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The Seraphic Doctor-Reflection for 7/15 apostleshipofprayer on Jul 14, 2011 Saint Bonaventure Reflection for 7/15/11 www.apostleshipofprayer.orgMore
The Seraphic Doctor-Reflection for 7/15

apostleshipofprayer on Jul 14, 2011 Saint Bonaventure
Reflection for 7/15/11

www.apostleshipofprayer.org
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2011-07-14 www.news.va/…/eucharist-and-c…
Whomever draws worthily near to the Eucharist – writes St. Bonaventure in the splendid Sermon on the Most Holy Body of Christ – obtains a quadruple grace: “This sacrament instills the strength to operate; raises one to contemplation; disposes one towards knowledge of divine reality; animates and ignites contempt for the world and the desire for heavenly …More
2011-07-14 www.news.va/…/eucharist-and-c…
Whomever draws worthily near to the Eucharist – writes St. Bonaventure in the splendid Sermon on the Most Holy Body of Christ – obtains a quadruple grace: “This sacrament instills the strength to operate; raises one to contemplation; disposes one towards knowledge of divine reality; animates and ignites contempt for the world and the desire for heavenly and eternal things,” as it was said of Elijah who, “with the force of that food walked up to the mountain of God, saw divine secrets and stopped at the entrance to the cave.”
“The devoted soul receives from this sacrament above all the energy to act, and in fact it is said that Elijah, “on the strength of that food, walked for forty days,”.” That food, observes the Seraphic Doctor, refers to “the body of Christ,” by virtue of which, “man is able to bear the tiring and incessant growth in spiritual life.”
Interpreting allegorically the number “forty,” a symbol in the Old and New Testaments, Bonaventure proceeds, “Walking for forty days, invigorated by that food means progressing in the spiritual life throughout all of our time, in which our life is guided by the New and Old Testaments.”
The second fruit of the Eucharist consists in, “raising one to contemplation,”: it is said, in fact, that Elijah, “reached the mountain of God.” Now, “to what does the term ‘mountain’ allude, if not to the elevation of the mind?”
Bonaventure provides an illustration through the story of Moses, “occupied in action,” while he tended his flock, “turned to gather in the intimacy of his heart, all of his actions and his affections,” when he leads the flock out of the desert; “with his mind raised toward heavenly things,” arriving at the mountain of God, “with his soul devoted to contemplation,” given as a gift to him after the apparition of the Lord. An apparition “in flames of fire,” notes the Seraphic, who proceeds, “fire has the power to warm and illuminate, to indicate when the soul has reached the grace of contemplation, the intellect achieves the light of knowledge and the affections the fire of love.”
In the third place, through the Eucharist, one is prepared for the manifestation of God and here the figure of Elijah returns who, arrived at Oreb, waits for the coming of the Lord, who is present not in the, “impetuous and vigorous wind that splits the mountains,” or “in the earthquake,” and not, “in the fire,” but in the “whispering of a light breeze.”
But it is important for Bonaventure to go beyond allegory: if God reveals himself in this light breeze, it means that, “he is not found in the spirit of pride, or in the agitation of impatience, or in the fire of cupidity or carnal concupiscence, but in the quiet of a serene conscience.”
Finally, the Eucharist, elicits the disdain of the world and the desire for the goods of heaven. It is an effect alluded to by the gesture of Elijah who, “covered his face with his cape, left and stopped at the entrance to the cave.” “In fact, as soon as his soul was lifted to the vision of the immense beauty of God and of his infinite strength, he immediately falls back into his own smallness, covers his face in profound humility, leaves the cupidity of the world and stops at the entrance to the cave, that is, longs for eternity. The cave represents the human body while the entrance is the desire to leave it.”
For Bonaventure, there is an intimate link between the sacrament of the Eucharist and the experience of God: communion with the Body of Christ instills in the soul the spiritual resources to ascend to the mystical summit of Christian existence, that is, to contemplation, which gives light to the intellect and fire to love and instills an ardent desire for eternal life.
It is easy to recognize in this Eucharistic language the themes, emphasis and evocative terms, typical of the theology of Bonaventure, understood as wisdom, which together comprises “knowledge and love.”
By INOS BIFFI
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