Mike Paschall . com

One of the things I dig the most concerning the devotional material I’m in right now is the periodic introduction to canonized theologians with whom I’m not very familiar.  Bonaventure was an Italian scholar who lived a short 53 years in the 1200’s.  He was canonized by Pope Sixtus IV in 1482 and declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Sixtus V in 1588.  All of that happened long after he had passed to glory, so none of it ever got to his head.  He entered the ministry through the Franciscan ranks and rarely ventured very far from the simple values of the Order.

What caught my eye today was the opinion of the author that Bonaventure’s spirituality was mature (something I would hope we’re all trying to attain without becoming stuck in more religious ritual).  Rohr calls him a “contemplative charismatic”.  Bonaventure got the big picture by understanding that you can’t really separate your natural life from your spirituality.  The two are radically fused together.  He reasoned that the “traces” or “footprints” of God are everywhere.  The discipline of our mind given to devotion towards God, leads us to see the unification of these things:  (1) all of humanity is one big family; (2) hearing the hidden God is totally possible in a wide assortment of experiences; and (3) paying attention to His influence (that is evident everywhere) makes life exciting, an adventure, something worthy of being treasured every single day!

BUT, where this leads us is even better.  IF we are one big family, IF there is a voice to listen to (and there is), and IF His touch is on everything and everyone, it SHOULD result in a life of REAL GRATITUDE, PRACTICAL REVERENCE, and SIMPLE JOY.  Do you have any of that working inside of you right now?

So… work this deal backwards.  Are you really grateful about your life or are you so hung in your past disappointments that you bemoan a dark cloud everywhere you go?  Like Pigpen, do you bring a little emotional clutter of what went wrong instead of what is going right?  Can you bend the knee to what is mysteriously beyond you anyway; or do you have to have an answer to every question in your mind before you’ll settle in peace, knowing full well that there are no answers to some questions on this planet?  Do you see how blessed you are or do you live in your own handcrafted prison of “woe is me”?

How much more blessed do you have to be… in order to see how blessed you already are?

-MDP-