Faithful Image of the Founder
Today I would like to talk about St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio. […] St. Bonaventure, in all likelihood born in 1217, died in 1274. Thus he lived in the 13th century, an epoch in which the Christian faith which had deeply penetrated the culture and society of Europe inspired imperishable works in the fields of literature, the visual arts, philosophy and theology. […]
Bonaventure wished to present the authentic charism of Francis, his life and his teaching. Thus he zealously collected documents concerning the Poverello and listened attentively to the memories of those who had actually known Francis.
This inspired a historically well-founded biography of the Saint of Assisi, entitled Legenda Maior. It was redrafted more concisely, hence entitled Legenda minor. […]
The General Chapter of the Friars Minor in 1263, meeting in Pisa, recognized St. Bonaventure’s biography as the most faithful portrait of their Founder and so it became the saint’s official biography.
What image of St. Francis emerged from the heart and pen of his follower and successor, St. Bonaventure? The key point: Francis is an alter Christus, a man who sought Christ passionately. In the love that impelled Francis to imitate Christ, he was entirely conformed to Christ.
Excerpts from: BENEDICT XVI.
General Audience, 3/3/2010
Restorer of the Franciscan Spirit
In St. Bonaventure’s day a trend among the Friars Minor known as the “Spirituals” held that St. Francis had ushered in a totally new phase in history and that the “eternal Gospel”, of which Revelation speaks, had come to replace the New Testament. This group declared that the Church had now fulfilled her role in history. They said that she had been replaced by a charismatic community of free men guided from within by the Spirit, namely the “Spiritual Franciscans”. This group’s ideas were based on the writings of a Cistercian Abbot, Joachim of Fiore, who died in 1202. […]
Seriously misunderstanding St. Francis’ message
It is understandable that a group of Franciscans might have thought it recognized St. Francis of Assisi as the initiator of the new epoch and his Order as the community of the new period, the community of the Age of the Holy Spirit that left behind the hierarchical Church in order to begin the new Church of the Spirit, no longer linked to the old structures.
Hence they ran the risk of very seriously misunderstanding St. Francis’ message, of his humble fidelity to the Gospel and to the Church. This error entailed an erroneous vision of Christianity as a whole. […]
St. Bonaventure’s theology is explained through the Franciscan charism. The Poverello of Assisi had shown with his life the primacy of love
As Minister General of the Franciscan Order, St. Bonaventure immediately realized that with the spiritualistic conception inspired by Joachim of Fiore, the Order would become ungovernable and logically move towards anarchy. […]
Jesus Christ is God’s last word; in Him God said all, giving and expressing himself. […] Thus there is no loftier Gospel, there is no other Church to await. Therefore the Order of St. Francis too must fit into this Church, into her faith and into her hierarchical order.
The true progress of Christ’s works
This does not mean that the Church is stationary, fixed in the past, or that there can be no newness within her. “Opera Christi non deficiunt, sed proficiunt.” Christ’s works do not go backwards; they do not fail but progress, the Saint said in his letter De Tribus Quaestionibus. Thus St. Bonaventure explicitly formulated the idea of progress and this is an innovation in comparison with the Fathers of the Church and the majority of his contemporaries. […]
The Franciscan Order of course, as he emphasized, belongs to the Church of Jesus Christ, to the apostolic Church, and cannot be built on utopian spiritualism. Yet, at the same time, the newness of this Order in comparison with classical monasticism was valid and St. Bonaventure […] defended this newness against the attacks of the secular clergy of Paris: the Franciscans have no fixed monastery; they may go everywhere to proclaim the Gospel. It was precisely the break with stability, the characteristic of monasticism, for the sake of a new flexibility that restored to the Church her missionary dynamism. […]
St. Bonaventure teaches us the need for overall, even strict discernment, sober realism and openness to the newness, which Christ gives His Church through the Holy Spirit. […] Indeed, we know that after the Second Vatican Council some were convinced that everything was new, that there was a different Church, that the pre-Conciliar Church was finished and that we had another, totally “other” Church, an anarchic utopianism!
Excerpts from: BENEDICT XVI.
General Audience, 10/3/2010
Intellectual Vigour, Faith and Ecclesial Renewal
He [St. Bonaventure] is an eminent theologian who deserves to be set beside another great thinker, a contemporary of his, St. Thomas Aquinas. Both scrutinized the mysteries of Revelation, making the most of the resources of human reason, in the fruitful dialogue between faith and reason that characterized the Christian Middle Ages, making it a time of great intellectual vigour, as well as of faith and ecclesial renewal, which is often not sufficiently emphasized.
Other similarities link them: Both Bonaventure, a Franciscan, and Thomas, a Dominican, belonged to the Mendicant Orders which, with their spiritual freshness […] renewed the whole Church in the 13th century and attracted many followers. […]
Let us return to St. Bonaventure. It is obvious that the specific emphasis he gave to his theology […] is explained on the basis of the Franciscan charism. The Poverello of Assisi, notwithstanding the intellectual debates of his time, had shown with his whole life the primacy of love. He was a living icon of Christ, in love with Christ, and thus he made the figure of the Lord present in his time; he did not convince his contemporaries with his words but rather with his life. In all St. Bonaventure’s works, precisely also his scientific works, his scholarly works, one sees and finds this Franciscan inspiration; in other words one notices that his thought starts with his encounter with the Poverello of Assisi.
Excerpts from: BENEDICT XVI.
General Audience, 17/3/2010
