Trinity, Christ, and History in St. Bonaventure (part II)

III. Trinity and History[i]




Theological thought about the progression of history had been taking place in Christendom at least since the time of Augustine. However, in Bonaventure’s age, there was no theologian of history as influential and controversial as Joachim of Fiore. The abbot Joachim borrowed from Augustine’s analysis of history the scheme of the seven ages corresponding to the seven days of creation. But he broke with Augustine insofar as, for Joachim, the seventh and final age takes place in history, rather than beyond it in eternity. The sixth age is marked by the passion of Christ, and the seventh is the age of the Spirit and of a worldly, contemplative peace.

For Joachim, history and the cosmos exhibit an essentially Trinitarian structure. The procession of history is the milieu in which the interpersonal relationships of God are reflected. The seven ages, like the Trinity, have “inner relations that give history an organic dynamic and character of its own.”[ii] Thus, because of the Trinitarian relations, history takes the shape it does.

The abbot divides his account between multiple patterns within history: most notably the
“prima diffinitio” and the “secunda diffinitio.”[iii] The prima diffinitio is the pattern of three unfolded in the social structures of the church that progress through the ages. Each of three ages is characteristically associated with a social vocation (married life, clergy, and monasticism) and a Person of the Trinity (Father, Son, and Spirit, respectively). In the final age, the age of the Spirit, the climax of history will issue in the perfect communion of spiritual men in an order of monks, living in contemplative peace. The goal of which is a society that in its communitarian love, images the Trinity socially.

The secunda diffinitio begins with two tempora of history (Old and New Testaments) beginning with Adam to the end of history, dividing the periods at Christ, who stands between as the turning point. The perfection of the New Testament time, as with the third age of the prima diffinitio, is found in a world dominated by the “viri spirituales” who derive from both periods (essentially monastics). The Trinity is exhibited in this second schema insofar as each tempora is formed by the double procession of the Holy Spirit: the first (Old Testament) from the Father’s sending of the Spirit; the second (New Testament) from the Son’s sending of the Spirit. Here, one can see that the image is imperfect, because the spiration in the immanent Trinity is one and eternal from Father and Son together. But as some scholars like E. Randolph Daniel argues, the final age for Joachim can be considered Christ’s insofar as the Spirit (who is unquestionably the dominant player in it) perfects the mystical body of Christ by uniting the various orders within the Church into a plurality in unity, thus forming the perfect image of the Trinity.[iv] In any case, one can see that for Joachim, the Spirit plays the primary role in revealing the Trinity within history: “As one who is sent by two, he could complete the self-revelation of God within history.”[v] And as the one who forms the viri spirituales, he can be seen to function with a primacy in the ascent of man and history to God. The Son, on the other hand, marks a turning point in the process of history, and rather than fully express the Trinity in His Person, He cannot Himself come to full expression in History until the Spirit completes His mystical body in the final age.

For Bonaventure, history and the cosmos exhibit a much more Christocentric structure. But as I mean to show: they are Trinitarian just insofar as they exhibit the Son. Daniel argues that Bonaventure breaks definitively with Augustine’s approach to history, and adopts a theory that closely resembles Joachim’s secunda diffinitio.[vi] Indeed, such an argument is convincing, and even Bernard McGinn suggests that Bonaventure, despite his criticism of the Joachite Trinitarian views (not insignificant for this discussion), displays an “original rethinking of the Joachite tradition” which fused “Joachite eschatology, Franciscan spirituality, and Scholastic passion for order.”[vii] Bonaventure’s two major influences with regard to his theology of history are no doubt Augustine and Joachim, and the degree to which each impacted his thought is difficult to fully realize. He follows Augustine in adopting the seven-day structure[viii]; he follows Joachim in 1) restricting the seventh age to an eschaton realized within history; 2) seeing the process of history in light of a Trinitarian exemplar; and 3) views the final age as one of a contemplative peace brought about through “spiritual understanding.”[ix]

Yet, unlike Joachim, Bonaventure’s account is unapologetically Christocentric. The whole of the world’s history is oriented to and centered on the Incarnation of the Son. Christ is the “center” of Scripture, time, and history: and therefore the consummation of everything within the course of the cosmos is found in Christ. Thus, the cosmos itself is brought to the completion of its creation only through its relationship to the Incarnation: “The first principle acting as restorer brought about the final completion of the universe.”[x] Here one can see the principle of the Son’s exemplarity, and the world’s dynamism through Him, shaping the relation of history to God.

