Customer Reviews

Bonaventure (Classics of Western Spirituality)

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This book comprises much of the great Saints works, and gives readers a glimpse at the different topics the Saint dealt with. I found the Tree Of Life section very deep and mystical, and explains how to have an intimate prayer relationship to God. Excellent overall book.

This book is a spiritual gold mine for all people seeking to see God in Jesus Christ as well as those from any and every background who seek the Truth.

St Bonaventure (1217 - 1274) is a doctor of the Catholic Church, lover of Christ, mystic and near contemporary of his spiritual father, St Francis of Assisi.

The book's first work, "The Soul's Journey into God", is an account of how to encounter God through creation, the soul, and reflecting on God's attributes of Perfect Being and Perfect Goodness. These encounters are treated in 6 steps leading us to the 7th and final step of the soul's spiritual rapture into the Holy Trinity.

Bonaventure cries out to us to leave behind all thoughts and desires and abandon our lives to Christ. Progressing through love, prayer and gazing on God we will see and know The Persons of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in this life and in the life to come.

The second work, "The Tree of Life", is a spiritual account of the central events of Jesus' Life: His Hidden Life, Ministry, Passion, Death, Resurrection, Ascencion and Glorification. It is a profoundly beautiful and poetic work. Bonaventure calls us to be crucified in Christ and to live anew in Him through sharing in His Virtues.

The final work, "The Life of St Francis", is a spiritual biography of the little poor man of Christ. St Francis encounters us and bids us leave all to follow and love Christ. Bonaventure shows us that we must, like St Francis, die in Christ and reproduce His Virtues in our own lives. It is a dynamic and powerful work.

This book will appeal to all people especially those pursuing the vision of God in Jesus Christ. It is a spiritual treasure for all. For Catholics, Bonaventure will provide great wisdom from the depths of the Church's Tradition regarding the soul's mystical marriage to Jesus Christ. It will be a great blessing for Orthodox Christians as Bonaventure, following St Dionysius and the Eastern Church Fathers, shows us how to ascend to God in spiritual darkness through the Vision of Divine Light. It will greatly bless Protestants as it is a profound account of God's Justifying and Sanctifying Grace.

Finally, it will powerfully speak to all Charismatics and Pentecostals who have experienced the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. St Bonaventure is a man filled with the Holy Spirit who has produced a practical guide of great wisdom on how to see, know and intimately love the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

All in all, a great spiritual treasure at a very affordable price. Highly Recommended for all people.

This book touched me deeply and led me to a greater understanding of God's grace through Jesus Christ. I found myself unable to put it down even when I was very tired! A true classic!

St Bonaventure was one of the greatest mystics of the medieval period. This edition includes his classic work 'The Journey of the Soul into God', the 'Tree of Life', and 'the Life of St Francis.'

Bonaventure was a Franciscan mystic and theologian. He had a very positive view of the material cosmos and the figure of the cosmic christ occurs strongly through his mysticism. For Bonaventure, there are two ways we know God; the book of nature, and the book of scriptures. Through these two paths and then by looking inwards into ourselves at our image created by God, we encounter God's prescence at the heart of our very being, a journey which is deeply Augustinian in its origins.

The Tree of Life is an examination of the logos of Christ, in both his passion and his cosmic role. The Life of St Francis is a work of hagiography on that great saint who was the founder of Bonaventure's order.

Bonaventure is very much an aesthetic theologian. He is deeply appreciative of the beauty of the world, of Christ, and of God. He sees the world and ourselves as 'God's work of art', to be cherished and loved for what they are, God's good creations. Such a positive view should be welcomed by any Christian spirituality today, when our world is faced with environmental problems of considerable magnitude.

"Bonaventure" provides a brief biography of its subject, the Franciscan scholar and Minister General, followed by three of his most important works. The works included are "The Soul's Journey Into God", "The Tree of Life" and "The Life of St. Francis." The first two invite the reader to meditate on the mysteries of God and to be drawn more deeply into them. The Life is a cross between a biography and a Gospel. It contains many factual details but also conveys the deep spirituality of St. Francis.

The parts of this book which I enjoyed the most were the biographical information of St. Bonaventure and "The Life of St. Francis". I think that the editors did an excellent job of relating the spirituality of Francis to the work of Bonaventure. Based on my reading of this book I believe that Bonaventure saw himself largely as an interpreter of St. Francis' spirituality to the world. For that alone it is worth reading.

FOr anyone trying to rediscover their faith, read this book! A true trilogy of Grace.

