The Journey of the Mind Into God (Henry Kajubi)

 KAJUBI HENRY, 11044T.

I have chosen Boonaventure’s classical writing: The Journey of the Mind Into God, by Saint Bonaventure of Bagnoregio.

Hope to journey with my mind to God

St. Bonaventure, (1221-1274 AD) an Italian Friar Minor is one of my favorite philosopher- theologians. He was also a Cardinal Bishop of Albano and later canonized a saint in 1482 AD and he was declared a Doctor (Seraphic Doctor) of the church in 1588 AD.

Bonaventure was often challenged by the varying concepts concerning God and the soul, faith and reason, transcendence and immanence. He was influenced by Platonic, he argued that things which are changing and composed in themselves yet they cannot be the end of human knowledge rather need to subscribe to the unchangeable archetypal cause of all truth through which everything is intelligible. In his teaching he also expounded on the Trinitarian concept and related it to creation.
I wish to learn more about how he integrates reason of the mind to faith. In this book, the prologue says,

“In the beginning the First Principle, from whom all other [cunctae] illuminations descend as from the Father of lights, by whom is every best gift and every perfect gift, that is the Eternal Father, I do invoke through His Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, with the intercession of the Most Holy Virgin Mary, the same Mother [genetricis] of Our God and Lord Jesus Christ, and of blessed Francis, our leader and father, to grant that the eyes of our mind (be) illumined to direct our feet in the way of 

His peace, which exceeds [exuperat] every sense”

I hope that by reading it, summarizing it and reflecting on it, I will come a better understanding of the relationship between reason and faith (Spirituality). I hope it is going to be The Journey of the Mind Into God.  May God bless you.

Bonaventure’s Road to Divine Wisdom (23rd September)

St. Bonaventure acknowledges God the Eternal Father as the ‘First Principle’ from whom we receive ‘every best and perfect gift’. He recognized God as a light that illumines the eyes of the mind so that in return the feet can choose peace when directed in the way of peace proclaimed by Jesus Christ, the Only Son of God. Bonaventure admires the contemplation of ecstatic peace evident in Jesus Christ, the man of peace: who with those who hate peace, was a peace-maker. He must have been spiritually touched by Jesus’ response to those men who treated him brutally and violently but with patience and endurance he continued to be a peace maker in Jerusalem and the whole of Israel. He also witnessed Jesus’ peaceful character in the life of St. Francis, whose divine form of prayer and contemplative spirituality nurtured his life to love the crucified Christ, the custodian of Christian wisdom. He acknowledges that prayer through the crucified Christ with faith, devotion, admiration, piety, humility and charity illumines rays of light in our mind so that by divinely inspired grace - wisdom is granted to us. Lovers of divine wisdom can have a taste of God. This is because they are ready to let the eyes of their conscience (not to fall into the grave pit of shadows) but to be raised towards the rays of wisdom glittering from God’s reflection. His admiration for divine wisdom through prayer and contemplation is a good and proper approach for how faith illumines the understanding of fundamental theological truths.