Meditation Class: Contemplation on Divine Unity: A Mystic’s Journal Entry December 21, 2005: Saint Bonaventure: A Mind’s Journey to God, Chapter V
Wednesday, December 21
Icy outside, in spite of my best efforts with salt. After class, Andy and Maria brought in wood for the stove and Nate emptied the coal bucket and brought in more coal. Now there are four filled buckets of coal, and two high stacks of wood near the stove. I gave them each a small present, and we wished each other a happy and holy Holiday. I think I have been teaching these younger meditators for almost - years. Marshall e-mailed, he will be in town this weekend. I very much look forward to seeing him again.
Tonight we began Chapter V of Saint Bonaventure’s A Mind’s Journey to God: On the Contemplation of Divine Unity Under It’s Basic Name: Being. As in the past, I have put Bonaventure’s words in italics.
Class lasted almost a half hour longer than usual, but we did finish half the chapter. Bonaventure begins: Now God can be contemplated not only outside of ourselves in His traces and within ourselves in his Image, but above us through a light which shines on our mind. Here Bonaventure speaks of a new experience while in the fifth level of contemplation: that we can now contemplate God “through a light that shines on our mind”. Bonaventure continues: That Light is Eternal Truth since “our mind is created directly by Truth Itself”. (We are told in a footnote that this quote is taken from Saint Augustine.) These two opening sentences of Chapter V began a fairly lengthy discussion. M. said that God created our minds: therefore, we can contemplate God by the Truth that shines on our mind, because the Light of God is shining on that mind. Andy added that the same Light that shines on our mind is the Light from which our mind is created; i.e. the essence of our individual minds is the same as that Light that shines on it. I thought this a very good answer, and said that the Source of all our individual thought is this Light. And that instead of being aware of the Source of our thoughts, we looked at and listened to only our own thoughts. Whereas, in deep contemplation we had the opportunity, given to us by Grace, to experience that Divine Light that is the Source of all thought. This ability to contemplate God, through this light which shines on our mind in this fifth level of contemplation, is given to all of us. It is built into the human vehicle itself, and I would assume into the vehicle of every creature on earth - for God has created all the creatures of earth, from His own Being and Essence.
Bonaventure then makes the distinction between the two modes of the eternal and invisible nature of God: The one mode considers the essential attributes of the Godhead; the other, the attributes of the Divine Persons. This began a discussion which M. initiated. By Godhead, Bonaventure seemed to be referring to Eckhardt’s “God beyond God”, i.e. the God which existed prior to the manifested Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This God beyond God would have no attributes in the usual sense of the term. Bonaventure does distinguish between the essential attributes of the Godhead and the attributes of the Divine Persons, and so we decided to read further for an explanation.
The first mode looks essentially at the aspect of being itself and says that God’s basic name is “He who is.” The other mode concentrates on the goodness of God and says that goodness is the basic name of God. The first mode comes from the Old Testament, when the unity of God is stressed, when God says to Moses: “I am who I am”. The second mode, comes from the New Testament with emphasis on the plurality of persons in God, i.e. Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Saint Bonaventure continues: To contemplate the invisible things of God in the unity of his essence, one begins with the notion of being. Bonaventure then goes into a sequence of rational, theological thought that concludes with the sentence: It follows that the being we are reaching out for is Divine Being. He says that potential being can only be understood through actual being, and actual being itself demands an act of pure being. Therefore, it is being that first comes into the intellect and that being is pure act.
Bonaventure then says: One is struck by the blindness of the intellect which does not consider what it first sees, that without which it could understand nothing. This brought us back to our original discussion, that without God as their Source, we would have no thoughts.
Bonaventure later in this section writes: Habituated as the mind is with the darkness of things and fascinated with the sensible world when it sees the light of Being itself it thinks it sees nothing not understanding that this darkness is the highest illumination of the mind just as when the eye sees pure light it thinks that it sees nothing. A footnote tells us that this darkness of Bonaventure = Divine Truths, i.e. truths so far beyond the intellect that the mind cannot grasp them. This long sentence holds many ideas: one idea being that our minds tend to extrovert, our thoughts naturally and irresistibly dwell on the sensible, physical world. Even though the footnote tells us that the darkness here represents Divine Truths, we discussed the possibility that here Bonaventure was referring to the Void we reach in deep contemplation. We then had a discussion on the Void and “nothingness”. That the true meaning of this mystical Void and nothingness was that the mind was devoid only of all thoughts and forms; in fact, it is in this experience of meeting the Void that we become enlightened and find the All.
The phrase sees pure light it thinks that it sees nothing, Maria took to mean that when the light is too radiant we cannot perceive forms. I mentioned that at Fatima two of the visionaries could not make out the form of Our Lady - only one, Lucia, actually saw the form of Our Lady. The other two children told their confessors that the Light emanating from and surrounding Our Lady was too bright for them to see any specific form.
this darkness is the highest illumination of the mind There could also be another meaning here: Saint Padre Pio, in one of his letters to a friend, wrote that during the Dark Night of the soul all appears Dark. But that in actuality, the soul was being infused with such a great Light that all appeared as Darkness. Until we have read the rest of this Chapter V, the meaning of Bonaventure’s sentence will not be clear.
Meditation Class: Contemplation on Divine Unity:
Moderator: figaro