Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
In this new calendar year, we're going to continue our series on Franciscan spirituality.
Probably not a widely popular, wildly popular series of reflections, but I think it does help some people, especially those who listen online.
Today we'll continue to look at man, and more specifically at the power of our will, so the ability to choose that we have.
Last time, a couple weeks ago, we spoke about our understanding.
Today we'll speak about our will.
God who is the final object and goal of our intelligence is also the goal of our will as well.
Saint Bonaventure, with his theory of illumination, places the energies of the mind and those of the will in one accord.
He teaches that just as the mind receives a certain intellectual illumination from God, so too our will receives what Bonaventure calls a moral illumination, or a warmth, or a spiritual weight, which inclines it to what's good, essentially which inclines it to God, the supreme good.
Saint Bonaventure writes, just as the intellect needs light to judge, so too the affections need a certain warmth and spiritual weight to love correctly.
This moral illumination of the will enables it to direct itself to God in what it chooses and in what it gives itself to, and constitutes it as the rational faculty that tends to the good.
This inclination, which orients or directs us constantly towards the good, makes us aware of the hierarchy of goods, from the lowest to the highest, and it helps us to see the fallenness and the instability of created goods, created things.
It makes us unsatisfied with all the limited goods that we come across in this life, and so it disposes us to be open to the truth that above all these things to which we give our affections, above all these passing things in life, we need to find our security in the unchanging love of God, essentially.
The Franciscan Father Ephraim Batoni says that through these illuminations, the illumination of the mind and of the will, God places inside of us an appeal and an indestructible need by which the intellect and the will turn to Him as to their perfection, really as to their only reason for living.
So through these illuminations, man, says Father Batoni, is naturally prepared to know and love all things in God, meaning to know and love them as images and reflections of the Divine Essence itself.
All the dynamic reality in us consists in an irrepressible need to give freely oneself.
In our free will, which is the result of our reason and our will, the whole person is synthesized.
We're created to be a self-gift to God, which corresponds to how God gives Himself to us, actually.
The will which was made so that we could freely choose God and give ourselves to Him, even though our will is weakened by sin, still all of our actions yearn for what's infinite and wait for the infinite to reach back and give Himself to us as well.
Reciprocal donations of God to man and man to God have different levels and different intensities of realization.
The apex, the perfect and total gift of God to man and of man to God is found where?
In Jesus Christ, in the Incarnation.
Man's will, therefore, in its essence and in its aspiration, preannounces and waits for the Incarnation, says Father Vito Fornari.
It's true that in reality, it's difficult to know God, to see Him in all things, to adhere to Him, to give ourselves to Him, that's true.
The climb to reach God requires effort.
We have to go through many sufferings during it, most of us know that, I think.
It's easy for us to become distracted and deceived by finite goods and things which present themselves to us here and now, but in these things, we won't find our true peace.
And of course, it's sin which clouds our reason and weakens our will at the same time.
But the light of God doesn't shine to cease, and we find that light always in the Word incarnate and in the Cross of Christ, in the Crucified One, essentially.
So in the Incarnation and the Redemption, it's toward these two realities that our minds and our hearts tend.
It's in these two realities where we find our true joy, our true peace, our true happiness.
So let's ask Our Lady today for the grace to have our wills completely united to Her’s and to Her Son’s, because again, it's only in uniting our wills to God that we will find our true peace, our true happiness, and the purpose of our whole existence.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.