Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
In our series on Franciscan spirituality, today we're going to talk about the relationship between nature and grace in the human person.
St. Bonaventure says that man is naturally born to be elevated above himself by contemplation and loving.
And it's through God's grace that we arrive at what we call a supernatural life, a life that rises above what's purely natural.
In this discussion on nature and grace, Franciscan spirituality gives its own specific perspective which places in evidence the nobility of our nature and the divine liberty of the Creator.
So we'll try to look at some of those aspects.
When God created man, He destined man to a supernatural end, elevated by grace.
So in the design of God and in reality, there's no place for a purely natural man, a man who's sufficient on his own, with his own gifts and strengths, who arrives at his own perfection.
History and experience confirm what Revelation already teaches, that the purely natural man, without at least somewhat of an aspiration to what's supernatural, is nothing more than a logical abstraction or an analytical distinction, i.e. he doesn't exist.
Just as in us, our rational life doesn't exist apart from the vegetative and animal life, so too there's not natural life in us that exists without any relation to what's supernatural.
Our natural life is oriented towards the supernatural and destined by God to receive it.
In us, there's only one life in which the supernatural elevates the natural within itself.
The supernatural helps coordinate the values and ends of our natural life and synthesizes it in its own forms.
Our nature is created in order to receive God's grace, and God's grace is what brings us to the glory that we're destined to.
So the supernatural life isn't an artificial superimposition, it's not something that indifferently we could have or not have.
In the actual ordering of divine providence, grace, even though it's absolutely gratuitous, grace perfects, completes, and elevates our nature, joining us to the supreme being who is God.
Franciscan thinkers say that the ontological basis for the intrinsic orientation of our human nature to grace is found in the fact that we're simply created in God's image.
Franciscans give a positive and a real value to what theologians call obediential power to the supernatural.
Obediential power is the capacity of the creature by which, thanks to an extraordinary help from God, he can produce an effect or receive a form superior to his natural forces and outside his natural sphere of action.
It's not just a passive, indifferent capacity that we have to receive God's grace.
Since God created us for glory and grace, grace and glory, our nature has in itself an inborn aptitude, an ontological orientation and ordination, an intrinsic pull to the supernatural to beatitude, so we're naturally oriented to that.
Even St. Thomas Aquinas himself says, every entity naturally desires its end, and everyone naturally desires his ultimate perfection.
St. Bonaventure says that our obediential power is passive in the sense that in no way can our human nature demand or produce God's grace.
God's grace is always a gift that's absolutely gratuitous.
However, the passivity here isn't just a neutral passivity like a piece of wood has to being carved into a statue or into a table or to be burned.
The piece of wood doesn't have a preference in all those things.
The passivity of our obediential power is like the passivity of a flower before the light of the sun.
The flower receives the light, it can't produce the light, but it's also made for the light.
It's the same thing with our rational soul.
Our soul is passive before God's grace receives it from on high, and with all of its forces It can never get God's grace on its own, but our soul is open to God's grace.
It's made for God's grace.
It reaches out to receive it, almost like the dry ground, reaching out for the rain that it yearns for to make it fertile.
It's in this way that the Franciscan doctors say that the obediential power is active and passive, and with that in us there exists an innate desire for eternal blessedness.
Franciscan reasoning is this.
Every creature has in itself a natural inclination, an unconscious tendency towards its own perfection, and it directs itself towards it as a good that suits him.
Man has in himself almost the blind and inborn stimulus of nature, like a weight that pulls him without a previous natural or supernatural cognition.
It's like an intrinsic yearning towards the supreme embrace of God, who is our ultimate end.
So we're not talking about an act of willing, nor something added or superimposed on to our nature, but it's the same rational nature that tends to God as its end with an unconscious desire, just like, for example, a rock naturally pulls towards its center of gravity.
The result is that human nature is like the prime matter, to use a philosophical term.
Human nature is incapable of actualizing itself alone in order to see God, but capable of being actualized and enabled to see him by means of grace and then glory in heaven.
So again, our human faculties are naturally oriented towards the vision and enjoyment of God, but we can't enjoy them on their own powers.
So this innate appetite or desire for God is actually part of our natural makeup, but it's a desire that has a supernatural end.
Only God, with his grace, can meet man and help him realize his desire and enable him to enter into eternal happiness.
Blessed John Duns Scotus says that this inborn appetite or desire is, one, necessary for us, two, it's intrinsic, three, it's our highest desire, and four, it's perpetual.
It's necessary because without it we would lack the motivation for perfection and our nature would become impoverished.
It's intrinsic because if our nature wasn't intrinsically susceptible to being elevated to beatitude, the soul wouldn't be beatified in its essence, but only extrinsically, accidentally.
The grace would be like water that runs over a rock, not like rain that's absorbed by the earth, and so the soul wouldn't be intrinsically changed.
It couldn't have a personal and interior happiness.
This innate desire for glory is also the highest among all our desires, and it is perpetual.
It couldn't cease unless our nature ceased to exist.
So with this inborn appetite, providence has wonderfully arranged the grafting point between nature and grace, and it will fit harmoniously to transform and perfect the whole man, the whole person.
Let's ask Our Lady then for the grace to cooperate with the perfecting plan that God has for each and every one of us.
Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.