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“We believe in one God the Father Almighty”

15 March 2025

The CHC blog

"We believe in one God the Father Almighty, maker of all things..."
Commemorating the 1,700th anniversary of Nicea

By Stefan Kaminski

This is the opening statement of the symbol of the Church’s first Ecumenical Council, convened in Nicea in 325 A.D. by Emperor Constantine, in concert with Pope Sylvester I. For the last 1,700 years, Christians have repeated these words to signify their participation in the ecclesial communion as believing members.

Perhaps no statement in the Creed is more fundamental than this one, at the level of establishing the horizon and backdrop of our thinking and imagination. This foundational belief sets the intellectual scene for the way we perceive reality: the world around us, other people and ourselves.

Commentators such as Mgr James Shea, President of the University of Mary in the US, rightly interrogate the basic intellectual framework that underpins contemporary Western society. Mgr Shea contends that we are essentially back in an “Apostolic era”, rather than a Christian one, as society’s collective imagination does not any longer operate on the foundations of a Creator and Redeemer God. Christianity today, he suggests, is facing a challenge not dissimilar to that of the early Church. Our belief in “one God, the Almighty Father” is in many ways no less counter-cultural in a secular, pluralistic society than it was in the pagan, pantheistic one of Rome.

The only difference is that today, theoretically, Christianity is a public point of reference and a large proportion of the population express some sort of belief in God, with a significant minority still professing a Christian belief. However, practically-speaking, religious faith is often seen as a private matter of subjective belief which has no place for expression in public life.

The opening of the Nicene Symbol is a powerful reminder that the very opposite is true. At the heart of Nicea’s first statement is the all-encompassing and creative power of the Father. This power is not to be understood in the common sense of ‘power over something’ or ‘power to do something specific’; rather, it is absolute power, within which all existence resides.

The radicality of this is easy to miss. To “create”, as spoken of in Genesis 1 and intended by the Nicene Creed, is “to call into being from non-being, from nothingness” (St John Paul II). God’s creation consists of willing everything that exists outside of Him, to be. It is this that the Church intends by “omnipotent” or “almighty”.

The rest of our Christian vision cascades from this starting point. If God is the only Being that is (“I am who I am”, Exodus 3:14), then everything that is created receives its being from God – or better still, receives being from God. Put differently, if the act of being belongs only to God, then all things and creatures are and continue to be by virtue of God’s will: “For he spoke, and it came to be” (Ps 33:9).

This has a profound consequence for our understanding of things in themselves. God, Who is Good, only creates and wills what is good. Thus, all things are good in their existence and in the way that they are intended by God. Nothing that exists can be said to be evil or wrong in the fact of its being and its being intended by God in a particular way. It is only when we redirect the purpose of something, starting with ourselves (Satan being the example par excellence), thereby detracting from God’s intention, that evil enters the equation.

It is thus that we can perhaps make sense of Jesus’ words, “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Christ Himself is the Incarnation of this perfection, and the fact that God the Son gave Divine perfection human form tells us how high an intention and end God has for us.

Detail from the Sistine Chapel ceiling, by Michelangelo
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“For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also”

5 March 2025

The CHC blog

"For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also":
Ash Wednesday and the CHC

By Stefan Kaminski

Before the CHC was invented and its motto (the above words of Jesus as reported by Matthew) adopted by its Board of Trustees in 2012, these words closed the Roman Church’s Gospel reading for Ash Wednesday for a good 800 years, if not more.

On the strength of the long association of this saying with Ash Wednesday, it could be said that the start of Lent therefore also serves as the CHC’s “spiritual feast day”. I suspect this will not suffice to claim an exemption from fasting and abstinence for its incumbent Director.

However, the words do merit a brief reflection on this particular and very important day in the Church’s liturgical cycle. Even if this verse is no longer to be found in today’s Gospel reading, as per the present lectionary, the current Gospel reading has retained many of the same verses, but shifted forward to a little earlier in the chapter, so dropping verse 21. The essence of this verse therefore very much retains its thematic consistency with Ash Wednesday’s Gospel.

