Reflecting and Responding
St. Bonaventure
The Fullness of Life in Christ
Since imagination aids understanding, I have arranged in the form of an imaginary tree the few items which I have collected . . . and have ordered . . . them in such a way that the first or lower branches depict the Savior’s origin and life are described; in the middle, his passion; and in the top, his glorification. . . . How wholesome it is, always to meditate on Christ.
THE TREE OF LIFE
MANY OF TODAY’S FOLLOWERS OF CHRIST hesitate to embrace Francis of Assisi because there is too little nuance in his treatment of the Christian life. At times he seems so literally minded that he is of little earthly good. Even so, his popularity and that of the Franciscans exploded throughout Europe. What Francis distilled in life became even more revered after his death: humility as the gateway to the spiritual life, the call to be a fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ and the commitment to lead an exemplary Christian life. Tugged along by the zeal to emulate his life and legacy, the Friars Minor gave rise to a whole new wave of “holy literature.” In the midst of the upsurge of interest in Francis’s life and ministry, the young Bonaventure (1217-1274) felt compelled to follow his leader’s example and then to preserve this example in writing.
History bears scant reference to Bonaventure’s early years. He was born in 1217 in Borgnoregio, a small Italian village near the Mediterranean Sea. Sprinkled among the few insights that do exist is a dramatic story that explains his debt to St. Francis. While still a young boy, Bonaventure became deathly ill. His future was in doubt and his illness worsened. In desperation his mother cried out in the name of St. Francis. Shortly thereafter, the boy’s fever broke and his health began to improve. Believing that the saint had played a direct role in his healing, Bonaventure felt forever indebted to Francis. His vast intellect and broad experience (monk, professor, colleague of Thomas Aquinas at the University of Paris, and minister general of the Franciscans) compelled Bonaventure to find a grand unified theory of the spiritual life.
Of all the personalities of the thirteenth century, few stand as ready and able as Bonaventure to interpret the church to the world and the world to the church. His ideas are challenging and complex. He is prolific in his output but frequently opaque in his meaning. His original writings, which fill more than thirteen volumes, range from devotional literature to speculative philosophies to systematic theology to biblical interpretation and even include theories of education. Bonaventure provides us with a comprehensive philosophy of life. Unfortunately, much of his writing is simply too obscure—even some of his writings on Christ remain remote and inaccessible. What he does provide, however, is one of the most striking and attractive portraits of the spiritual life developed during the thirteenth century.
Although Bonaventure’s writings cover such a wide range, the topics that concern us come from the period of his life when he devoted his abilities to helping us understand the nature and destiny of our life with God. His nickname, the “Seraph Doctor,” betrays history’s view of his indebtedness to Francis. The title comes from the central image he uses to convey the nature of the spiritual life: the account of St. Francis seeing the fiery Seraph on Mount La Verna. Bonaventure uses the account to provide an allegorical interpretation of the spiritual life. It is this allegorical interpretation that becomes his central contribution to articulating the nature of our life with God.
Sources of Spiritual Knowledge
Bonaventure identifies six sources of spiritual knowledge, each of which acts in unique ways to guide us on our spiritual journey.
The literal and allegorical understanding of Scripture. In the thirteenth century, the Bible was read with the goal of receiving its depth and complexity over time. We often speak of the “allegorical” interpretation of Scripture, but this phrase diminishes the dynamic interplay between God’s interpretive Spirit, our spirit and God’s inspiring Spirit that gave rise to the original text. Eventually, this method became standardized and known as lectio divina, the oldest and most widespread method for reading and understanding both the literal and allegorical senses of Scripture.
Lectio divina, which means “divine readings” or “reading divine things,” originated with the greatest minds in the history of the early and medieval church. They were often sophisticated people with powerful intellects. Many contributed to the development of doctrinal teachings of the church, using the Scriptures as their primary source. Over time this prayerful reading of Scripture became normative, and for many centuries faithful Christians never second-guessed the reliability of the text. Receiving its message as the will of God, devout believers found help and guidance for their life with God from their reading and prayer.
