09241974 HH Paulo VI address at the Seraphicum
September 24, 1974: SS speech. Paul VI at the "Seraphicum" in Rome on the VII centenary of the death of St. Bonaventure
With great pleasure we have walked the short path that from our residence has brought us here.
The circumstance that has given rise to this visit of ours is the solicitude of the Shepherd of all the People of God who always guides our thoughts and directs our steps, and makes us share the same feelings that overwhelmed the spirit of Saint Paul at the moment in which he proposed to visit the first Christians in Rome again: "When I come to you, I will come with the full blessing of the Gospel of Christ" (Rom 15:29).
1. We know that in this venue, which is honored with the most illustrious name of the Seraphic Doctor, scholars of diverse backgrounds and of various nationalities have recently illustrated the multifaceted personality of Saint Bonaventure of Bagnoregio on the seventh centenary of his death, in order to that the solemnities celebrated in other places and in different ways culminated in multiplied praise.
To all those who for whatever reason have happily participated in said commemoration, We are pleased to extend our satisfaction. At the same time, we feel obliged to formulate the wish that the celebrations of the centenary of a death result in a celebration of life, which Saint Bonaventure, with his example and his teaching, can transmit with complete certainty even to the Church of our time. Have we not written, in our letter Scientia et virtue to the General Ministers of the three Franciscan Families, dated July 15, 1974, that “this same teacher of doctrine and life still speaks, although already dead for seven centuries? ".[1]
2. Therefore, since we are going to remain for a moment among you, devoted children of the Saint, teachers in the teaching of his doctrine, cultivators of his thought and his work, we cannot help feeling attracted by the title of a brief writing of his that, although it is not among the largest due to its size and the things it contains, is undoubtedly well known and frequently commented on, to the point that it alone is enough to place its author in history of the doctrines of the Middle Ages, for its peculiar doctrine and for its unitary method. We refer, as you have already guessed, to the book entitled Itinerary of the mind to God, written on Mount Alverna in 1259.
The very title of Itinerary sounds to us, men of today and more serious and severe heirs of the doctrinal patrimony of Saint Bonaventure, as something pleasant and, therefore, well accepted due to some simple but correct and very useful indications that give us the joyful impression that the author is close to us, as a guide and as an interpreter of certain tendencies of our mentality. Itinerary: in this very title it seems to us that there is a certain movement of the spirit that investigates and investigates everything, according to the restless and progressive style of contemporary culture, which certainly aims to investigate the nature of things; but very often, traveling the paths of philosophy and theology, he easily tires and stops at certain stations, as if they were the last and supreme, while the Itinerary, oriented towards the only goal that can compensate for the fatigue of the rough and long way, it continues very straight towards the supreme term of the divine Truth, which fully coincides with the divine «Reality».
The Saint Bonaventure Itinerary recognizes the value of the intermediate stages, which mark the order of our knowledge, but tends to a higher ascent, exercising, in a constant effort, the vigor of understanding, either through experience or through reasoning, and thus responding to the innate postulates of a pedagogy apprehended both by the senses and by the mind and soul, just as the best school of our time can appreciate.
Said Itinerary, moreover, supported and confirmed by that illumination of Saint Augustine who incites the ascent with the words Quaere super nos, finally arrives at the first threshold of the infinite mystery; but it does not stop here either, but rather, as if the ascent had been interrupted, it continues in another direction, as if it were descending, opening a new path: we refer to the path of the interior solitudes of the human spirit, where Christ, light and nourishment , is anticipated, in the regions of the soul, to enter a new and no less arduous search, which no longer develops outside, in the world of created things, but within us, so that at all times it is applied to the inexpressible presence of God, who, through his grace, established for himself in the soul a new and mystical home.
This is the path that brother Bonaventure happily undertook and the one that with equal wisdom he proposes anew to today's man: the Itinerary of the mind to God, of which it is proper to reform man interiorly and open a new way for him to approach to Christ the Lord.[2]
We have said itinerary undertaken and proposed by brother Buenaventura.
We have certainly used this name of brother on purpose, since it seems to us no less apt than the very illustrious Cardenal to accurately describe his life and his extraordinary message.