In a literal sense, the choice of these words could be seen as ironic for a charity whose first objective was the preservation of material goods. As I am sure is obvious to our readers, this would be to miss the point of the relics and religious artefacts that form the core of the Stonyhurst Collections.

The Sermon on the Mount, by Carl Bloch, 1877

Whether it be part of the bodily remains of a saint or an object directly associated with that saint, relics are venerated as the incarnate memorial of those persons who are now living with Christ, and whose same bodies served as a “temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 6:19) on this earth. It is only by virtue of this sanctity, that one may hope for further graces to be channelled through the physical memorial of these saintly people who stand before the face of God.

Thus, properly-speaking, relics have no value for this world whatsoever. As an object, in terms of both what they represent (the saint) and what they mediate (grace), their orientation is heaven and their raison d’être is our own arrival therein.

The logic of this motto for our charity is therefore hopefully obvious: “treasuring” a relic for its ability to nurture the growth of our soul before God signals a heart that is focussed on heaven; whereas “treasuring” a relic for its earthly (i.e. monetary or historical) value signals the orientation of the heart to this earthly life.

Man of Sorrows, by William Dyce, c.1860

What Christ has to offer in Matthew’s chapter 6, as part of the Sermon on the Mount, is precisely wisdom for orienting our lives towards heaven. And rather neatly, our CHC motto is immediately preceded by Jesus’ words on the three Lenten disciplines: prayer (verses 5-15), fasting (verses 16-18), and almsgiving (verses 1-4). All the more does this seem to justify claiming Ash Wednesday as our spiritual feast day!

The Lenten season is one of “putting to death whatever is worldly in us” (Col 3:5): it is a period of purgation, purification and preparation (a catchy summary for your children or students!). The two great historical references in the Old and New Testaments both involve long periods in the desert, a place where there is little bodily comfort and where one’s existence before God is given a raw reality. Prayer, fasting and almsgiving are essentially about this exercising of our spiritual ‘muscles’ and the trimming down of our reliance on material wellbeing. They are about working towards heaven, rather than working for the world.

Each of these three disciplines, moreover, has a particular role in further disposing us to the three theological virtues. Prayer, which we examined extensively in last year’s blog and podcast series, should aid our faith, increasing our closeness to God and our sense of reliance on Him. Fasting should teach us to materially place our hope in the spiritual, rather than the material, realm, by denying to some extent what we desire through our body. Almsgiving builds us up in charity, as we give of what we have for the good of others: a small, practical expression of the highest form of love, which is the greatest of the virtues.

The start of Lent is a time not just for fixing on specific resolutions, but on meditating more broadly on the orientation of our heart, and to enact practices that will express a heavenly resolution.

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Pope Francis

10 December 2024

The CHC blog

Pope Francis | The Year of Prayer

By Joey Belleza, PhD (Cantab.)
We end our series of reflections on the Year of Prayer where it began—with Pope Francis. We hope that these reflections have been helpful to you, your friends, and your family. The Holy Father convoked this Year of Prayer so that we might more readily enter the joyous festivity of the Jubilee Year 2025 with renewed vigour in our Christian faith, and we hope that our brief look at prayer through the eyes of the saints and the liturgy might help our listeners prepare for the great Jubilee. To close this Year of Prayer, then, perhaps let us allow Pope Francis to speak to us. Prayer is important for all the reasons we have covered this year, but perhaps an underrated reason for prayer is that Christ himself—God made flesh—also prayed! In the Gospels, the Pope tells us,
we learn that Jesus not only wants us to pray as he prays, but assures us that, even if our attempts at prayer are completely vain and ineffective, we can always count on his prayer. We must be aware of this: Jesus prays for me. Once, a good bishop told me that in a very bad moment in his life, a great trial, a moment of darkness, he looked up in the Basilica and saw this phrase written: “I, Peter, will pray for you”. And this gave him strength and comfort. And this happens every time that each of us knows that Jesus prays for him or for her. Jesus prays for us. In this moment, in this very moment. Do this memory exercise, repeat this. When there is a difficulty, when you feel the orbital pull of distractions: Jesus is praying for me. But, father, is this true? It is true! He said it himself. Let us not forget that what sustains each of us in life is Jesus’ prayer for every one of us, with our first and last name, before the Father, showing him the wounds that are the price of our salvation.
May our prayers become one with Christ’s prayer that we might be one with him.
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Pope Benedict XVI