In surveying Christian mystics through the medieval period, Bonaventure's The Soul's Journey into God reappropriates a radical spirituality that is best articulated as wisdom theology.

This investigation of Bonaventure's spirituality demonstrates Bonaventure's meaning of God, the human person, and how the God-human relationship is integrated with themes of creation theology and Trinitarian love mysticism.

From these understandings, it becomes clear how Bonaventure empowers personal spirituality through what can be experienced as a power of radical contradictions - a recurring theme in Bonaventure's theology that communicates the authentic paradox, the parabolic experience, and the radical irony that inspires faith.

Great spiritual reading for anyone interested in Western mysticism. Noy only do you get meditations to make your mind soar on the mystery of Christ in the "Tree of Life", but you also get a "skeleton" of the mystical life in the "Soul's Journey into God". I only wish I had more background into the mystics, but for anyone with a background in the gospels, be they Protestant or Catholic, this book will be highly informative. I have yet to read the third part of the book, which is a biography of St. Francis. Needless to say I was pleased. Along with the forward by a Franciscan scholar, you get three classical works in one.For someone really intersted in a life of prayer, meditative and contemplative, this is a must-have.

St. Bonaventure was a crucial successor to St. Francis because his emphasis on academic learning transformed the Franciscan Order. While St. Francis was an unlettered man of undoubtable sanctity and sweetness, St. Bonaventure was an erudite professor at the University of Paris and Roman Catholic cardinal. "Within the Franciscan Order, Bonaventure is considered its second founder" (p. 7, Introduction). This volume's collection of Bonaventure's writing telegraphically conveys the spirit and seminal history of the Franciscan Order.

Along with an informative Introduction, three of St. Bonaventure's works are presented: 1. The Soul's Journey to God, 2. The Tree of Life, and 3. The Life of St. Francis.

1. "The movement of creatures out from God and their return to God is the central focus of Bonaventure's entire vision" (p. 26, Introduction). One could say the same of Dante's Divine Comedy and indeed the entire Neoplatonic corpus. And indeed the Neoplatonic influence is heavily present in this first work, The Soul's Journey to God. (As of course is the Aristotelian influence.) The Soul's Journey to God reminds me of the comment by Manly P. Hall that, if you take an early Christian work and remove all references to Jesus, Mary, and the Holy Trinity, it would be almost impossible to distinguish between it and a Neoplatonic work. In sum, The Soul's Journey to God reads like Christianized Neoplatonism of the Middle Ages. For that reason it is the least impressive of the three works.

2. The Tree of Life is a homiletic retelling of the Gospel narrative of Jesus' birth, ministry, death, and resurrection. Being a Franciscan retelling, there is strong emphasis on the humility of Christ and his "wealth in poverty".

3. The Life of St. Francis is, to me, the most uplifting and interesting of the three works. The narrative is so packed with St. Francis's miracles (eg, his changing water to wine, a few strands of his hair preventing a wall from collapsing, his levitation during prayer, etc) that it veers toward light-heartedness. I am not saying these miracles did or did not happen: I am saying the nature and varieties of St. Francis's miracles are simply incredible. As a young man, Francis experienced what Joseph Campbell termed "the classic shamanic experience" of a serious illness preceding a life-changing epiphany: the voice of Jesus spoke to the young Francis from a wooden cross in a church; later, Francis had a compellingly real vision of Jesus crucified; and of course the climactic vision in St. Francis's life was the six-winged seraph, which vision shortly preceded his receiving the stigmata.

What shines forth in the Life of St. Francis is the vision of a humble life of SERVICE TO OTHERS lived without regard for material things - a stunning liberation of the spirit (that is required of all Franciscans, none of whom are permitted to own property). "No one should be praised whose end is still uncertain" (p. 236), said St. Francis. Francis's end IS certain. He is worthy of great praise as a true ascetic with a heart of gold. How can you not love a man who would pay to ransom lambs from the slaughter and who literally would give you all he had *and* the shirt off his back?

St. Francis emphasized the immanence of God throughout His Creation, in a way very evocative of Eastern spirituality. Walt Whitman could easily have acquired his strong joyous sense of God's immanence from St. Francis rather than from Hinduism and Buddhism. The spiritual parallels between the West and East are striking, but then authentic spirituality always presents parallels.

By the bye, this book makes an excellent addition to a reading of Umberto Eco's fun novel The Name of the Rose (Everyman's Library (Cloth)).

Bonaventure is a spiritually uplifting and historically interesting work - very recommended.