We have seen that just as the Son contains within Himself the actuality of all creaturely perfections, both the world and the individual soul find their consummation in and through the Son. Because of this, scholars like Daniel and Delio have argued that one must view Bonaventure’s theology of history in the light of the mystical ascent of the Itinerarium. As Daniel has held, the Itinerarium is essentially a commentary on the theology of history found in the Hexaemeron (even though it predates it by 14 years).[xi] From the union in Christ of all worldly perfection, both whole and individual, God establishes a relationship of the soul to the world: the soul is a “microcosm” of the world, because both are ordered to Christ as the center.[xii] The destinies of the soul and of history intertwine, and can be seen in light of each other. One can see the structural similarities: in the journey of the soul, one ascends through six levels of purification and illumination (wings of the seraph) before the mystical peace that is union with Christ, while history flows through six ages (six days) before the seventh age of mystical peace; the soul’s ascent is to Christ, the Son, crucified before the believer, while history lusts for Christ as the fulfillment of all time; and the progress of the soul’s ascent is marked by levels of knowledge issuing in a love that exceeds knowledge, while the peace of the seventh age will be marked by a transition from knowledge to “spiritual understanding.” As Delio notes: “Because the journey of the soul recapitulates the journey of the world, Bonaventure indicates that both the soul and the world are destined for spiritual marriage with Christ.”[xiii]

Thus, for Bonaventure, the destiny of history is essentially Christocentric but also essentially mystical. It is the ascent of the spiritual men in Christ that ushers in the final age and thus facilitates the fulfillment of time. But while following Joachim in emphasizing the contemplative nature of the final age, Bonaventure reinterprets the concept of the viri spirituales: for Joachim, the peace of the seventh age comes by way of a future order (or orders) of contemplatives sent by God into time, which he associates with the angel of the sixth seal from Revelation 7: 2; for Bonaventure, the spiritual man is in fact Francis. Thus, the inhabitant of the final age of mystical peace is the poor mendicant who was struck with the stigmata and taken into holy ecstasy. This means that, in light of the overpowering spiritual influence of Francis, Bonaventure’s “spiritual man” is a state realizable now, not in a future age.[xiv] The seventh age takes on a parallel place in history, not a successive one. Francis, in his wounds and his exemplary Christian life, shows that the final age of mystical peace is attainable in the present. Thus, one’s mode of access to this state is not one’s place in a divinely ordained monastic order, or waiting on a future action of the Holy Spirit, but mystical union with the crucified Christ. Here, Bonaventure’s novelty is recognizable: he goes beyond Joachim in attributing the attainment of the future age to a mystical union with the Son. This, as shown in Francis’ spirituality, meets the criteria set out by Bonaventure’s Trinitarian meditations: that one’s progression toward God will be marked with an essential Christocentric element.

Because union with God (as union with Christ) becomes the hermeneutic through which the process of history comes to fulfillment, and because it also marks the immediacy of the final age for spiritual men (such as Francis), the progression of both the soul and history will be realized in the image of Christ: in other words, the signs of such progression become the signs of conformity to the crucified Christ. The perfection of the final age is no longer simply an image of a social Trinity (as with Joachim), but rather the comprehensive conforming of oneself to the Cross of Christ: meaning also the embodiment of God’s love unto death, and even the physical sign of the stigmata (which the age of the Spirit cannot itself usher in). Body and spirit are joined to Christ, and the final age is now marked by the suffering humanity of Christ. The glory of history is reinterpreted as crucifixion with Christ, just as in the Itinerarium the final stage is an ecstatic love only achieved through abandoning oneself to the Cross of Christ.[xv] All of these examples exhibit what occurs for Bonaventure’s spiritual man: such signs show one’s re-orientation in the image of Christ.

It is the concept of the image that, for Delio, marks the underlying difference between Joachim and Bonaventure. For Joachim the revelation of the Trinity in history is exhausted in the community of spiritual men and does not depend upon a fundamental Christocentricity. For Bonaventure, any image of the Trinity can only truly come by way of the image of the Son. As was shown earlier, the Son is given primacy not only as exemplar (all return through Christ) but also as the expression of the Trinity. While the vestiges of the Trinity abound in the world, not even these can ultimately be taken or understood apart from the infinite expression of the Son, and in the end the Trinity is only perfectly revealed by and in the Son. “The appearance of Christ in the final age means the realization of the kingdom; unity in the body of Christ, who is in union with the Father, will bring all those united to Him into the oneness of the Father and Son.”[xvi]

Thus, as noted earlier, the two functions of the Son as exemplar and expression shape the progress of history toward its destiny as well as the revelation of the Trinity within history. The former constitutes the necessarily mystical character of the cosmos as it moves toward its fulfillment in Christ, while the latter establishes the centrality of Christ (even Christ crucified) as the truest image of the Trinity in history. One can argue that these two, as united in Christ, are themselves intertwined: one can only come to the fullest revelation of the Trinity that comes by Christ when one is in ascent toward Christ, remade in the image of Christ, and thus mystically united to Him (since union with Christ is also union with the Father and Spirit to whom He is united, beyond any “knowledge”).[xvii] One might argue that the truest revelation of the Trinity as Trinity within history is found only in one’s participation in the destiny of that history: Christ reveals the Trinity all the more in uniting us to “It,” by uniting us to Himself (even on the Cross). Ultimately, the Christocentric character of history and the cosmos can only end in union not just with Christ (who is the rightful exemplar), but with the entire Trinity, thus revealing even more the Trinitarian structure of history.