26 November 2024

The CHC blog

Pope Benedict XVI | The Year of Prayer

By Joey Belleza, PhD (Cantab.)

In a ten-part series of Wednesday catecheses beginning 4 May 2011, Pope Benedict XVI—with his characteristic intellectual depth and historical rigour—explained how prayer is common to every civilization; and then, passing through the entire span of salvation history, traced the growth of human beings in prayer from the Pentateuch unto consummation in Christ. These reflections, available on the Holy See website, constitute a most edifying distillation of Pope Benedict’s deeply biblical spirituality, reminding us that our own prayer should make recourse to sacred scripture as an ever-renewing source of inspiration.

However, in this brief reflection, let us focus on the humble simplicity which lay at the heart of Pope Benedict’s intellectual erudition. As one of the greatest theological minds ever to succeed Saint Peter, Benedict enjoyed a stellar university career and continued to publish important works as a cardinal and as pope. From completing his doctorate summa cum laude at the age of twenty-six despite the interruption of the Second World War, to writing his brilliant Jesus of Nazareth trilogy near the end of his life, Pope Benedict’s faith was marked by a loving and untiring quest for the truth made known in the person of Jesus Christ.

After taking the dramatic decision to resign the papacy, Pope Benedict humbly and dutifully made way for a successor while continuing to support the Church silently through his prayer. The frailty of old age took his mobility, his ability to write, and even his voice, but in his last months he remained steadfast with total trust in the Lord. What a wonderful paradox it is to know that, after nearly nine decades of life, thousands of pages written, hundreds of speeches and sermons delivered, that Pope Benedict’s final utterance was a simple, three-word prayer as though from the heart of a child: “Gesù, ti amo”—“Jesus, I love you.”

As Saint Paul wrote to Corinth, “If I speak with the tongues of men or of angels but have not love, then I am nothing but a clashing gong or a clanging cymbal.” This passage—which Joseph Ratzinger himself quoted in a famous homily to the cardinals on the eve of his election—seems to have been taken to heart by this pope himself. All his theological erudition and eloquence was rooted in an abiding love for Christ the Lord. His second encyclical, Caritas in Veritate is likewise a testimony to the inseparability of truth and love. Even if we cannot speak in the tongues of angels, or even with the eloquence of a younger Pope Benedict, let us also remain steadfast in the Lord, such that when our voices fail at the door of death, we still might say loudly in our hearts, “Jesus, I love you!”

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Pope John Paul II

12 November 2024

The CHC blog

Saint John Paul II | The Year of Prayer

By Joey Belleza, PhD (Cantab.)

Saint John Paul II’s monumental twenty-six year pontificate is full of eloquent moments, quotations, and actions whose inexhaustible depth cannot be summarized in these few words. And despite carrying the immense responsibility of shepherding a truly global Church, with so many causes for both rejoicing and sorrowing, John Paul always made time—even incredible amounts of time—for his own personal prayer. Those close to him recalled how he would spend up to six hours at a time in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, while his own devotion to Mary ensured a prominent place for the Rosary in his daily schedule. “In prayer,” the Pope said, “you become one with the source of our true light – Jesus Himself.” And as he liked to often say, we come to Jesus only through his Mother—ad Iesum per Mariam.

The Rosary is my favorite prayer.  A marvelous prayer!  Marvelous in its simplicity and its depth.  In the prayer we repeat many times the words that the Virgin Mary heard from the Archangel, and from her kinswoman Elizabeth… To pray the Rosary is to hand over our burdens to the merciful hearts of Christ and His mother.

