Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
We're continuing our series on Franciscan spirituality today and its doctrinal foundations.
Today we'll talk about God as the supreme good or “summum bonum” in Latin.
St. Bonaventure, in his work, The Soul's Journey to God, distinguishes two modes to contemplate God.
He says the first is to consider God as I am who I am.
The second way is to contemplate him, to consider him as the supreme good.
It's on this notion of good with a capital G that Bonaventure interweaves, his whole plan of theology.
All of his theology is founded on this idea of God as the supreme good.
Just as all theologians, just like them, St. Bonaventure understands God as pure act, as supreme actuality, but he doesn't conceive God as a fullness which is immovable and static, like a cistern or a barrel full of water that just sits there and doesn't move.
He doesn't think of God like that.
That's more the philosopher Aristotle's understanding of God, the unmoved mover.
To use the water analogy, Bonaventure thinks of God more as a fountain of living water, which tends to overflow out of abundance.
That certainly is a more scriptural view of God.
Jesus speaks of God's life and his grace as a fountain of living water.
We read that in John chapter four.
So God is love, always an act, always dynamic and vital.
God is life which is eternally giving of himself as well.
For St. Bonaventure, God is one and three because he's the infinite good.
God in Himself is the lover and the father.
He's also the beloved and The Son, and he's the bond of their reciprocal love in the Holy Spirit.
He's all these things rolled up into one because he is the supreme good.
He must be exceedingly diffusive, says Bonaventure.
That means that God must pour himself out continually in a continual action of love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
In this way of understanding, God is the point of departure for seeing the incarnation in the right light, in the Franciscan light.
It should help us more easily to embrace the absolute primacy of Christ.
We'll explain that a little bit.
Blessed John Duns Scotus, along these lines, affirms that God is formally love, not only in His operations, but also in his being.
Scotus sees all of God's activity, his internal activity, plus what he does outside of himself.
He sees all of it developing in a dynamic of goodness.
And since love by nature communicates itself to someone else, to another, God communicates necessarily in himself, so in his Trinitarian life, and he communicates freely outside of himself.
So the activity of love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, called God's life, ad intra, is necessary.
God's love outside of himself in creation is free, not necessary.
That's called God's activity, ad extra, whatever happens outside of himself.
Franciscan Alexander of Hales, who was one of St. Bonaventure's teachers, would say that God's goodness is a double manifestation of goodness.
One is intrinsic according to power, the other is extrinsic according to number, says Alexander.
First manifestation of God's goodness is eternal, the second one is temporal.
It's what happens in time, in creation.
Creation and creatures are an irradiation of the infinite divine goodness.
So creation is a pure effect of the love of God.
We still have, amazingly, we still have Lady Liberty, the statue of our Lady Liberty in New York City Harbor.
It's actually presiding over New York City Harbor as we speak.
They haven't torn it down yet, surprisingly.
Well, it's love and liberty, too, that preside over God's creative act.
That's what presides over God's creation, love and liberty.
To create for God means simply to manifest his love externally, to externalize his love.
Some people may be very shy and very reserved about expressing their love.
Well, in creation, we can say God breaks out of his shyness.
You wanna look at it in a really dumbed-down way.
Creation is God's way of showing, of manifesting his love outside of himself.
God's goodness is seen in an infinite way inside the Trinity.
It's manifested in a finite way in creation.
In God's inner life, so life of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, it's the Son who welcomes the entire gift of love from the Father and who reciprocates this gift of love as well.
Outside of God's inner life, this is also how it works, too, but in a different proportion.
The creative love of God is comprehended, it's welcomed, and then it's fully reciprocated, but who can actually do that in creation?
Who can fully give God his love back?
The universe can't do it, the angels can't do it, we can't do it, certainly.
Not even Our Lady in the Immaculate Conception can welcome and fully reciprocate the whole gift of God.
God's love is fully welcomed and reciprocated in creation only in Christ Jesus, in the Word Incarnate.
We read in Matthew 12, 18, Behold my Son whom I have chosen, my Beloved with whom my soul is well pleased, quoting from Isaiah 42, verse one.
We can interpret that as God the Father talking about his incarnate Son, proud Father boasting of his boy.
And regarding all of this, Father Matthias Schaben, a 19th-century German Catholic theologian said this, he says, the two fundamental movements in the Trinitarian process, the communication of the divine nature and the infinite glorification of God, continue externally in the Incarnation.
So the Incarnation has in the Trinity its explanation and its source, and presents itself as the flower of a tree that has its origin in the Trinitarian process, says Father Schaben.
To put it simply, he's saying the Incarnation of Christ is willed by God for himself.
Sin or no sin, doesn't matter.
Sin or no sin, the Incarnation is willed by God simply for himself.
In fact, in the Trinity, the second person, the eternal Word, He loves and honors the Father as his origin.
The Father loves and honors the only begotten Son, communicating him, his being, his life.
These two eternal lovers honor each other with a reciprocal, mutual, most perfect love.
And again, in the mystery of the Incarnation, they continue to love one another and to honor one another.
The Father loves the Son, giving him absolute primacy, so first place in all creation, making him the firstborn of every creature.
We read that in Colossians 1.15.
Giving him every power in heaven and on earth.
We read that in Matthew 28.18.
And placing him in him alone, all of his delight.
We read that in Matthew 3.17.
It's the Father loving the Son in creation.
The Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ honors the Father, taking on a new birth and Sonship in the world.
First and foremost, he does this to love the Father with a supreme love, as the Father merits.
That's why he comes into the world.
First and foremost, to love the Father.
He honors the Father, placing himself in a state of inferiority through the humanity that he assumes, while at the same time, the Son remains equal to the Father by the divinity he holds onto.
And he does this with the goal of offering to the Father a perfect adoration on behalf of all creation.
Jesus also honors the Father by offering him the greatest sacrifice on Calvary too.
So the adorable heart of Jesus, substantially united to the Word, welcomes in its fullness the gift of God and reciprocates that gift with perfect love, with a love that God desires and deserves.
And it's on the nature of love, on the needs of love, and on the conception of God as love, upon all this rests the absolute predestination of Christ.
Predestination independent of any sin or of anything which is outside of God himself.
We know that's a lot to take in at 7 a.m. in the morning.
Probably can be a bit hard to understand if you haven't understood or taken theology before.
If you think about it, listen to it carefully, there are some things that will make sense.
Some things that will be helpful for our spiritual growth too.
So let's ask Our Lady for the gift of understanding and knowledge that we can understand God better, that we can understand God's plan better, and in that way we can love him better and more fully cooperate with him in our day-to-day lives.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
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Ave Maria.