In the end, (as Delio argues convincingly), and as I’ve attempted to show, the different accounts of history found in Joachim and Bonaventure respectively derive from two distinct understandings of the Trinity. Delio suggests that while Joachim employs a fundamentally Augustinian conception of the Trinity and views history as “a multi-dimensional pattern of relationships that reaches its consummation in perfect unity-in-diversity,” it is Bonaventure’s preference for the eastern model and the self-diffusive Good that allows him to view Christ as the mediator between Father and Spirit and the center of history, “the center of emanation and return in creation.” She concludes: “The two distinct theologies of the Trinity, therefore, may give rise to two distinct eschatologies, one prophetic in nature and Trinitarian in image, the other mystical in nature and Christoformic in image.”[xviii] Bonaventure’s account of the Trinity allows not only for the expression of the Trinity as Trinity externally, but also allows for the Son’s unique place as the mediator of that revelation. And this function of the Son is united in Christ with His role as exemplar of creation, producing an intriguing complementary relationship between the soul’s (and history’s) ascent to God (in Christ) and the revelation of Triunity (in Christ). It is this interplay that seemingly protects Bonaventure’s “eastern” account of the Trinity from being overly economic in nature, such that problems of subordinationism and tri-theism would become problematic. For there is no pure “diffusion” of the three Persons in history to the human intellect, no unqualified revelation. For Bonaventure, any revelation of Trinity in the economy, in a sense open to metaphysical speculations and judgments, is always continuously purified and surpassed until they are succeeded altogether by the paradigm of union. Because Christ is both telos of creaturely ascent and expression of the divine, there is no revelation of the Trinity that does not accompany a transformation in the receiver via union, in love that surpasses knowledge. Thus, the preference for the economic (as three) does not exclude or disregard an understanding of the immanent Trinity, but is only ever revealed in/through the believer’s mystical ascent: because the milieu in which revelation occurs is always in a world and to a soul that are both already dynamically progressing toward God the Son (in their very being). Thus the Trinity’s economic revelation cannot be seen outside of the mystical progress of men towards God, and ultimately, cannot be properly conceived apart from the “burning love of the crucified.”


[i] For this section, I am greatly indebted to the work of Ilia Delio in her “From Prophecy to Mysticism: Bonaventure’s Eschatology in Light of Joachim of Fiore” in Traditio. vol. 52, 1997: p. 153
[ii] Delio, p. 154
[iii] Ibid. p. 156
[iv] Cited in Delio, p. 156
[v] Delio, p. 158
[vi] Ibid. p. 159
[vii] McGinn, Bernard. “The Abbott and the Doctors : Scholastic Reactions to the Radical Eschatology of Joachim of Fiore” in Church History. vol. 40. 01. 1971: p. 43
[viii] Bonaventure. Breviloquium. Trans. de Vinck, Jose. Paterson, N.J. St. Anthony Guild Press, 1963: IV, chap. 4
[ix] McGinn, p.43
[x] Breviloquium. IV, chap.4: p. 154
[xi] Cited in Delio, p. 160
[xii] Ibid. p. 160; cf. Hexaemeron. I, 11
[xiii] Delio, p. 162
[xiv] Ibid. p.164
[xv] Itinerarium. Chap.7
[xvi] Delio, p.173
[xvii] Itinerarium. Chap. 7. 5
[xviii] Delio, p. 176

Trinity, Christ, and History in St. Bonaventure (part I)

This is the first part of a paper I did a few semesters back for Cyril O’Regan’s class on the Trinity

I. Introduction:

Bonaventure, as a Trinitarian thinker, can be seen in many lights; as a champion of the Augustinian tradition, with ample regard for divine simplicity, unity, and the problem of appropriations; in another sense, as a unique integrator of eastern Trinitarian views into the western mindset, having been exposed to the rich Greek heritage “emanating” westward from such bountiful “fonts” such as Denys, Maximus, and the Cappadocians (through Eriugena)[i]. One may note as well his notably Franciscan spirituality: emphasizing poverty, humility, and Christ crucified, all likely deriving from the very wounds of his spiritual father Francis. And as a thinker interested in the ends of history, the great doctor shows signs not only of Augustine but even of the controversial vision of Joachim of Fiore, whom he (and the Church) criticized.
From this considerably rich deposit, consisting of some of the most intriguing and central issues to his theology, we can draw out two factors that definitively characterize his theology of history and its relation to the rest of his thought: his unabashed devotion to Christ and the fundamental relationship he draws between the Trinitarian processions and the created world. From these, one can see the role that the revelation of the Trinity has in relation to the unfolding of finite history. First we shall examine some foundational principles of Bonaventure’s Trinitarian thought (deriving key features from Neo-Platonic sources) that come to affect the status of the world and of history; and by then analyzing some notable characteristics of his vision of history in comparison to Joachim’s, one can see more clearly how his conception of the Trinity weighs upon and shapes the direction and path upon which the cosmos progresses toward its end; ultimately revealing not only the Christocentric aspects of the world and history, but also its fundamentally Trinitarian orientation.

