VATICAN CITY, MARCH 10, 2010 (Zenit.org).-
Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI gave
today during the general audience, which he began in St.
Peter's Basilica and continued in Paul VI Hall.
* * *
[Greeting to the Don Carlo Gnocchi Foundation in St.
Peter's Basilica]
Dear brothers and sisters!
I am happy to receive you in this basilica and to
address my cordial welcome to each one of you. I greet
the pilgrimage promoted by the Don Carlo Gnocchi
Foundation after the recent beatification of this
luminous figure of the Milanese clergy. Dear friends, I
am very aware of your extraordinary work in favor of
children in difficulty, the disabled, the elderly, the
terminally ill and in the vast realm of social and
health care. Through your projects of solidarity, you
make an effort to continue the meritorious work begun by
Blessed Carlo Gnocchi, apostle of modern times and
genius of Christian charity, who, accepting the
challenges of his time, dedicated himself with every
care to little dismembered children, victims of war, in
whom he saw the face of God.
Dynamic and enthusiastic priest and keen educator, he
lived the Gospel integrally in the different contexts of
life, in which he operated with incessant zeal and
tireless apostolic ardor. In this Year for Priests, once
again the Church sees him as a model to imitate. May his
brilliant example sustain the commitment of all those
who dedicate themselves to the service of the weakest,
and awaken in priests the lively desire to rediscover
and reinvigorate the awareness of the extraordinary gift
of grace that the ordained ministry represents for one
who has received it, for the whole Church and for the
world.
We conclude our meeting singing the prayer of the Our
Father.
[Catechesis in Paul VI Hall]
Dear brothers and sisters,
Last week I spoke of the life and personality of St.
Bonaventure of Bagnoregio. This morning I would like to
continue with the presentation, reflecting on part of
his literary work and his doctrine.
As I already said, among various merits, St. Bonaventure
had that of interpreting authentically and faithfully
the figure of St. Francis of Assisi, whom he venerated
and studied with great love. In a particular way, in the
times of St. Bonaventure a current of Friars Minor
called "spiritual" held that there was a totally new
phase of history inaugurated with St. Francis; the
"eternal Gospel" had appeared, of which Revelation
speaks, which replaced the New Testament. This group
affirmed that the Church had now exhausted her
historical role, and in her place came a charismatic
community of free men guided interiorly by the Spirit,
namely, the "spiritual Franciscans." At the base of the
ideas of this group were the writings of a Cistercian
abbot, Joachim of Fiore, who died in 1202. In his works,
he affirmed a Trinitarian rhythm of history. He
considered the Old Testament as the age of the Father,
followed by the time of the Son, the time of the Church.
To be awaited yet was the third age, that of the Holy
Spirit. The whole of history was thus interpreted as a
history of progress: from the severity of the Old
Testament to the relative liberty of the time of the
Son, in the Church, up to the full liberty of the
children of God, in the period of the Holy Spirit, which
would have been also the period of peace among men, of
the reconciliation of peoples and religions. Joachim of
Fiore aroused the hope that the beginning of the new
time would come from a new monasticism. It is thus
understandable that a group of Franciscans thought it
recognized in St. Francis of Assisi the initiator of the
new time and in his order the community of the new
period -- the community of the time of the Holy Spirit,
which left behind it the hierarchical Church, to begin a
new Church of the Spirit, no longer connected to the old
structures.
There was, hence, the risk of a very serious
misunderstanding of the message of St. Francis, of his
humble fidelity to the Gospel and to the Church, and
such a mistake implied an erroneous vision of
Christianity as a whole.
St. Bonaventure, who in 1257 became minister-general of
the Franciscans, found himself before serious tension
within his own order due, precisely, to those who
espoused this current of "spiritual Franciscans," which
aligned itself to Joachim of Fiore. Precisely to respond
to this group and to give unity again to the order, St.
Bonaventure carefully studied the authentic writings of
Joachim of Fiore and those attributed to him and, taking
into account the need to present correctly the figure
and message of his beloved St. Francis, he wished to
show a correct view of the theology of history.
St. Bonaventure addressed the problem in fact in his
last work, a collection of conferences to monks of the
Paris studio, which remained unfinished and which was
completed with the transcriptions of the hearers. It was
titled "Hexaemeron," that is, an allegorical explanation
of the six days of creation. The Fathers of the Church
considered the six or seven days of the account of
creation as a prophecy of the history of the world, of
humanity. The seven days represented for them seven
periods of history, later interpreted also as seven
millennia. With Christ we would have entered the last,
namely, the sixth period of history, which would then be
followed by the great sabbath of God. St. Bonaventure
accounts for this historical interpretation of the
relation of the days of creation, but in a very free and
innovative way. For him, two phenomena of his time
render necessary a new interpretation of the course of
history:
The first: the figure of St. Francis, the man totally
united to Christ up to communion of the stigmata, almost
an alter Christus, and with St. Francis the new
community created by him, different from the monasticism
known up to then. This phenomenon called for a new
interpretation, as a novelty of God which appeared in
that moment.
