Monday, July 15, 2013

Saint Bonaventure: "My soul yearns for you in the night"

" ... yes, my spirit within me keeps vigil for you."
--Is 26:7-9, 12, 16-19

Scripture and Tradition never cease to teach and celebrate this fundamental truth: "The world was made for the glory of God." St. Bonaventure explains that God created all things "not to increase his glory, but to show it forth and to communicate it", for God has no other reason for creating than his love and goodness: "Creatures came into existence when the key of love opened his hand." The First Vatican Council explains:

This one, true God, of his own goodness and "almighty power", not for increasing his own beatitude, nor for attaining his perfection, but in order to manifest this perfection through the benefits which he bestows on creatures, with absolute freedom of counsel "and from the beginning of time, made out of nothing both orders of creatures, the spiritual and the corporeal. . ."
-- CCC 293
Art: Vittore Crivelli, Saint Bonaventure

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