II. Trinity and World:

The Triunity of God is revealed in Christian Revelation, and nowhere is Bonaventure so bold as to reduce the richness of that Revelation to a preambula fidei, that the intellect should have stumbled upon on its own. The Trinity does however express itself within human reasoning, weds itself to the rational, in the principle that the perfection of being entails a bringing forth of that which is of the same kind. Being in its height is ecstatic. The highest being requires the highest form of self-communication (which in Christian terms takes the form of an infinitely selfless love). Thus, Bonaventure’s “dynamic” vision of the Trinity, flowing from the “emanation tradition” of the Eastern Fathers: God is supremely dynamic insofar as the generation and diffusion of being from the Father (fontalis plenitudo) amount to eternal processes: generation of the Son and spiration of the Spirit. And yet Bonaventure (the good westerner that he is) does not shirk the unity of the Divine essence in favor of a Greek infatuation with Persons: he notes that because of God’s absolute simplicity, the self-communication(s) of this highest being must in some sense be compatible with divine unity. Both simplicity and the principle of a self-diffusive perfection of being characterize Bonaventure’s speculation upon the Trinity, and it is because of the former that one establishes an absolute uniqueness of God from other beings; and because of the latter that one can say the Trinitarian emanations are in a real sense “intrinsically necessary.”[ii] And as von Balthasar points out, it is the combination of Biblical Revelation and the Neo-Platonic principles that draws the self-diffusion of being up into the divine Being before all else: “The old Platonic axiom bonum diffusivum sui now in the light of Christian revelation no longer refers simply to God’s relationship with the world but to his absolute being itself…” He continues, drawing out the consequences of this move: “and this opens the way for an explanation of the structure that belongs to the natural kinds in the world, makes it possible to trace them back to their origin without absorbing them monistically into the rays of the light that is their source.”[iii]

In this application of the self-diffusion principle and its connection with the perfection of Being, one can see not only the “intrinsic necessity” of the Trinitarian relations, but also the necessity of the Trinity as foundation of the world and its relations. Because God is diffusive of created being only insofar as He is (as Father) diffusive of eternal emanations, there is no possibility of considering God’s relation to the world outside of or prior to God’s internal relation to Himself in the Trinitarian Persons. This is also evident in that, for Bonaventure, diverging from Augustine, the Greek preference for Persons commands an essentially un-Augustinian understanding of God’s relation to the world.[iv] God acts toward the world as He is in se, as Trinitarian. While for both Augustine and Denys, the Triunity of God is in many respects restricted to a divine height beyond expression in the world, for Bonaventure real expression occurs: “Rather, the Trinity is truly revealed in its overflow into the world (in creation and the Incarnation of Christ), and shows itself thereby to be the a priori ground of everything that exists in the world.”[v] The places of the Persons are preserved externally just as they are in the heart of God’s Being, and appropriation comes to signal the propria of the Persons in God’s communication of Himself: “This means nothing less than the grounding of the act of creation in the act of generation in the Godhead…”[vi] Bonaventure attempts here to forge a middle-way between subordinationism (the danger always lurking about the emanation tradition of the Greek Fathers) and a conflation of natural and supernatural.

The emanations within God, then, as eternal and infinite, become the exemplars which all external expressions image (i.e. creation). Bonaventure even holds that the many finite processions within creation all point to eternal processions. But for the Seraphic Doctor, the emanation of the Son is given a primacy as exemplar. In the generation of the Son, the Father expresses Himself: fully and completely, in all His power and capacity. In the Son the self-diffusion is relentlessly self-abandoning (yet not to the Father’s dissolution): for the Son is the perfect realization of the Father and His power in a way that no creature could achieve. And because the Father’s capacity in diffusion includes the capacity of everything real and possible, it includes all of creation as well. In the Son, the Father’s infinitely possible capacity becomes actualized perfectly. As von Balthasar writes: “If the Father has really given expression in the Son to His whole being and capacity, then in the Son everything that is possible through God has taken on reality: if anything else outside God is realized through God, it can have possibility and reality only through and in the Son.”[vii] For Bonaventure the second Person of the Trinity is therefore the archetype of the world, the exemplar of all creatures: to put it in Neo-Platonic terms (from which Bonaventure likely drew for much of his analysis of God’s relation to the world) the realm of the eternal or divine ideas of the created order is essentially swept up into the reality of the Son, such that all ideas of the creatures are eternally actual in the Son’s Being.[viii] Thus, as for Neo-Platonic philosophy (broadly speaking), the realm of these ideas contain a greater ontological density than the created “shadows,” the Son as perfectly embodying all of the Father’s capacity in creation marks a unique “place” in the divine being of exemplarity: such that, as emanation of creatures implies a certain “falling” in degrees of reality from the ideas, so too do creatures in their being descend from the (infinitely) ontologically richer reality of the Son. And as there is a built-in dynamism of reditus in the imperfect creature toward the ideal, there is thus an essentially Christocentric element to the dynamics of all creaturely being. There is an energetic eros in creatures to seek their perfection, their ideal; and this can only be found in the Son, in whom all of the perfections of creatures exist in actu. The Neo-Platonic cyclical “flow” is baptized here and shines forth the undeniable relationship that all creation has with the Son as exemplar; and thus the undeniable relation the Son has to all progression of creation toward God (including the mystical one).

