July 15, 2025
As we celebrate the high feast day of St. Bonaventure, Bishop and Doctor of the Church, this week—July 15, to be precise—it’s perhaps a worthwhile exercise to delve into what may be his most preeminent theological and mystical work, The Journey of the Mind to God. Among other reasons, given the widespread secularism prevalent throughout the culture, it is a somewhat hidden treatise in service to all those seeking an authentic spiritual path. It is a door swung open for all of us—to reflect and refocus, to both contemplate and connect with something well beyond a dubious chat room, a stream of gaming videos, or any of the millions of random so-called influencers blathering on various social media platforms. That is to say, The Journey of the Mind to God is a crucial and timely roadmap to the Thrice-Holy Godhead whom every one of us longs for, whether we realize it yet or not. Indeed, the Doctor of Grace himself, St. Augustine, illuminates us all with his timeless check on reality:
“For you made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.” (Confessions, Book I, Chapter I).
Though some may cast doubt and deliver harsh critiques, from the very first day St. Bonaventure entered the monastery of the Friars Minor as a zealous 21-year-old Master of Arts scholar (circa 13th c., University of Paris), he sincerely lived the Franciscan way of life with all his heart and soul. Simply put, there is in him no separation between the religious life of a friar—a life of radical self-surrender to the Gospel (and to his at-times incorrigible fellow friars)—and the learned spirit of a shrewd but pious theologian. His is a single existence—no duplicity of life, no phony fronts, nothing but an ardent search for Light and Love in the steps of Holy Father Francis, the Seraph of Assisi. No surprise, then, that few writings of St. Bonaventure are so deeply entwined with the spirit of St. Francis as The Journey of the Mind to God.
When a soul enters into this Itinerarium, this ancient roadway of prayer, he discovers a seemingly new Bonaventura—a preeminently devout and knightly friar whose ideal end remained one and the same as that of St. Francis of Assisi. The means Bonaventure employs for its realization are, however, sublimely distinct. Distinct—not merely different, or of some newfound form or modernistic methodology. Rather, St. Bonaventure’s Journey of the Mind to God is, before all else, the witness of a man resolved to live the Franciscan ideal he had come to long for above all else. Paris notwithstanding, his was a life of radical transformation rooted in the form and pattern of Christ Jesus Crucified, as revealed in the Gospels. The Itinerarium, this ancient travel guide, is as it says—a pilgrimage of the soul to God. It is, if you will, a mystical manual on the hard science of holy love for all pilgrims on their way to the Mystical City of Peace.
The Seraphic Doctor, St. Bonaventure, understood quite well from where and Who his Seraphic Father drew the strength to persevere in these itinerant dispositions, for he too followed the same ever-ancient, ever-new road. He, too, wandered throughout the world like a pilgrim and stranger—an indomitable itinerant in both the literal and spiritual sense. It is entirely fitting, then, that St. Bonaventure’s distinctive spiritual observations and intellectual thought would center entirely on Christ Crucified:
“There is no other path but through the burning love of the Crucified… First, therefore, I invite the reader to the groans of prayer through Christ Crucified, through whose blood we are cleansed from the filth of vice and sin…” (Itinerarium, Prol., 3–4)
Saint Bonaventure, as Minister General, might not have found full satisfaction and peace within the lecture halls of Paris—but neither did he among his fellow friars, who too often embroiled themselves in endless controversy between a life of startling severity and stark duty, and a life suspiciously perceived as lax and lazy. No, the Seraphic Doctor instead humbly climbed La Verna in the very footsteps of his model and master, St. Francis. His primary desire was to seek and find that benevolent yet intense peace and serenity St. Francis had so perfectly embraced—and the inner peace found in the perfection of wisdom: the Cross of Christ.
Indeed, by figuratively following Holy Father St. Francis to La Verna, Bonaventure could—and did—reach the height of ecstatic contemplation, a mystical union he genuinely believed to be accessible to all devout souls:
“Inspired by the example of our blessed father, Francis, I sought after this peace with a yearning soul—sinner that I am and all unworthy, yet seventh successor as Minister General to all the brethren in the place of the blessed father after his death… upon divine impulse, I too withdrew to La Verna as to a place of quiet, there to satisfy the yearnings of my soul for peace. While I abode there, pondering on certain spiritual ascents to God, there occurred to me… the vision blessed Francis received of the six-winged Seraph in the form of the Crucified. As I reflected on this marvel, it immediately seemed to me that this vision suggested the uplifting of Saint Francis in contemplation and that it pointed out the way by which the state of contemplation can be reached.” (Itinerarium, Prol., 2)
The vision of the now-famous six-winged Seraph in the form of Christ Crucified provides the motif for this universal journey of the mind to God. Saint Bonaventure himself says:
“The figure of the six wings of the Seraph brings to mind the six steps of illumination which begins with creation and leads up to God.” (Itinerarium, Prol., 3)
We’ll examine these six steps of prayerful illumination in another post later this month—most fittingly in the month dedicated to the Precious Blood of Jesus.
Read Part II – The Stages of Ascent in St. Bonaventure’s Itinerarium Mentis in Deum