Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
continuing our series on Franciscan spirituality today, talking about social life.
In our last reflection, we spoke of the laws, which govern our personal moral life and social morality, which are what we call natural laws.
St. Bonaventure, following St. Augustine, says that natural law goes back to the eternal law, which is written in our hearts, as the Apostle says, Romans 2:14.
Blessed John Duns Scotus says that all the practical principles noted with the simple light of reason belong to the natural law.
In substance, we're talking about the discernment of right reason, by which we tell right from wrong, good from evil.
It's a law that we all have inside of us.
It's completed by the positive divine law, so Revelation, the Old Testament, and it's perfected by the evangelical law, which is the most perfect of all laws, essentially the New Testament, to which no other testament will be added.
Duns Scotus says that we have greater and more effective helps for us to observe the evangelical law in respect to the law of the Old Covenant, so in that sense, he says, the new law is actually even lighter than the older one.
In a certain way, the natural law is the habit of the operative order by which man understands that he must do what is good, and with this condition, he can become morally good and socially beneficial, able to render to himself and to others what is due in just measure.
Right reason modeled on the infinitely just and right reason of God is meant to guide us in our moral activity and dynamism.
So just as for the natural order, there's an absolute regulating principle, it's also the same thing for the moral order, which is founded on and based on the eternal law, as well as a principle for the social order, which is governed by the principle of the natural law of justice.
St. Bonaventure compares society to a living organism and to a body in which all the members coordinated amongst themselves and hierarchically based, conserve their proper specific vitality and functionality, and work towards the common good.
The common good includes both the temporal good and the spiritual good, eternal goods, which even though those two, the eternal and the temporal goods, even though they're distinct, they can't be disassociated as long as we're pilgrims here on this earth.
So the life of society is a community life, which aims at a common good, integrating the simple sum of individual goods, and as much as the person is a part of the social whole that's superior to individual interests, however, this personalistic character, the evaluation of the moral and the spiritual ends of the human person and the temporal common good can never be minimized, neglected, or fought against.
Because the intrinsic ordination of man to the supernatural drives every person to goods that are above and beyond economic and social interests.
To govern this vast structure of social life where in the large human family individuals and nations have a proper vocation, proper specific contribution, their own natural rights.
To govern the structure of the social life, sociologists rightly base themselves on legal, political, and social justice which, although they aim at the common good, they don't neglect the good of the individual.
The Franciscan doctors, even though they aren't sociologists, they don't do anything differently.
It's a wonderful social philosophy and their thinking that carries within it the characteristics of their spirituality.
St. Bonaventure sees the social order balancing on legal justice, on commutative justice, and distributive justice.
To him, the structure of associated life presents itself as something that has to be totally pervaded by the virtue of justice.
Justice is the virtue, which rectifies every form and every human faculty and addresses itself as liberality towards our neighbor, as penance and innocence regarding ourself, and as adoration and obedience to God.
And, Bonaventure and Scotus teach that before the fall of Adam and Eve, everything was held in common, that the division of goods didn't exist, but sin with the egoism that followed it made the holding of goods in common impossible, hence the need for private property.
So the Franciscans say that the entire social and political world must be governed by justice.
Justice is the balancing principle that must inform people's lives and interactions and the life of the state as well.
And as we'll note in our next reflection, though strict justice isn't all that's needed for the social order, charity has to be added as well.
Let's ask Our Lady then for the grace to know how to live justly and charitably in our time here on earth as a perfect preparation for eternity.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.