The process of the world’s history is for the great doctor one such dynamic that is ultimately only conceivable as destined to the Son: “…we can affirm that the highest and noblest perfection in the universe is not attained until such a time as the nature that contains the germs that make for the spirits (rationes seminales) and the nature that contains the concepts of reason (rationes intellectuals) and the nature that contains the archetypical designs of the world (rationes ideales) are united to form one single person: and this happened at the Incarnation of the Son of God.”[ix] As we shall see, from this concept Bonaventure draws the conclusion that Christ is the “center” of all history.

A certain primacy is also given to the Son by Bonaventure with reference to the world in revelation. The Son, the Word, is the universal expression of the Father. The Holy Spirit is construed as the Father’s giving. Insofar as these notions are distinguishable, one can see how the primacy of second Person functions with regard to revelation. The Son is God as He is perfectly expressed, and thus this “manner” of being within the Godhead affords the Son’s appropriation of “truth” in its most fundamental sense. The Word is the dynamic revealing of the Father, and thus the entire substance of God perfectly outpoured (within Himself). And as we have seen, because He contains the fullness of the Father’s infinite capacities, the Son is at one and the same time the universal expression of all that is created. For Bonaventure, there is no expression or revelation of anything apart from the primal and eternal revelation of the Father in the Son. All created expressions can only express themselves because of that Original expression.

And the Son is not only the perfect “representing” of the Father, but also of the Spirit’s relation to the Father. In this sense, the Son is Himself the perfect “revelation” (if revelation has meaning within God) of the Trinity within the Godhead. And in terms of gracious revelation of God as three Persons, the perfect “witness” to the Trinitarian relations can only be He who is Himself the infinite expression of the three: “this witness (of the Father, Son, and Spirit) is expressed only by the Word, for the Word gives expression to the Father and to itself and to the Holy spirit, and to everything else.”[x] The Son gives expression to His begottenness from the Father as well as His spiration of the Spirit with the Father. No doubt here the notion of the “filioque” plays a key role in Bonaventure’s positioning of the Son as “unifying center between Father and Spirit”: who leads back to the Father and in that “leading back” (love) constitutes the spiration of the Holy Spirit. The Son, insofar as He is “God as truth” and thus is the expression of the Trinity itself, renders all revelation of the Trinity in history, covenant, economy, etc. of an intrinsically Christocentric nature. The fullest expression and revelation of the Trinitarian Persons, insofar as (following the Greek paradigm) they are expressed in the world as they are Personally, nevertheless are only so revealed through the second Person, and thus through Christ. The image of Christ, as we shall see, will function for Bonaventure as the truest image of the Trinity. Revelation of Trinity and its meaning for history centers around Jesus Christ.

The two complementary Christocentric notions of 1) the Son as exemplar of creaturely reality (rendering all reditus toward God inherently through Christ) and 2) the Son as supreme expression of the Trinity (rendering all Trinitarian revelation ultimately through Christ) are what give Bonaventure’s account of history its radically Christocentric flavor while at the same time and only in this way characterizing the fullest expression of the Trinity in relation to the destiny of the world. As will be illustrated, in Bonaventure’s account of history, the two “poles” of ascent through Christ and revealing through Christ intertwine and are joined in the one Person of Christ who, for Bonaventure, is the dramatic “center” of all history. By a brief examination of some features of Bonaventure’s theology of history, one will be able to see how these Trinitarian principles shape the theological account of the process of the world.



[i] Woo, Esther. “Theophanic Cosmic Order in Saint Bonaventure” in Franciscan Studies: vol. 31 annual IX. Franciscan Institute. St. Bonaventure, NY. 1971
[ii] Bonaventure. Interarium Mentis in Deum (The Journey of the Mind to God). Trans. Boehner, Philotheus O.F.M. Indianapolis. Hackett Publishing, 1990. Chap. 6. 2
[iii] von Balthasar, Hans Urs. The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics vol. II: Studies in Theological Style: Clerical Style. Trans. Louth, Andrew. San Francisco. Ignatius Press, 1984. p. 285
[iv] This is not to suggest an incompatibility between a rich Trinitarian view of God’s relation to the world and Augustine’s “preference” for divine unity in the economy. Any way of phrasing the difference in the thinkers seems to fail in articulating their continuity…
[v] Ibid. p.261
[vi] Ibid. p.291
[vii] Ibid. p.292
[viii] Woo, p.308
[ix] Bonaventure. De Red. Art. 20: V 324b. cited in: von Balthasar, p. 309
[x] von Balthasar, p.290; cf. Bonaventure. Collationes in Hexaemeron: 9. 2

In Honor of the Feast of Saint Anthony the Great -- January 17

St Anthony the Great is said to be the founder of Christian monasticism. He was not the first ascetic to go out into the Egyptian desert, but his charismatic personality attracted followers, followers Anthony did not want and yet knew he had to take care of for their own well being. He became their spiritual father by default. He set up simple monastic rules for them to obey and occasionally gave personal guidance and exhortation to those who desired it. But for himself, he desired a simple, quiet life. In the end, he did not want to be put above others, he did not want to be considered great – he saw that the path to friendship with God required a combination of love, humility, and personal holiness. Yet it is because he put these so well into practice that he became a great beacon for others, an example for all of us to follow, and not just to those who, like him, feel a call to the religious life.