Like St Therese and Mother Teresa before him, John Paul found comfort in the words passed on to us through the tradition of the Church. At times when our own eloquence and expressiveness might fail, one can never do wrong by leaning on the prayers we have learned from those who passed on the faith. In doing so, we imitate Mary’s surrender, saying with the Church her fiat mihi—be it done to me—allowing the gifts of these timeless prayers to renew our souls.

Closeness to the Eucharistic Christ in silence and contemplation does not distance us from our contemporaries but, on the contrary, makes us open to human joy and distress, broadening our hearts on a global scale. Through adoration the Christian mysteriously contributes to the radical transformation of the world and to the sowing of the gospel. Anyone who prays to the Eucharistic Saviour draws the whole world with him and raises it to God.

May we follow the example of Saint John Paul II by attentively praying the Rosary and visiting Christ often in the Blessed Sacrament, confident that we will be drawn up through Mary’s embrace into the heart of her Son.

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Venerable Francis-Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan

29 October 2024

The CHC blog

Ven. Francis-Xavier Van Thuan | The Year of Prayer

By Joey Belleza, PhD (Cantab.)

Francis-Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan’s story is one of remarkable perseverance under severe anti-Christian repression. Ordained a bishop in 1967, he was arrested after the fall of Saigon in 1975, being imprisoned in a Communist re-education camp for thirteen years, nine of which were spent in solitary confinement. He never reached the post appointed to him by Pope Paul VI—the important Diocese of Saigon—and upon his release in 1988, he remained under house arrest in Hanoi. In 1991, he was allowed to visit Rome, but never to return to Vietnam. Bishop Van Thuan served Pope John Paul II in various capacities in the Roman Curia before being named a cardinal in February 2001. He died in Rome of cancer on 16 September 2002, and declared Venerable by Pope Francis in May 2017.

One who has undergone harsh imprisonment, torture, and solitary confinement for over a decade, as did Cardinal Van Thuan, would be well tempted to lose faith. And yet, he remained steadfast to God, adopting “ten rules of life” which fostered his perseverance even in the most difficult of times. We cannot hear review all ten rules, but in the context of the Year of Prayer, the Cardinal’s third rule is especially fitting: “I will hold firmly to one secret: prayer.” Yet what exactly did he pray? The Cardinal tells us:

I prayed with the word of God, the Psalms. I said the prayers I had recited in the family chapel every evening when I was a child. The liturgical songs came back to me. I often sang the Veni Creator, the hymns of the martyrs, the Sanctorum Meritis, the Credo… To truly appreciate those beautiful prayers, it is necessary to have experienced the darkness of incarceration, conscious of the fact that your suffering is offered for faithfulness to the Church.

Cardinal Van Thuan drew strength from his memories of the liturgy, singing the Psalms, the Creed, and even some of the great medieval Latin hymns whose use, unfortunately, has been eclipsed in most of the Church. His recourse to the great ninth century hymn Sanctorum Meritis places him in the company of another great saint who endured an unjust imprisonment—Thomas Aquinas—who used Sanctorum Meritis as an inspiration for one of his own Eucharistic hymns, Sacris Solemniis.

Cardinal Van Thuan is perhaps most famous for finding ways to celebrate Mass in prison (when not in solitary confinement). With the aid of other Catholic faithful outside the prison, as well as through the sympathy of his guards (some of whom later converted), he acquired small quantities of bread and wine. In his words:

I wrote home saying ‘Send me some wine as medication for stomach pains’. On the outside, the faithful understood what I meant. They sent me a little bottle of Mass wine, with a label reading ‘medication for stomach pains,’ as well as some hosts broken into small pieces. The police asked me: ‘Do you have pains in your stomach?’ ‘Yes’ ‘Here is some medicine for you!’ I will never be able to express the joy that was mine: each day, three drops of wine, a drop of water in the palm of my hand. I celebrated my Mass… At nine-thirty every evening at lights out everyone had to be lying down. I bent over my wooden board and celebrated Mass, by heart of course, and distributed Communion to my neighbours under their mosquito nets.

