The Mind's Road to God (St. Bonaventure)

St. Bonaventure (1221 - 1274) was born in central Italy. He studied at the University of Paris, where he later became a professor of theology. He entered the Franciscan order in 1242, was made general of the Franciscans in 1257, and became bishop of Albano in 1273. Gregory X made him a cardinal shortly before Bonaventure’s death. He was canonized a saint in 1482 and in the sixteenth century was made a doctor of the Church.

In "The Mind’s Road to God", St. Bonaventure tells of ascending Mount Alverna, 33 years after the death of St. Francis, to meditate and seek spiritual peace in the very place where St. Francis had experienced the miraculous vision of the crucified Seraph. While in that place Bonaventure had the same vision, and he reports, “While looking upon this vision, I immediately saw that it signified the suspension of our father himself in contemplation and the way by which he came to it.”

The six wings of the Seraph, he says, are to be understood as signifying the six stages of spiritual illumination by which the soul ascends to God. The way is only by the blood of the Lamb, for the six stages of illumination begin with God's creatures and lead up to God only "through the Crucified."

The basic image of Bonaventure’s spiritual allegory is that of a six-winged angel, seen as bearing three pairs of wings, each pair symbolizing one of the three major phases in the ascent to God. The first pair of stages involves reflecting on the sensible, corporeal world; the second pair consists in the contemplation of the mind’s own powers; the third is contemplation of God’s essence. The ascent to God, then, calls for seeing God through and in the body, then through and in the mind, and, finally, through and in the features of pure being. Bonaventure accordingly divides his treatise into seven chapters, the first six having to do with the six stages of illumination, and the seventh with the mystical experience of the union with God by which peace comes to the spirit.

Throughout his account of the stages in the ascent to God Bonaventure emphasizes that the securing of beatitude, the "fruition of the highest good," requires divine help. None can be blessed, the saint writes, "unless he ascend above himself, not by the ascent of his body but by that of his heart," and then he adds, "But we cannot be raised above ourselves except by a higher power raising us up."