Quotes About Bonaventure

St. Bonaventure (1221–1274) taught that to work up to loving God, start by loving the very humblest and simplest things, and then move up from there.

For Scotus, as for Bonaventure, the Trinity is the absolute beginning point—and ending point too. Outpouring Love is the inherent shape of the universe, and when we love, only then do we fully exist in this universe. We do not need to "understand" what is happening, or who God is, before we can live in love. The will to love precedes any need to fully understand what we are doing, the Franciscan School would say.

and, by the merits of the Mother of Mercy, he did himself conceive and give birth unto the spirit of Gospel truth.

He did much to keep different groups of Franciscans together, one of the many reasons that have led a majority of Franciscan historians to regard Bonaventure's generalate as a blessing in which his moderation saved the order from chaos.47 For those who are inclined to doubt this view, it is important to recall that shortly after his death, the order fell into nearly four decades of fractious dispute, which turned deadly in 1318, when four Spirituals were burned at the stake in Marseilles.48

Bonaventure recontextualizes poverty in the whole Christian life. Poverty is carefully presented, not as an end in itself, but as a particularly effective means to insuring two essential Christian virtues: (i) the fundamental humility that every Christian should have before God, and (2) the charity that is the Christian life. In other words, Bonaventure subordinates poverty to the absolutely foundational virtues of humility and charity.

Although you feel tepid, approach with confidence, for the greater your infirmity the more you stand in need of a physician.