The second: the position of Joachim of Fiore, who
announced a new monasticism and a totally new period of
history, going beyond the revelation of the New
Testament, called for an answer.
As minister-general of the Order of Franciscans, St.
Bonaventure had seen immediately that with the
spiritualistic conception, inspired by Joachim of Fiore,
the order was not governable, but was going logically
toward anarchy. For him there were two consequences:
The first: the practical need of structures and of
insertion in the reality of the hierarchical Church, of
the real Church, needed a theological foundation, also
because the others, those who followed the spiritualist
conception, showed an apparent theological foundation.
The second: although taking into account the necessary
realism, it was not necessary to lose the novelty of the
figure of St. Francis.
How did St. Bonaventure respond to the practical and
theoretical need? Of his answer I can only give here a
very schematic and incomplete summary in some points:
1. St. Bonaventure rejected the idea of the Trinitarian
rhythm of history. God is one for the whole of history
and he is not divided into three divinities. As a
consequence, history is one, even if it is a journey and
-- according to St. Bonaventure -- a journey of
progress.
2. Jesus Christ is the last word of God -- in him God
has said all, giving and expressing himself. More than
himself, God cannot express, cannot give. The Holy
Spirit is Spirit of the Father and of the Son. Christ
himself says of the Holy Spirit: He "...will bring to
your remembrance all that I have said to you" (John
14:26), "he will take what is mine and declare it to
you" (John 16:15). Hence, there is not another higher
Gospel, there is not another Church to await. Because of
this, the Order of St. Francis had also to insert itself
in this Church, in her faith, in her hierarchical order.
3. This does not mean that the Church is immobile, fixed
in the past and that novelties cannot be exercised in
her. "Opera Christi non deficiunt, sed proficiunt," the
works of Christ do not go backward, do not fail, but
progress, says the saint in the letter "De tribus
quaestionibus." Thus St. Bonaventure formulates
explicitly the idea of progress, and this is a novelty
in comparison with the Fathers of the Church and a great
part of his contemporaries. For St. Bonaventure, Christ
is no longer, as he was for the Fathers of the Church,
the end, but the center of history; history does not end
with Christ, but a new period begins. Another
consequence is the following: prevailing up to that
moment was the idea that the Fathers of the Church were
at the absolute summit of theology, all the following
generations could only be their disciples. Even St.
Bonaventure recognizes the Fathers as teachers for ever,
but the phenomenon of St. Francis gave him the certainty
that the richness of the word of Christ is inexhaustible
and that also new lights can appear in the new
generations. The uniqueness of Christ also guarantees
novelties and renewal in all the periods of history.
Certainly, the Franciscan Order -- so he stresses --
belongs to the Church of Jesus Christ, to the Apostolic
Church, and cannot build itself on a utopian
spiritualism. But, at the same time, the novelty of such
an order is valid in comparison with classic
monasticism, and St. Bonaventure -- as I said in the
preceding catechesis -- defended this novelty against
the attacks of the secular clergy of Paris. The
Franciscans do not have a fixed monastery, they can be
present everywhere to proclaim the Gospel. Precisely the
break with stability, characteristic of monasticism, in
favor of a new flexibility, restored to the Church her
missionary dynamism.
At this point perhaps it is useful to say that also
today there are views according to which the whole
history of the Church in the second millennium is a
permanent decline; some see the decline already
immediately after the New Testament. In reality, "opera
Christi non deficiunt, sed proficiunt," the works of
Christ do not go backward, but progress. What would the
Church be without the new spirituality of the
Cistercians, of the Franciscans and Dominicans, of the
spirituality of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the
Cross, and so on? This affirmation is also valid today:
"Opera Christi non deficiunt, sed proficiunt," they go
forward.
St. Bonaventure teaches us the whole of the necessary
discernment, even severe, of the sober realism and of
openness to new charisms given by Christ, in the Holy
Spirit, to his Church. And while this idea of decline is
repeated, there is also the other idea, this
"spiritualistic utopianism," which is repeated. We know,
in fact, how after the Second Vatican Council, some were
convinced that everything should be new, that there
should be another Church, that the pre-conciliar Church
was finished and that we would have another, totally
"other" Church. An anarchic utopianism! And thanks be to
God, the wise helmsmen of Peter's Barque, Pope Paul VI
and Pope John Paul II, on one hand defended the novelty
of the council and on the other, at the same time,
defended the uniqueness and continuity of the Church,
which is always a Church of sinners and always a place
of grace.
4. In this connection, St. Bonaventure, as
minister-general of the Franciscans, took a line of
government in which it was very clear that the new order
could not, as a community, live at the same
"eschatological height" of St. Francis, in which he saw
the future world anticipated, but -- guided, at the same
time, by healthy realism and spiritual courage -- had to
come as close as possible to the maximum realization of
the Sermon on the Mount, which for St. Francis was the
rule, though taking into account the limits of man,
marked by original sin.
