The Solemnity of St. Bonaventure: July 14, 2006 A.D.

On this day, in the year of Our Lord, 1274, during the Second, Sacrosanct and Ecumenical Council of Lyon, after having reconciled the Greeks back to the Church, the glorious seraphic doctor, passed to his eternal reward.


You can read more about St. Bonaventure at

http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura

You can read an English translation of most of the first Book of St. Bonaventure's Commentaria in Quatuor Libros Sententiarum, his great summa of theology at

http://www.franciscan-archive.org/bonaventura/sent.html


The Genius of the Seraphic Doctor

The Genius of the Seraphic Doctor, St. Bonaventure, lay in this: that he departed in no maner from the teachings of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and yet showed how the doctrines of the ancient Philosophers could and could not be used to explain and defend Scripture and Tradition.

Unlike St. Thomas he synthesized no new system of theology, and his works reflect much of the current terminology of his day. For this reason he is a corrective to those who would make of St. Thomas such a thinker as was entirely unique, and hence able to be separated from Catholic Thought. At the same time the Seraphic Doctor is a corrective to those who belive that all the doctrines of St. Thomas originated with him, or who belive that he either was without error or that his doctrine is more important that al the rest of the Fathers and Doctors combined.

In himself, the Seraphic Doctor shows us a theology at the service of the Catholic Faith and the Roman Church, which explains the Faith as a coherent unity with Scripture and Tradition, against the innovators, who would seek to either add novelties or attack the common teaching of the ancient Fathers.

With St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas is more correctly understood; but moreso, in St. Bonaventure the Church has an equal light to Saint Thomas, who confounds modernists and all heretics, especially those who, by obviating Thomas seek a Church which is not catholic.

Pope Leo XIII asked all the disciple of St. Thomas and all seminarians to read St. Bonaventure's works, because, more than St. Thomas, St. Bonaventure strove to warm the heart of the reader as much as enlighten his mind; and to arrive at understanding by the way of peace and reconciliation.

In St. Bonaventure, we see the wisdom of God at work in reconciling the different theological opinions of Saints and Fathers, not by rejecting one or the other, but by undrestanding each for what it was and finding their common foundation in Eternal Truth, Christ Jesus, the One Teacher, whose wisdom is the Rule and Mediation of all true Theology.

Thus it was St. Bonaventure's grace, not that of St. Thomas, to assist the Church in the reconciliation of the Greeks after more than 200 years of schism. A grace which, the Seraphic Doctor still can give the Church today, if only we return to his wisdom and holiness of life.