The enduring writings of the great saints of the church. Since each generation must bear faithful witness to our life with God, this witness in turn nourishes every new believer. For Bonaventure, tradition does not stifle Scripture but incorporates it, along with its various uses and interpretations in the life, practices, experiences and teachings of the church through the ages.
The contemporary writings of the great spiritual masters. In this respect Bonaventure uses the work of St. Francis and others to show how his contemporaries live and think about their life with God. This allows him to use these writings to amplify and build his own understanding of God and demonstrates how this understanding grows over time through interaction with other great Christians.
The integrative writings of experts in the human disciplines. This reflects the right use of reason. He shows that Christianity is based on faith, but this does not mean that we oppose or reject reason. Our minds are a gift from God that allow us to understand Scripture, construct doctrine, make sense of our life and offer a meaningful contribution through our work.
“The book of nature.” Bonaventure shows how learning to read the book of nature enables us to perceive the active presence of God in the world. All of the church for most of its history has believed that God created the heavens and the earth. In more recent times there has arisen a dispute over how old or young the earth actually is, but always there is a recognition that because God created it, the world is good and worthy of our respect.
The mature wisdom to read “the book of experience.” Bonaventure’s most dramatic use of spiritual experience is the way he appropriates St. Francis’s experience of the fiery Seraph to illustrate the process and goal of the spiritual life. Ultimately, he believes everyone has a real and personal experience with God so that we have confidence in our faith in him.
Stages of Spiritual Growth
Next come the seven stages of our spiritual growth. As we work through each stage, the discoveries made at one level must be appropriated into the next until the highest level when we experience perfect union with God. The six sources of spiritual knowledge help us understand how the seven stages of spiritual growth are intertwined. Each stage must be dealt with in its proper order, and our ability to understand the role of each stage in our life with God is necessary for our complete transformation. We must see our senses transformed at stage one, for example, gaining a sense of our spiritual senses beyond our natural senses if we are to see our imagination transformed in stage two. The first six stages show Bonaventure’s massive integrative mind at its finest. Stages one and two reflect the influence of St. Francis. Stages three and four reflect the influence of Augustine. Finally, stages five and six reflect the influence of Dionysius (we’ll look at him in chapter 7). Let’s consider each stage briefly.
Stage one consists of the senses. Through seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling we gain information that leads to human knowledge. The senses are the gateway to intelligence. The sense world always mediates the intelligible world. For Bonaventure, although all thoughts do not arise from experience, all thoughts depend on experience.
The second stage is the imagination. This is not a casual or frivolous activity but a special way in which we understand our sense experience and what it can teach us about God. Although this is a distinct stage, it cannot be considered independent of the others. Because the temporal always mediates the eternal, the work of the imagination organizes our sensory knowledge in such a way that we understand our life with God and express our devotion to him.
The third stage is the intelligence. Augustine emphasizes that we bear the image of God through our capacity to reason. Likewise, Bonaventure highlights that our intellectual capacities are formed by reflecting on temporal realities, eternal realities and unchanging truths. We use our intelligence to understand terms, delineate propositions and investigate inferences. Bonaventure amplifies this understanding with an illustration. “How could the intellect,” he begins, “know that a particular being is defective and incomplete if it had no knowledge of the Being which is free from all defect?” In other words, because we have an idea of perfection implanted in us, by nature we are able to understand imperfection.
In this stage, our intellect is able to put sensory knowledge and reasonable thoughts into proper alignment. As a result, the transformed mind that is aware of God’s reality is able to see the form of the Trinity in every aspect of knowledge. Bonaventure’s culminating illustration in this section demonstrates how the three powers of human reason (memory, understanding and will) lead us to enjoy eternity, understand truth and embrace God.