In truth, he shared, more than other religious men who at that time flourished in the holy Church, the vicissitudes of his Order founded shortly before, to which he gave much after having received much from it. He also knew how to establish a permanent connection in his life with the Founder of his Order, from whom he learned the plan of ascetic life and a very high ecclesial meaning, and from whom he became the "thinking conscience". For this reason, he went to the places where Saint Francis was born, lived and died, in order to expose the events of his life in all truth and transmit them to posterity.[3]
But since "in the great offices" that were entrusted to him he always postponed "perverse concern",[4] that is, the solicitude for earthly things, he withdrew "to Mount Alverna as a place of quiet, eager to seek the peace of soul”;[5] still today, prudent and circumspect men enumerate this mountain among the “exalted places of the spirit”,[6] because of the completely unique way in which Francis experienced Christ in person there. In addition, from Saint Francis he learned that extremely neat and very natural way of praising God "in all and for all creatures...", and of firmly believing and simply confessing "the truths of faith according to what the Church believes and teaches." Holy Roman Church».[7]
Doesn't that industriousness of life and serene tranquility of mind that characterized Brother Bonaventure come from this Franciscan source, and that show that God is close to us in nature and present in us through faith?
3. Indeed, the itinerary that Saint Bonaventure proposes to others, as well as the one he himself followed, should not be considered a solitary pilgrimage that tends to a distant and completely unknown goal. On the contrary, it is a question of embarking on the path together with the Son of God who, made man, was conformed to our human image, to lead us back to his own divine image, which was imprinted on man at the very moment of creation. creation.[8] In Christ, then, made brother of the human race,[9] also the universe, like a beautiful poem,[10] has once again become a voice that speaks of God and impels "that in all creatures you see, hear, praise, love and revere, exalt and honor your God, lest the whole universe rise up against you».[11] And since Christ, God from eternity and man for eternity, was the author of a new creation in the faithful through his grace, it follows from this that the exploration of the presence of God becomes for them contemplation in their souls. , “in which he dwells through the gifts of his abundant charity”.[12] This contemplation, therefore, finally becomes an itinerary towards God, an itinerary that is carried out within ourselves, in whom God deigned to establish his dwelling (cf. Jn 14:23).
Oh, to what marvelous discoveries this interior itinerary leads us!
Because, opening a new channel, it leads us to find grace, which is like the "foundation of the rectitude of the will and of the perspicuous illustration of reason";[13] to find faith, by which they are increased and they perfect our cognitive faculties, and through which we participate in the knowledge that God has of himself and of the world; to find, moreover, hope, for which our irrevocable encounter with Christ the Lord is prepared; to consummate the friendship that even now unites us with Him; to finally find charity, through which we share divine life, and this pushes us to consider all men as our brothers, according to God's will.
4. Finally, what does Saint Bonaventure's message mean if not an invitation to man to recover his true image of himself and to reach the fullness of his person?
Confidently, we deliver this same message to each and every one of you, to whom the communion of religious profession or the consonance of opinions constitutes immediate heirs of the Seraphic Doctor, so that you may investigate its fertile riches and dedicate yourselves to spreading it everywhere. But we also recommend it with equal interest to all the children of the Church who are today, perhaps more than ever, exposed to a kind of interior decomposition; and we do this with the purpose that each one, diligently meditating on said message, finds in it help to make effective the witness of his life both in the Church and in the world.
I hope that Almighty God "makes you worthy of the vocation and with his power brings to fruition all your purpose of doing good and the activity of faith" (2 Thes 1,11); We gladly confirm this wish with our Apostolic Blessing.
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[1] Letter from HH Paul VI to the Franciscan General Ministers on the occasion of the VII centenary of the death of Saint Bonaventure (July 15, 1974).
[2] Cf. Paul VI: Aloc. May 9, 1973: AAS 65 (1973), p. 323; Bull Apostolorum Limina, May 23, 1974: AAS 66 (1974), p. 306.
[3] Major Legend (=LM), Prologue, no. 4.
[4]Dante: Paradise, XII, 128s.
[5] Itinerarium mentis in Deum, Prol., n. 2: Opera omnia, t. V, p. 295.
[6] Cf. J. Guitton, in L'Osservatore Romano, 25-X-73, p. 3, col. 1.
[7] LM 4.3.
[8] Cf. Vitis mystica, chap. 24, no. 3: Opera omnia, t. VIII, p. 189.
[9] In Ev. Luc., 22, 66: Opera omnia, t. VII, p. 561a.
[10] In I Sent., d. 44, a. 1, q. 3, concl.: Opera omnia, t. I, p 786b.
[11] Cf. Itinerarium, chap. 1, no. 15: Opera omnia, t. V, p. 299.
[12] Itinerarium, chap. 4, no. 4: Opera omnia, t. V, p. 307.
[13] Itinerarium, chap. 1, no. 15: Opera omnia, t. V, p. 298.
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