Not only did the cardinal draw strength from the prayers of the liturgy—he continued to draw strength from the source of the liturgy—Christ himself. If we are at times tempted to discard the rote prayers given to us by the Church, as if they would be less meaningful than something new or spontaneous, let us follow the example of Cardinal Van Thuan, who, in the most dire circumstances, found the in stable prayers of the Church a link to the unshakeable faith of the confessors and martyrs. With him, may the Church sing the words of that venerable hymn:

Sing, O Sons of the Church sounding the Martyrs’ praise!
God’s true soldiers applaud, who, in their weary days,
Won bright trophies of good, glad be the voice ye raise,
While these heroes of Christ ye sing!

Sanctorum meritis inclyta gaudia
pangamus socii, gestaque fortia:
gliscens fert animus promere cantibus
victorum genus optimum.

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Maria Goretti

15 October 2024

The CHC blog

Saint Maria Goretti | The Year of Prayer

By Joey Belleza, PhD (Cantab.)

Prayer is ordered not only to our own personal good, but for the good of our neighbours. For this reason, the central part of Mass has the people ask that the sacrifice might be made acceptable to God “for our good and the good of all his holy Church.” The graces which flow from the Mass can extend to all people, and are meant to bring everyone, from the holiest saint to the most unrepentant sinner, into communion with God. The story of Saint Maria Goretti is a most remarkable example of how the effects of prayer can extend to even one who, in one moment in life, might have been seen as an enemy of Christ and his Gospel.

The third of seven children, Maria was devoutly dedicated to the Lord, living with her family in impoverished conditions. When she was nine, her father died, forcing the family to live in a shared house with the Serenelli family. On 5 July 1902, one of the Serenelli sons, the troubled nineteen year old Alessandro, took a lustful liking to the young Maria. In a moment when they were alone at the house, Alessandro threatened to stab Maria if she did not submit to his advances. She refused, warning Alessandro of his mortal sin. Still, the young man persisted, attempting to force himself on her, choking her as she resisted with all her might. Finally, in a fit of rage, Alessandro stabbed Maria fourteen times. Maria, gravely wounded, reached for the door, but Alessandro stabbed her three more times.

Maria was rushed to the hospital and Alessandro was arrested. She survived incredibly for a day, with the surgeons amazed that she had not succumbed to so many wounds to her heart and lungs. However, her resistance was only temporary. She breathed her last on 6 July, but not before pronouncing, “I forgive Alessandro Serenelli, and I want him with me in heaven forever.”

Instead of a life sentence, the court imposed a thirty year sentence, acknowledging Alessandro’s harsh upbringing and consequent mental illness. He was unrepentant for three years, until a bishop visited him. After this visit, he wrote to the bishop, saying how Maria appeared to him in a dream, in which she gave him white lilies which burned in his hand. From that day, Alessandro repented of the murder. He was released after twenty-seven years, whereupon he immediately sought out Maria’s mother and begged her forgiveness. She responded, “If my daughter can forgive him, who am I to withhold forgiveness?”

In 1947, Pius XII beatified Maria, and after a rapid canonization process, raised her to the altars in 1950. Her canonization Mass is remarkable in that not only the parents of the martyr were present, but also her murderer. Alessandro Serenelli, now a lay brother of the Capuchin Franciscans, joined the throng of Christian faithful praising God for the gift of Maria’s example.

Christ taught us to love our enemies, and Maria Goretti followed this commandment perfectly. May we also pray for those who wrong us, that they too might return to the loving embrace of God.

St Pio of Pietrelcina
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Padre Pio

01 October 2024

The CHC blog

Saint Pio of Pietrelcina | The Year of Prayer

By Joey Belleza, PhD (Cantab.)