Stage four is the understanding, the intersection of our natural powers with our supernatural destiny. Christ is the linchpin that transforms every aspect of our earthly existence in order to assist us in our journey to God. “No matter how enlightened one may be by the light of natural and acquired knowledge,” Bonaventure asserts, “he cannot enter into himself to delight in the Lord unless Christ is the mediator.”
This stage is critical because at this level we transition from the right use of our natural senses to the recovery of our spiritual senses. “When by faith the soul believes in Christ, it recovers its spiritual hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting and touching.” When our spiritual hearing and seeing are restored, we are able to receive and understand the words of Christ and view the splendor of his illumination. When our spiritual smelling is restored, we recover our ability to understand Scripture properly. When we recover our spiritual sense of taste and touch, we experience the love and life that originate in God.
Stages three and four form the two middle wings of the Seraph and lift us above the earthly plane to the final plateau on our way to union with God. At this point, Bonaventure pauses to emphasize that God is outside us in the physical world as demonstrated in stages one and two, within us through the rational world as demonstrated in stages three and four, and beyond us in the spiritual world as he will now demonstrate in stages five and six.
Stage five (the intelligence) begins our entrance into the “holy of holies” as we see the essential attributes of God. Stage six (the conscience) prepares us for stage seven (union with God) by guiding us to understand the interrelationship of the Father, Son and Spirit in the Trinity. Together, God’s essential attributes and interrelated nature are made known to us through Christ our teacher, who alone mediates these truths to every one of us who is faithful. These truths are not discoverable by human reason alone. On our own and apart from God we can recognize our need for God, but we cannot recognize his nature or internal relationship. It is here that Bonaventure makes his beautiful statement that “evangelical perfection” is the process by which we come to imitate Christ perfectly in word, thought, deed and spirit.
Everything Leads Through Christ
Bonaventure states that no one can understand the nature of God and the destiny of the Christian life without Jesus Christ. We can all work our way through stages one, two and three. But at the pivotal juncture in stage four, unless Jesus is our mediator there is no way to develop a proper understanding of God or arrive at the ultimate destiny of the Christian life.
Like creation itself, stage seven brings us to a state of complete alignment of every thought and desire through union with God. This is to experience apatheia, the state of existence where all our longings are satisfied exactly as God intended and we are able to live free of disordered thoughts and emotions. This is to experience shalom, a state of complete peace.
Bonaventure completes our ascent by returning to Francis and the spellbinding encounter he experienced on Mount La Verna. For Bonaventure, Francis is the example of evangelical perfection, of the person who imitates Christ so completely that he becomes like him. The ultimate goal of the Christian life is to experience the mystical Christ and in this way recognize that our life with God both includes and transcends our earthly thoughts and experiences.
REFLECTING AND RESPONDING
Did you notice that Bonaventure actually believed in such a thing as spiritual knowledge? Not just feelings or speculations, but actual knowledge. For the most part we today can hardly comprehend the idea of a body of knowledge about the spiritual life. I mean real knowledge. Knowledge in character formation that we can test and verify. We have much to learn in this area and Bonaventure can help us. We are only now recovering some of Bonaventure’s insights into the sources of spiritual knowledge. I want to highlight three of these that are of special interest today.
The first is the value of approaching Scripture by means of lectio divina. The recovery of this approach has come in reaction to the detached, mechanical, higher critical view of Scripture we have had for some time now. With lectio divina we are gaining a new appreciation for the character formation purposes of Scripture.
What is involved in lectio divina? It involves listening to the text of Scripture—really listening, listening yielded and still. It involves submitting to the text of Scripture, allowing its message to flow into us rather than attempting to master it. It involves reflecting on the text of Scripture, permitting ourselves to become fully engaged—both mind and heart—by the drama of the passage. It involves praying the text of Scripture, letting the biblical reality of life with God to give rise to our heart-cry of gratitude, confession, complaint or petition. It involves applying the text of Scripture, seeing how God’s Holy Word provides a personal word for our life circumstances. It involves obeying the text of Scripture, turning, always turning, from our wicked way and into the way everlasting (Ps 139:23-24). As we do this the river of God’s life will flow through the Bible and into the thirsty wasteland of our soul.
