THE SAINTS IN A YEAR - ST BONAVENTURE AND THE BEAUTY OF GOD

Fr Billy Swan

On 15^th July each year, the Church celebrates the Feast of St Bonaventure, the Franciscan Bishop and Doctor of the Church. Bonaventure was born in 1217 in the Italian town of Bagnoregio. As a young man he came in contact with a new community gathered by a certain Francis of Assisi who died shortly after Bonaventure was born. Impressed by the simplicity of the friars and their love for the poor, he joined the Order but brought with him a serious intellect, a gift of writing and teaching. In 1257, he became Minister General of the Franciscans and went to Parish to teach. In 1273, Pope Gregory X appointed Bonaventure Cardinal-Bishop of Albano and asked him to participate in the Council of Lyon in 1274, in an effort to restore unity with the Orthodox churches of the East. He died shortly afterwards.

St Bonaventure’s writings on God and the Christian life are particularly beautiful, fresh and inspiring. He was and remains a prophet of God’s nature as beautiful, which is something we should contemplate more deeply.

For Bonaventure, God’s beauty is expressed in his goodness. The good is defined as that which communicates itself and bestows itself as a life-enhancing gift. To describe the dynamic power of goodness, he used a Latin phrase ‘bonum est diffusivum’ which describes it as always going beyond itself and spreading out. God’s Being is not static but communicates itself and exudes itself in love.

For the Franciscan saint, Christ crucified reveals God’s goodness but also his beautiful humility. For him, the cross reveals a new logic that bursts human expectations of what should be. ‘This is our logic’, he said, pointing to the cross. Speaking of Christ, he wrote: ‘Through the visible wounds we see the wounds of invisible love’. Like St Francis, the image of Jesus crucified moved him emotionally but ultimately to faith. For both Bonaventure and Francis, it was Jesus fastened on the cross  that melted their soul so that ‘whenever Christ’s crucifixion came to his mind, he could scarcely contain his tears and sighs’ (Bonaventure, The Life of Francis). For Bonaventure and Francis, the call to humble service and self-giving is grounded in the God who is a humble servant and continually gives of Himself.

Finally, for Bonaventure, God is and always will be Trinity. For him, ‘the Trinity is the foundation of the entire Christian faith’. Bonaventure’s mind and soul were centred on God as the source of love and ‘from this source flows the river which makes glad the city of God, so that with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving we sing to you our hymns of praise, and by experience prove that with you is the fountain of life; and in your light we shall see light’ (Bonaventure, On Feast of the Sacred Heart).

Bonaventure understood that all of the created world reflected the Trinity and so deserved our contemplation. Contemplating the created world leads us to faith and worship: ‘When that book was open to humankind and our eyes had not yet become darkened…to read this book is the privilege of the highest contemplatives’.

Speaking of contemplatives, in his biography on the life of St Francis, he pointed to him as someone who contemplated God’s creation in a way that led him to praise the Creator Himself. He beautifully wrote: ‘Aroused by all things to the love of God, Francis rejoiced in all the works of the Lord’s hands….In beautiful things Francis saw and fell in love with God who is Beauty itself and through the signs of God’s presence imprinted on creation, Francis followed his beloved everywhere. For Francis, all things were a ladder by which he could climb up and embrace Him who alone could satisfy his heart’.

As we celebrate the feast of St Bonaventure, may our contemplation of all God has made be like a ladder we climb to arrive at a deeper faith in God’s mercy, humility and goodness. And through this contemplation, may we be more convinced of these words of St Augustine who wrote on God’s beauty:

‘The Bridegroom is beautiful wherever he meets us. Beautiful as God, as the Word who is with God…he is beautiful in heaven, and beautiful on earth; beautiful in the womb, and beautiful in his parents’ arms. He is beautiful in his miracles and beautiful under the scourges; beautiful in inviting to life, and beautiful in not shrinking from death; beautiful in laying down his life and beautiful in taking it up again; beautiful on the cross, beautiful in the tomb and beautiful in heaven’ (Expositions of the Psalms, 44.3).