Bonaventure Quotes on God
Bonaventure (Giovanni di Fidanza, 1221–1274) led the Franciscan school at Paris in the same generation in which Aquinas led the Dominicans, and developed the most sustained Augustinian-Franciscan alternative to the Aristotelian synthesis Aquinas was constructing. The Soul's Journey to God (Itinerarium Mentis in Deum) describes the soul's six-stage ascent from the contemplation of God's traces in the sensible world, through reflection on the divine image in the human soul, to the mystical apex in which discursive thought is transcended in loving union with God. The Reduction of the Arts to Theology and the Disputed Questions on the Knowledge of Christ supply the parallel theoretical framework in which all the human sciences find their proper place as preparatory disciplines for the saving knowledge of God.
Quotes
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Attributed to Bonaventure:
“Let us run, then, with all our being, to enter the joy of our Lord.”
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Attributed to Bonaventure:
“He who is not enlightened by such great splendours of created things is blind; he who is not awakened by such great cries is deaf.”
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Attributed to Bonaventure:
“All knowledge serves theology.”
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Attributed to Bonaventure:
“The soul, in its journey to God, ascends through nature, through itself, and finally through what is above.”
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Attributed to Bonaventure:
“Christ is our way to ascend; Christ is the door, the ladder, the vehicle.”
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“Let us not believe that it is enough to read without unction, to speculate without devotion, to investigate without wonder, to observe without joy, to act without godly zeal, to know without love, to understand without humility, to strive without divine grace, or to reflect as a mirror without divinely inspired wisdom.”
Wikiquote -
“But the soul cannot have any virtue if God is not loved with all the heart; for from that love flows the fulness of all grace, and without it no grace can flow into the soul, nor can it abide in it.”
Wikiquote -
“The virtue of gratitude is extremely commendable and pleasing in the sight of God, as its opposite is a detestable vice before him. Of which subject, thus speaks St. Bernard: Learn to be thankful for every grace received. Consider diligently the favors heaped upon you, that no gift of God be defrauded of the due return of gratitude and thanksgiving you ought to make, whether the gift be great, middling, or little.”
Wikiquote -
“For the nearer any one approaches to God, the more he is illuminated, and therefore the more clearly does he see the majesty and mercy of God.”
Life of Christ, Chapter XXXIV, Of the Multiplication of the Loaves, and how God provides for those who love Him -
“Life of Christ, Chapter XXXIV, Of the Multiplication of the Loaves, and how God provides for those who love Him”
For the nearer any one approaches to God, the more he is illuminated, and therefore the more clearly does he see the majesty and mercy of God. -
“It will avail a man little to have been a religious, to have been patient and humble, devout and chaste, to have loved God and to have exercised himself in all the virtues, if he continues not to the end. He must persevere to win the crown. In the race of the spiritual life all the virtues run, but only perseverance “receives the prize” (1 Cor. 9:24.) It is not the beginner in virtue but “he that shall persevere unto the end that shall be saved” (Matt 10: 22.) “What is the use of seeds sprouting if afterwards they wither and die?” None whatever!”
Wikiquote -
“Contemplation deepens the more we feel the working of God’s grace within our hearts, and the better we learn to encounter God in creatures outside ourselves.”
Bonaventure, On the Sentences , Book 2, 23, 2, 3 | Quoted by Pope Francis in Laudato si' (2015), paragraph 233