Last week we celebrated the feast of St. Bonaventure, and noted that he was honored with the title "Doctor of the Church" in recognition of his achievements in dogmatic, mystical, exegetical and homiletic theology. What follows is a short sample of St. Bonaventure's famous treatise on mystical theology, "The Journey of the Mind to God." The excerpt is taken from the second to last chapter, entitled "Of The Reflection Of The Most Blessed Trinity In Its Name, Which Is Good:"
If then you can look with the mind's eye upon the purity of goodness, which is the pure actualization of the principle of Charity, pouring forth free and due love, and both mingled together, which is the fullest diffusion according to nature and will--the diffusion as Word, in which all things are expressed, and as Gift, in which all other gifts are given--you may see by the highest communicability of the Good that a Trinity of Father and Son and Holy Spirit is necessary. Because of the greatest goodness, it is necessary that there be in them the greatest communicability, and out of the greatest communicability the greatest consubstantiality, and from the greatest consubstantiality the greatest configurability, and from all these the greatest coequality; and therefore the greatest coeternity as well as, because of all the aforesaid, the greatest co-intimacy, by which one is in the other necessarily through the highest degree of mutual penetration and one operates with the other through the complete identity of substances and power and operation of the most Blessed Trinity itself.
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