Thus we see that for St. Bonaventure, to govern was not
simply a task but was above all to think and to pray. At
the base of his government we always find prayer and
thought; all his decisions resulted from reflection,
from thought illumined by prayer. His profound contact
with Christ always accompanied his work of
minister-general and that is why he composed a series of
theological-mystical writings, which express the spirit
of his government and manifest the intention of guiding
the order interiorly, of governing, that is, not only
through commands and structures, but through guiding and
enlightening souls, orienting them to Christ.
Of these his writings, which are the soul of his
government and show the way to follow either as an
individual or a community, I would like to mention only
one, his masterwork, the "Itinerarium mentis in Deum,"
which is a "manual" of mystical contemplation. This book
was conceived in a place of profound spirituality: the
hill of La Verna, where St. Francis had received the
stigmata. In the introduction, the author illustrates
the circumstances that gave origin to his writing:
"While I meditated on the possibility of the soul
ascending to God, presented to me, among others, was
that wondrous event that occurred in that place to
Blessed Francis, namely, the vision of the winged
seraphim in the form of a crucifix. And meditating on
this, immediately I realized that such a vision offered
me the contemplative ecstasy of Father Francis himself
and at the same time the way that leads to it" (Journey
of the Mind in God, Prologue, 2, in Opere di San
Bonaventura. Opuscoli Teologici / 1, Rome, 1993, p.
499).
The six wings of the seraphim thus became the symbol of
six stages that lead man progressively to the knowledge
of God through observation of the world and of creatures
and through the exploration of the soul itself with its
faculties, up 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 one can reach this
mystical communion with God, would make one descend to
the depth of the heart: "If you now yearn to know how
that happens (mystical communion with God), ask grace,
not doctrine; desire, not the intellect; the groaning of
prayer, not the study of the letter; the spouse, not the
teacher; God, not man; darkness not clarity; not light
but the fire that inflames everything and transport to
God with strong unctions and ardent affections. ... We
enter therefore into darkness, we silence worries, the
passions and illusions; we pass with Christ Crucified
from this world to the Father, so that, after having
seen him, we say with Philip: that is enough for me"
(Ibid., VII, 6).
Dear friends, let us take up the invitation addressed to
us by St. Bonaventure, the Seraphic Doctor, and let us
enter the school of the divine Teacher: We listen to his
Word of life and truth, which resounds in the depth of
our soul. Let us purify our thoughts and actions, so
that he can dwell in us, and we can hear his divine
voice, which draws us toward true happiness.
[Translation by ZENIT]
[The Holy Father then greeted the people in several
languages. In English, he said:]
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
In our catechesis on the Christian culture of the Middle
Ages, we return to the teaching of Saint Bonaventure,
the great Franciscan theologian of the thirteenth
century. Bonaventure refuted the idea, based on the
doctrine of Joachim of Fiore and associated with the
"spiritual" Franciscans, that Saint Francis had
inaugurated a new and final age of the Holy Spirit, to
replace the age of Christ and the Church. In his defence
of the newness of the Franciscan charism, he developed a
remarkable theology of history and progress, based on
the definitiveness of the Christ event and its enduring
fruitfulness in the history of the Church. He insisted
that Christian revelation will not be surpassed in
history, and that the future fulfillment of God's plan
remains the object of our Christian hope.
Bonaventure was influenced by the writings of
Pseudo-Dionysius, which present God as the origin and
goal of a goodness which pervades the cosmos. In his
work, The Journey of the Mind to God, he guides the soul
from created realities to the mystic contemplation of
the Triune God. Bonaventure made Christ the centre of
his theology; his writings invite us to welcome Christ's
word into our hearts and thus to experience the joy of
God's eternal love.
I offer a warm welcome to the many school groups
present, including the Bruderhof group from England and
the students of Saint Michael's Holy Cross Secondary
School in Dublin, Ireland. The developments taking place
in Northern Ireland in these days are a promising sign
of hope, and I pray that they will help to consolidate
the future of peace desired by all. Upon the
English-speaking pilgrims and visitors I invoke God's
abundant blessings.
Copyright 2010 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana
[He concluded in Italian:]
I greet, finally, the youth, sick and newlyweds. Dear
young people, may the Lenten journey that we are taking
be an occasion for authentic conversion that leads you
to maturity of faith in Christ. Dear sick people,
participating with love in the suffering of the Son of
God incarnate, you are able to share preliminarily in
the glory and joy of his resurrection. And you, dear
newlyweds, find in the alliance that, at the cost of his
blood, Christ has made with his Church, the support and
model of your marital pact and of your mission at the
service of the Gospel.
I am profoundly close to the persons hit by the recent
earthquake in Turkey and their families. I assure each
one of my prayers, while I ask the international
community to contribute rescue services with promptness
and generosity.
My deep sympathy also goes to the victims of the
atrocious violence that bloodies Nigeria and that has
not spared even defenseless children. Once again I
repeat with a heartbroken spirit that violence does not
resolve conflicts, but only increases the tragic
consequences. I appeal to all those who have civil and
religious responsibility in the country, to do their
utmost for the security and peaceful coexistence of all
the population. I express, finally, my closeness to
Nigerian pastors and faithful and I pray that, strong
and firm in hope, they will be authentic witnesses of
reconciliation.
[Translation by ZENIT]
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