Saint Pio of Pietrelcina is one of the great prophetic voices of the twentieth century, with great insight into the spiritual problems of the individuals who came to him for advice, as well those of the world at large. He once lamented that “today’s society does not pray. That is why it is falling apart.” Living in an age marked by the most destructive wars in human history and the great crises of secularization that followed, Pio was astutely aware that a world alienated from God was caused by a deep spiritual malaise among peoples, which allowed the forces of evil to take root in modern societies. But he also identified a solution to the problem, a solution that must be taken to heart by individuals who might heroically lead society back to the embrace of the merciful Saviour: “Prayer is the best weapon we possess, the key that opens the heart of God.” In classic Capuchin Franciscan fashion, he encourages us to unite our spiritual turmoil to the sufferings of Christ crucified.

 

Pray that God will console you when you feel the burden of the Cross, for in doing so you are in no way acting against the will of God, but you are placing yourself beside the Son of God who asked His Father during the Agony in the Garden to send Him some relief. But if He is not willing to give it be ready to pronounce the same ‘Fiat,’ ‘So be it,’ that Jesus did.

 

Of course, conformity to Christ’s sufferings on Calvary is granted most perfectly through the celebration of the Eucharist, and unsurprisingly, the Mass holds a central place in Padre Pio’s prayer life. “It would be easier for the world to exist,” he says, “without the sun than without the Holy Mass.” He was also an ardent advocate of Eucharistic adoration, saying that “one thousand years of enjoying human glory is not worth even an hour spent sweetly communing with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.” Therefore, he exhorts us:

 

Kneel down and render the tribute of your presence and devotion to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. Confide all your needs to him, along with those of others. Speak to him with filial abandonment, give free rein to your heart, and give him complete freedom to work in you as he thinks best.

May we visit Christ in the Blessed Sacrament often as Padre Pio did, uniting ourselves with the Passion of Christ, that we too might share the glory of the Resurrection.

St Therese of Lisieux
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Therese of Lisieux

18 September 2024

The CHC blog

Saint Therese of Lisieux | The Year of Prayer

By Joey Belleza, PhD (Cantab.)

Maintaining a consistent prayer life is often difficult, requiring the discipline that Saint Teresa of Avila mentions throughout her autobiography. The ascent to true union with God, as Teresa and Bonaventure have shown us, is often plagued by the distractions of daily life, to the point that we might even fall out of the habit of prayer. Starting again from zero, as it were further hinders our growth in virtue, and the task of entering into that discipline again can be discouraging. One saint who understood this struggle well was a latter day French disciple of Saint Teresa—Saint Therese of Lisieux, also known as Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, or simply “the Little Flower.”

Saint Therese of Lisieux is rare among the Doctors of the Church, in that she died very young (at the age of 24) and that she therefore did not enjoy the elite formal education of the others. And yet, by numbering her among the Doctors, the Church extols her example of simple faith and simple wisdom as having a spiritual and intellectual value comparable to that of other great teachers like Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Teresa.

“Sometimes when I am in such a state of spiritual dryness that not a single good thought occurs to me,” Therese write, “I say very slowly the ‘Our Father,’ or the ‘Hail Mary,’ and these prayers suffice to take me out of myself.”

“I take refuge, then, in prayer, and turn to Mary, and our Lord always triumphs.”

This is the essence of her “Little Way,” that is, her simple way of uniting herself daily to Christ though humble acts of prayer and devotion. And while the breadth and complexity of the liturgy is proposed to us by the Church as a maximal and most secure means of receiving the graces of Christ, the extra-liturgical modes of conformity to Christ are also necessary for the life of faith.

“For me, prayer is a burst from my heart, it is a simple glance thrown toward heaven, a cry of thanksgiving and love in times of trial as well as in times of joy… Frequently, only silence can express my prayer.” Even the silence of our hearts can express our longing for God, our utter dependence on him. Thus, with many modes of prayer at our disposal, she exhorts us: “Let us not grow tired of prayer: confidence works miracles.”

