In the collect of today's Mass, we pray for two gifts: to benefit from Saint Bonaventure’s great learning and constantly to “imitate the ardor of his charity.”
So writes Michael Andrews, Chancellor of the Diocese of Lansing, upon the Feast of Saint Bonaventure, the great 13th century Italian Franciscan bishop, cardinal, theologian and philosopher. Michael continues:
For Saint Bonaventure true knowledge of God transforms the heart, so that charity — loving God above all things and our neighbor as ourselves — becomes the virtue guiding all our actions.
Bonaventure studied theology alongside the great Saint Thomas Aquinas. While Aquinas emphasized God’s truth, Bonaventure was drawn to God’s goodness. Together, they challenge us to a unified faith — fully engaging both head and heart, contemplation and action.
Saint Bonaventure’s intense charity had both practical and spiritual dimensions. When the pope appointed Bonaventure as cardinal, the pope’s representatives arrived while the saint was washing the dishes. Bonaventure asked the delegates to hang the red hat on a tree while he finished his kitchen work.
Bonaventure knew that the path to holiness is not found in external honors, but in showing God’s love through the ordinary tasks of daily living. He wrote: “The free heart is held by no other love than the love of God.”
He was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1588, becoming known as the "Seraphic Doctor," a reference to the ardent love and devotion of the seraphim, the highest choir of angels.
* Image: Saint Bonaventure Receiving Communion from the Hands of an Angel by Francisco Herrera the Elder (1576–1656), Louvre Museum, Paris.