St Bonaventure & the Wholly Flaming Fire

Today we keep the feast of Saint Bonaventure, Doctor of the Church. The Seraphic Doctor counsels us wisely:

Question grace, not instruction;
desire, not intellect;
the cry of prayer, not pursuit of study;
the spouse, not the teacher;
God, not man;
darkness, not clarity;
not light, but the wholly flaming fire
which will bear you aloft to God
with fullest unction and burning affection.

Pope Benedict XVI explained the mystical teaching of Saint Bonaventure in his General Audience on 10 March 2010; these are the words of a Doctor explaining a Doctor, of a mystic explaining a mystic, of a theologian of love explaining a theologian of love:

The six wings of the Seraph thus became the symbol of the six stages that lead man progressively from the knowledge of God, through the observation of the world and creatures and through the exploration of the soul itself with its faculties, to the satisfying union with the Trinity through Christ, in imitation of St Francis of Assisi. The last words of St Bonaventure’s Itinerarium, which respond to the question of how it is possible to reach this mystical communion with God, should be made to sink to the depths of the heart:  “If you should wish to know how these things come about, (the mystical communion with God) question grace, not instruction; desire, not intellect; the cry of prayer, not pursuit of study; the spouse, not the teacher; God, not man; darkness, not clarity; not light, but the fire that inflames all and transports to God with fullest unction and burning affection…. Let us then… pass over into darkness; let us impose silence on cares, concupiscence, and phantasms; let us pass over with the Crucified Christ from this world to the Father, so that when the Father is shown to us we may say with Philip, “It is enough for me‘” (cf. ibid., VII 6).

Dear friends, let us accept the invitation addressed to us by St Bonaventure, the Seraphic Doctor, and learn at the school of the divine Teacher:  let us listen to his word of life and truth that resonates in the depths of our soul. Let us purify our thoughts and actions so that he may dwell within us and that we may understand his divine voice which draws us towards true happiness.