Saint Therese, in her simplicity, has rightly taken her place among the great Doctors of the Church. And yet, as Thomas and Bonaventure stood on the shoulders of Aristotle, Saint Therese stood on the example of Archimedes when she said: “Our fulcrum is God; our lever, prayer; prayer which burns with love. With that we can lift the world!” Let us take heart from the humble example of Saint Therese, who faced moments of spiritual dryness not with despair, but with humble recourse to the prayers which Christ and his Church have given us.

St Bonaventure, Part 4
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Saint Bonaventure, part 4

03 September 2024

The CHC blog

Saint Bonaventure, Part 4 | The Year of Prayer

By Joey Belleza, PhD (Cantab.)

We come to our final pair of stages in Bonaventure’s Itinerarium. The first pair of stages considered God as present in created things outside of us (extra nos), and the second pair considered God as imaged within us (intra nos). The last pair of stages considers God as supra nos—above us. The reflections here become even more speculative and theological, while also recognizing the limits of human language in describing God.

Instead of summarizing these stages sequentially, it may be helpful to describe them together. This pair considers God according to his two most proper names: Being (esse) and Goodness (bonum). Bonaventure represents these two names as the two cherubim facing each other atop the Ark of the Covenant. In the Old Testament, the space of the two cherubim was also known as the “mercy seat,” over which the presence of God hovered within the tabernacle. Just as the cherubim were close to yet beneath God, so do the names Being and Goodness represent the closest and most general human descriptions possible for God’s essence. Scripture and tradition use all sorts of metaphors for God; for example, God is described as a rock, a fortress, a warrior, and a king in various parts of the Bible. However, all metaphors limp and eventually fail. When we contemplate God as Being itself (what Thomas Aquinas described as ipsum esse) or as Goodness itself, we are using the most perfect names we have for God which are not subject to limitation and change. That the two cherubim face each other is taken by Bonaventure to mean that these most perfect names of Being and Goodness are meant to be contemplated together in preparation for the final ascent to God.

At the end of the sixth stage, one has ascended as far as possible by a maximum of human effort. However, all these stages remain preparatory in light of true union with God, which cannot be achieved by human effort alone but only received. After six chapters describing six stages of ascent, Bonaventure concludes the Itinerarium with a paradoxical seventh chapter describing the perfect and final ascent which was granted to Saint Francis when he received the stigmata. This involves a recognition that God is beyond anything that human words can adequately describe. It requires humility and self-denial to the point of becoming like Christ—and in the case of Francis, this was manifested in his own wounded body. Bonaventure makes the radical claim that, in this final passing over into God, “we must cease all intellectual operations, leaving behind all created images and earthly cares and desires.” Even contemplating God as Being and Goodness must also be left behind, if we are to truly rise beyond the cherubim and behold the seraphim, as did Francis. Let us close our series on Bonaventure by quoting the end of the Itinerarium’s seventh chapter, where Bonaventure explains what full conformity to Christ entails.

But if you ask how these things should come to pass, seek grace, not doctrine; desire, not understanding; the groaning of prayer, not the study of lectures; the bridegroom, not the university master; God, not man; the dark cloud [caliginem], not clarity; not light, but a fire totally enflamed and transferred into God with excessive anointings and most ardent affections. This fire is God, and this path is in Jerusalem, and Christ ignites it in the fervour of his most ardent passion, and he who truly perceives it, says: “My soul chooses hanging and my bones choose death” (Job 7:15). Whosoever loves this death can see God, for it is doubtlessly true: “No man shall see me and live” (Ex 33:20). Let us die [moriamur], therefore, and enter into the dark cloud; let us impose silence on our cares, desires, and phantasms; let us pass over [transeamus] with Christ crucified from this world to the Father, so that, with the Father shown to us, we might say with Phillip: “It is enough for us” (Jn 14:8); let us hear with Paul: “My grace is enough for you” (2 Cor 12:19); let us rejoice with David, saying: “My flesh and my heart fail, O God of my heart, and you O God are my portion always (Psalm 73:26). Blessed be the Lord forever, and let all the people say: let it be, let it be. (Ps 106:48)” Amen.

Saint Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, pray for us.

St Bonaventure, Part 3
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St Therese of Lisieux