Ilia Delio, O.S.F., writes about St. Bonaventure in the Introduction to her book: SIMPLY BONAVENTURE:
Bonaventure’s theological system is a profound and unique synthesis…He is concerned with three questions: Where have we come from? What are we doing here? Where are we going?
Bonaventure began with the conviction of faith in God who has revealed himself to us in Jesus Christ. Always searching for the ultimate ground of truth, he came to perceive the fullness of truth in Jesus Christ.Bonaventure had a passionate love of God revealed in Christ crucified in whom he saw the mystery of God and creation united.
The Trinity provides a “blue-print” for creation since the relationship between the Father and the Son/Word, united in the Spirit is the ground of all other relationships. The question of why we exist finds meaning on three different levels: in the mirror of creation, in the creation of the person as the image of God in the Incarnation. Humanity has not changed in the last 800 years since Bonaventure. The essential questions he raised in the thirteenth century are still relevant.
In our age where meaning and purpose of human existence is becoming increasingly vague and the quest for human identity shows the marks of desperation, Bonaventure offers a profound system of thought….He redefines the boundaries of what it means to be human and Christian. It is a search and a journey that begins with desire and prayer, and spiral through the complexities of our lives, as we seek to find God at the center of our existence….He lead us that to recognize God within us is to let go of what we cling to that is not God, and to embrace that which is God.
We cannot understand the mystery of God within us and in our world; we can only yield to this mystery in love…..for to yield in love is to return to the point from which we gan. And in this return we discover the truth of who we are created to be and the truth of the world in all its beauty.
Truth to Ponder 