With you is the source of life
From a work on The Sacred Heart of Jesus by Saint Bonaventure, bishop, Doctor of the Church (1221-1274)
With you is the source of life
Take thought now, redeemed man, and consider how great and worthy is he who hangs on the cross for you. His death brings the dead to life, but at his passing heaven and earth are plunged into mourning and hard rocks are split asunder.
It was a divine decree that permitted one of the soldiers to open his sacred side with a lance. This was done so that the Church might be formed from the side of Christ as he slept the sleep of death on the cross, and so that the Scripture might be fulfilled: They shall look on him whom they pierced. The blood and water which poured out at that moment were the price of our salvation. Flowing from the sacred abyss of our Lord’s heart as from a fountain, this stream gave the sacraments of the Church the power to confer the life of grace, while for those already living in Christ it became a spring of living water welling up to life everlasting.
Arise, then, beloved of Christ! Imitate the dove that nests in a hole in the cliff, keeping watch at the entrance like the sparrow that finds a home. There like the turtledove hide your little ones, the fruit of your chaste love. Press your lips to the fountain, draw water from the wells of your Savior; for this is the spring flowing out of the middle of paradise, dividing into four rivers, inundating devout hearts, watering the whole earth and making it fertile.
Run with eager desire to this source of life and light, all you who are vowed to God’s service. Come, whoever you may be, and cry out to him with all the strength of your heart. “O indescribable beauty of the most high God and purest radiance of eternal light! Life that gives all life, light that is the source of every other light, preserving in everlasting splendor the myriad flames that have shone before the throne of your divinity from the dawn of time! Eternal and inaccessible fountain, clear and sweet stream flowing from a hidden spring, unseen by mortal eye! None can fathom your depths nor survey your boundaries, none can measure your breadth, nothing can sully your purity. From you flows the river which gladdens the city of God and makes us cry out with joy and thanksgiving in hymns of praise to you, for we know by our own experience that with you is the source of life, and in your light we see light.
Source: The Liturgy of the Hours – Office of Readings
Saint Bonaventure (1221-1274) was born in Bagnorea, Italy, Giovanni di Fidanza and received the name Bonaventure from St. Francis of Assisi who cured him of a childhood illness. He became a Franciscan in 1238 and studied at Paris. He taught theology and Scripture at Paris. He was involved in a controversy over the mendicants in Paris. Bonaventure received his doctorate in theology with St. Thomas Aquinas in 1257 and was elected minister general of the Friars Minor. He labored to reconcile dissident factions in the Order. In 1260 he promulgated a set of constitutions on the rule with a lasting impact on the order. He helped secure the election of Pope Gregory X and was appointed cardinal-bishop of Albano and was appointed by Gregory to draw up the agenda for the fourteenth General Council at Lyons to discuss reunion of the Eastern churches with Rome. Bonaventure was successful in bringing about the reunion, but he died at Lyons while the Council was still in session. Bonaventure was an outstanding philosopher and theologian and one of the great intellects of medieval ti8mes. He authored numerous treatises, biblical commentaries, some five hundred sermons, and was the official biography of St. Francis. Canonized in 1482 he was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1588.