Memorial of Saint Bonaventure, bishop and Doctor of the Church
(Isaiah 1:10-17; Matthew 10:38-11:1)
St. Francis founded the Order of Friars Minor, and St.
Bonaventure guided it through a critical period after his death. At the time there was rivalry between
Franciscan progressives who wanted the Order to adapt to the times, and the “Spirituals”
who wanted to keep a rigorous poverty as they thought Francis intended. Bonaventure, the minister general of the
order, allowed friars to buy books for their teaching, a ministry that was
taking hold. But he himself practiced
simplicity and frugal poverty as a model for the friars.
Bonaventure is remembered for his scholarship and his
holiness. He was a scholastic to be sure, but his work is not as reason
centered as Thomas Aquinas’. His fame today is more as a mystic than a
dogmatic theologian. Those who pray the
Liturgy of the Hours remember his reflection on the Sacred Heart read on its
Solemnity.
Bonaventure’s name is a compound of two Latin words, bona
ventura, good venture. He was a holy
person whom every one of us might emulate as a good venture.