“Abba Anthony said, ‘I no longer fear God, but I love Him. For love casts out fear’ (John 4.18),” The Sayings of the Desert Fathers. Trans. Benedicta Ward (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publishers, 1984), 8. St. Anthony felt called to go out into the desert, to live alone, in order to feel closeness with God. When he heard a sermon on Matthew 19:21, he believed Jesus was speaking personally to him, telling him to go sell all he had, and to come and follow wherever Jesus would lead. Yet, he felt afraid, as do most young people going out living on their own; he did not know what it is he was to do or accomplish “When the holy Abba Anthony lived in the desert he was best by accidie, and attacked by many sinful thoughts. He said to God, ‘Lord, I want to be saved but these thoughts do not leave me alone; what shall I do with my affliction? How can I be saved?”ibid., 2.

The answer he was shown was simple: prayer. Why prayer? Because prayer leads us to God, opens us to God, allows us to grow in our love of God. Prayer does not change God, does not make God more loving, but changes us, makes us more loving and more capable of being loved, that is, more capable of feeling that love which is already there. Through prayer, Anthony was able to remove all fear from his life; even death did not frighten him – he knew to live was to be with Christ, to die was to be with Christ; either way he was with Christ, with his love. What else is there that he could want?

“Abba Anthony said, ‘I saw the snares that the enemy spreads out over the world and I said groaning, “What can get through such snares?” Then I heard a voice saying to me, “Humility,”’” ibid., 2. Many of us seek an exaggerated sense of glory for one’s life; that is, many of us desire to be above all others at their expense. It is not wrong to desire excellence in our work. We should feel a sense of satisfaction when achieve it. What could be wrong is how we take it: do we turn glory as its own end, as an idol? Satan tempted Christ with glory, and Christ turned against it. The world continues to snare many with this sham; Hollywood, with its self-congratulatory awards ceremonies represents one such example. Humility keeps us stable in life; it shows us that we should not be so full of ourselves that we push everyone else away. Moreover, humility allows us to realize our own faults and weaknesses, showing us why we need to rely upon others, showing us why we cannot accomplish everything by ourselves. We need others, and when we accept them, they act as the arms of God in our life. If we turn them away, we are really turning away from God.

St Anthony had two experiences which humbled him, shaping and perfecting his spiritual life. He believed he was the first Christian to become and ascetic and to seek a quiet life in the desert away from the temptations of the world. Pride made him think that this made him the best of all monks. He was wrong on both accounts. “It was revealed to him in sleep, however, that another more worthy than he dwelt in the deeper recesses of the desert and that it was his duty to seek him out,” St. Jerome, “Life of St Paul the Hermit,” in Early Christian Biographies. Ed. Roy Deferrari (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1952), 229. It was because of his love of God that he accepted what he was told without complaint: he went out and found this man, St Paul the Hermit, whom he embraced as a long lost friend. More important than his experience with St Paul, Anthony learned that his spiritual equal was not, as he would have expected, a monk living in the desert. “It was revealed to Abba Anthony in his desert that there was one who was his equal in the city. He was a doctor by profession and whatever he had beyond his needs he gave to the poor, and every day he sang the Sanctus with the angels,” Sayings of the Desert Fathers, 6. It is not a monastic life that makes one great; it is the simple love for God manifested in the way we treat and respect others which makes us great.

The last mark of the great friend of God is their piety and holiness. Many people confuse this to be a life without temptation, a life without struggles. If Jesus struggled and resisted temptation, then we should realize that we are no greater than he, and we too will face such trials and tribulations in our life. Indeed, not only are we going to, we must in order to grow and become the one God wants us to be. St Anthony understood this when he said, “Whoever has not experienced temptation cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven […] Without temptations no-one can be saved,” ibid., 2. As a child learning to walk must develop muscles, so we, spiritual children, must develop ourselves and find out who we are through temptation; even as a child will stumble but never give up until they can walk on their own, so we too we shall stumble, but should never give up until at last we have reached spiritual perfection. We should not give in to despair when we falter, but rather look into the times we do not, because it is in our little victories that we know perfection is possible.

Holiness is not to be found in someone who has hid themselves from the world, fearful of the temptations it gives. It is found in the one who embraces the world in love, and conquers those fears through their love of God. There are two ways of not failing a test: not taking it and passing it; wide is the difference between the two; so too with temptation. Just because there is one you have not yet experienced does not mean you have overcome it; only in its overcoming is virtue established. True monasticism is not about a flight from temptation, but about achieving virtue. The early monks went out to the desert to fight devils, that is, to fight the temptations within. Yet we do not need to be a monk to do this; the greatness of St Anthony and his followers is available to all, if we would but desire (eros) God.

The Feast of St Francis of Assisi

Today's the day! It's the feast of St Francis of Assisi!

Troparion Tone 3.
When riches had impoverished the world, you enriched it with the poverty of Christ, and by your love for all creation, you revealed to us the radiance of Tabor's light, so that all nations see in you the deep desire of all mankind. Beg Christ our Lord to save our souls.