Second, we are gaining a new appreciation for the “book” of nature today. To be sure, nature has experienced the effects of the Fall with its decay and corruption. As the wise apostle Paul puts it so graphically, “The whole creation has been groaning in labor pains” waiting for the day when it will be “set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom 8:21-22). Yet even in its present decay, the book of nature teaches us much. We see beauty and symmetry and glory there, for nature is always doing the will of the Father. The trees stretching skyward, the birds singing and swooping through the air, the little creatures that scurry about the earth, all are doing the will of the Father. Most days when I am writing I will take an hour or two to hike in a nearby canyon just so I can see some of the will of the Father. In his poem “God’s Grandeur” Gerard Manley Hopkins tells it straight: “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” In the silence of this canyon I experience something of that grandeur.
Finally, we come to the “book” of experience. Learning to “read” our experience and the experience of others is so valuable. In this we are following the ancient dictum “know thyself” . . . with a caveat. As we seek to understand our inner motivations, scruples and desires, we also look for the footprints of God in our experiences. We most certainly ask, “What does this experience teach me about myself?” In addition, we also ask, “What does this experience teach me about God?” “Can I discern the good hand of God in all things?” “How does God reveal himself through my experiences?” “In what ways is God hidden to me?” “And why?”
All this asking and discerning is best done in community. Frankly, we humans are capable of infinite self-deception. Thus it helps when we have trusted friends who are wise in the ways of the Spirit and can help us track the footprints of God in our experiences. This is, of course, the work of spiritual direction, but it need not be a formal arrangement. Where there is a loving, nurturing community, we can open our lives to one another and help each other discern where God has been at work in our experiences.
I hope it does not take away from the importance of the man and the greatness of his teaching if I beg to differ with Bonaventure on one important matter. And it is not just Bonaventure; this same issue comes up with many others in this book, for it was a fairly common belief of the time, especially in desert monasticism. I am referring to what the ancients called apatheia, this ability to live completely free of all emotion or desire. I hate to be blunt about it, but human beings simply cannot live without desire. Without desire we will not eat or drink or sleep. The Christian message is not the elimination of desire but the transformation of desire. The overcoming of destructive desire and developing the inward reality of right desire is what we are after and what we can experience as our life is soaked in Jesus and his way.
A Prayer of St. Bonaventure
“Pierce, O most sweet Lord Jesus, my inmost soul with the most joyous and healthful wound of Thy love, and with true, calm and most holy apostolic charity, that my soul may ever languish and melt with entire love and longing for Thee, may yearn for Thee and for thy courts, may long to be dissolved and to be with Thee.
“Grant that my soul may hunger after Thee, the Bread of Angels, the refreshment of holy souls, our daily and supersubstantial bread, having all sweetness and savor and every delightful taste.
“May my heart ever hunger after and feed upon Thee, Whom the angels desire to look upon, and may my inmost soul be filled with the sweetness of Thy savor; may it ever thirst for Thee, the fountain of life, the fountain of wisdom and knowledge, the fountain of eternal light, the torrent of pleasure, the fullness of the house of God; may it ever compass Thee, seek Thee, find Thee, run to Thee, come up to Thee, meditate on Thee, speak of Thee, and do all for the praise and glory of Thy name, with humility and discretion, with love and delight, with ease and affection, with perseverance to the end; and be Thou alone ever my hope, my entire confidence, my riches, my delight, my pleasure, my joy, my rest and tranquility, my peace, my sweetness, my food, my refreshment, my refuge, my help, my wisdom, my portion, my possession, my treasure; in whom may my mind and my heart be ever fixed and firm and rooted immovably. Amen.”