple and uneducated could have a clearer knowledge of God than the wise. He was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1588 by Pope Sixtus V. Let us pray for the Holy Spirit to inspire us, like St. Bonaventure, to love God with our minds as well as our hearts; and if we come across a fact or a teaching that seems to us to contradict our faith, let us not reject it but investigate it: for the truth that it contains can never contradict the truth that is God. For a reflection on the understanding of holy Scripture, please click on the image. Peace be with you!