Kontakion Tone 6.
Hearing the words of the Holy Gospels, you left your earthly father to serve your Father in heaven, showing us the riches of poverty and the perfect joy of the Cross. And in opposing the pride of the mighty with the humility of the simple, and breaking down the walls of hatred with the power of your love, you became yourself an image of the crucified Christ, who is everywhere present and fills all things.

When St Francis was told to repair the church, he was given this message while kneeling in front of a Byzantine-style Crucifix, reportedly in an Italo-Byzantine parish. St Francis saw the ruined building he was in and believed it was the church he was supposed to fix -- and in a way, it was, but it was to be the foundation for his greater mission, the mission to help rebuild the Catholic faith from within. Yet, what an amazing turn of events - this mission, this foundation for one of the greatest saints to grace the pages of history, took place in an Eastern Church. Could there be another message here, an indication of the kind of mission Francis and his friars can play in church unity? Perhaps.

Despite some Orthodox who reject St Francis, usually from small sectarian groups which present their limited understanding of tradition as normative for all, we find in the Orthodox world profound respect for St Francis. Indeed, there is an understanding of many Orthodox that St Francis is for the Catholics what St Seraphim of Sarov is for the Orthodox. St Seraphim, like St Francis, was filled with the spirit, and constantly seen interacting with animals, treating them as his personal friends. Indeed, in some spiritual biographies of St Seraphim, some Orthodox have reported seeing a vision of heaven where St Francis of Assisi is standing next to St Seraphim, showing us that theway of holiness they offer is one and the same, and (as some see it) that the East and West are not so fundamentally divided as the political situation on earth makes it out to be.

It should come as no surprise that, among the scholastic theologians, it was St Bonaventure, a Franciscan, who seemed to edge closer to the East than any of the rest. His theology continued with the Eastern sympathy of theology with mysticism (all the major scholastic saints did this, to be sure, and St Thomas Aquinas is a profound mystic, but there seems, at least to me, a greater mystical overtone throughout all of Bonaventure's writings, even in his systematic treatise, than any of the other schoolmen). St Francis was his guide in understanding the Christian life, and Bonaventure's theology can be read as a theological commentary on what St Francis said and did.

In the way of St Bonaventure, I wanted to write a small treatise to celebrate St Francis' feast, showing how Francis has influenced my own theological ideas. Every time I read one of the major, early biographies of St Francis, I learn something new, and I find it somehow mixing itself into my own thoughts and transforming them in subtle ways.

This was a treatise I was not able to write for today. Perhaps next year.

However, I thought I would share one thing I have learned from St Francis, something I think Catholics today need to know more than ever: the true path of inter-religious dialogue. This path is ever loving, ever open, and yet ever willing to state the truths of the Catholic faith in bold, but compassionate, ways. In a time where Christians and Muslims were fighting each other in the Crusades, St Francis decided it was his mission to go into Muslim territories and proclaim his love for Christ. He did not go to defame anyone, he only went to uplift the faith. His sermons were simple and humble, never inflammatory. He showed the truth without having to be harsh. Even in the most hostile of territories, where a bounty was given to anyone who killed a Christian, St Francis was able to turn the tables around, to earn the respect and affection of even the darkest of hearts. He was given the freedom to preach, and through his work, the Franciscans were given the protection of the shrines in the Holy Land.

We need more like St Francis today, people so filled with a radical love for Christ and their neighbor, that they become imitators of Christ, who was love incarnate. And where did St Francis get such love? By the grace of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Beauty, who transformed St Francis' eyes in San Damiano so that St Francis could only see the world in the light of this spirit, in the light of beauty, which we see in his famed Canticle of Brother Sun.

A Prayer In Honor Of St Francis of Assisi

This week the Church will be celebrating the feast day of St Francis of Assisi. As one of the greatest saints of the Church, he has also held a considerable influence on my own spiritual and theological development.

To start this week off, I thought I would share a prayer I wrote for my Master’s thesis. That work was an examination of some of the problems that are debated in traditional Christology, and I tried to show how a different philosophical framework (Yogacara Buddhism) could be used to help answer those problems.

In it, I wrote the prayer to show the practical applications of my Christological reflections. As one can see, in it one can find St Francis’ prayer for peace. St Francis, I believe, shows us one way for inter-religious dialogue, and his spiritual insights have a strong concordance with the best of Buddhist thought.

I have edited the prayer slightly since the time I wrote my thesis, because I needed to smooth out a couple rough portions from the end of the prayer.



Vows

My Lord and My God,
I will work for the salvation of all beings.
I will work to remove all my evil desires and attachments.
I will study and practice your ways,
So that I can realize the way of truth.

My Lord and My God,
However innumerable the sentient beings, I will work to help them all.
However inexhaustible the passions which lead to sin, I will work to extinguish them all.
However immeasurable are your ways, I will follow them.
However incomparable is the truth, I will work to attain it.

My Lord and My God,
I will work to save all beings from difficulties,
I will work to destroy all evil passions,
I will work to learn the truth and so that I can teach it to others,
I will work to lead all towards union with you.

My Lord and My God,
I will work to deliver all beings from suffering,
I will work to cut off all afflictions,
I will study all approaches to the truth,
I will follow the path to the Beatific Vision: nirvana.

My Lord and My God,
As sentient beings are numberless, I will help ferry them across the ocean of suffering,
As confusion is inexhaustible, I work to uproot it,
As your ways are without measure, I will seek to know them all,
As unity with the Mystical Body of Christ is unsurpassed, I will work to actualize it fully.

Concluding Prayers

My Lord and My God,
Make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy. (Prayer of St. Francis)

My Lord and My God,
Make me an instrument of your compassion.
Where there is ignorance, let me bring wisdom;
Where there is sin, virtue;
Where there is suffering, healing;
Where there is pride, humility;
Where there is discord, harmony.

Through the prayers of the Mother of God and of all the saints, may I obtain the grace I need to know the needs of others, the way to help them out of their suffering, and the strength needed to guide all souls on the path of salvation, especially those who are in most need of mercy. Amen.

Holy Father Liberius, Pope Of Rome

Today, on the twenty-seventh of August, the Ruthenians commemorate the memory of Holy Father Liberius, Pope of Rome. Holy Father Liberius? Yes. In a rather strange twist of fate, the first Pope not placed on the Western martyrology is remembered by the East.

While it would be difficult to determine all the reasons for this development, a few important facts can be brought out to help understand how this came about.

Pope Liberius lived in an exciting but tumultuous age. During the time of Constantine, not only had Rome’s official persecution of Christians ended, Christians begun to have an open influence in the affairs of state. What should have been a time of joy became a time of sorrow when it became obvious that there was discord in the Church. In Egypt, Arius contended against Patriarch Alexander of Alexandria on the nature of the Trinity: are the Father and the Son to be seen as equals (the position of Alexander), or is the Son inferior to the Father (the position of Arius). Constantine, directed by Ossius of Cordova (whose feast is also today), tried to restore Christian unity by convening the council of Nicea in 325. At the council, Arius’ position was condemned, and the vast majority of the bishops accepted the Nicene Creed, written by Ossius, as representing the common Christian tradition. Arius and his followers continued to spread their teachings, and Constantine did not establish Christian unity.

Liberius would become Pope in 352, and the conflict between the Nicenes and the Arians continued. Emperor Constantine was dead, and the empire was led by the Arian-sympathizing emperor, Constantius II. The emperor wanted to unite Christianity under an Arian creed, and forced bishops to sign Arian confessions. Pope Liberius, completely orthodox in his beliefs, rejected the emperor, and was sent into exile in 355. Two years later, he was called back. Some writers suggested he fell into the Arian heresy and completely succumbed to the will of the emperor. Others suggested that he had agreed to an ambiguous statement which did not have to be interpreted heretically. Others saw neither of these, and believed he came back to Rome, victorious over the cruel mechanizations of the emperor. While Constantius still lived, it is clear Pope Liberius tried to continue in an orthodox, if somewhat quiet, manner. Once Constantius died in 361, Liberius made it very clear where his sympathies lie. In an act of mercy, he was willing to welcome communion with any of the bishops who, against their will, had signed their names to any of Constantius’ decrees. All they had to do was simply to repudiate any and all heretical decrees they had agreed to.

In the West, not only was there a theological battle being waged against the Arians, there was an internal debate going on the relationship between Christian ethics and ecclesiastical leadership. Under the influence of the legalistic Novatians, some Western Christians thought lapsed Christians could not receive absolution for their error, and even if they were repentant, they could not be welcomed back into the Christian fold. Likewise, under the influence of the Donatists, others questioned whether or not a bishop who erred in the faith or morals could continue their sacramental leadership in the Church. When a leader opposed either of these groups their character was immediately brought into question. Pope Liberius became easy prey – stories were spread about his fall from the orthodox faith. Even those who did not hold to either the Novatian or Donatist position were influenced by these rumors. Liberius was believed by many as being a weak leader who had, out of pressure, momentarily fallen into heresy. Can such a Pope be recognized as a holy father of the Church? Clearly, with his marred reputation, the answer was no.

Things were quite a bit different in the East. Not only was the influence of Novatian and Donatist thought negligible at best, but the fact that many of the Eastern bishops were the ones who lapsed from the faith and were later readmitted to communion with Rome by Liberius’ policies gave them a more benevolent view of the Pope. There was, simply put, a greater fluidity of thought in the East. The East was quicker to fall into the Arian heresy, but the East also provided the theological support which brought about its defeat. The East, without the moralistic legalism of the West, was more open to mercy. Had not St Athanasius himself admitted, like Liberius, that a creed signed under compulsion was not to be held against those Christians who signed it, if in their heart, they denied it? Had not Liberius, throughout his life, throughout his exile, made it clear where he stood? How, then, could his sanctity and leadership be denied, when his voice was one of the voices of orthodoxy in his time?

Thus the Latins and Greeks developed differing attitudes towards Liberius. The Latins, who had more literature that condemned him, in the end, did not list him in their official martyrologies. The Greeks, who probably did not know of this discrepancy with the Latins, placed Liberius, with many other of the bishops who had been forgiven momentary lapses in faith, in their lists of Saints, and continue to commemorate him as one of the many holy Popes of Rome.