Dwelling on the Love of God

Homily for the Feast of St. Bonaventure

When we tried to describe life in heaven, we frequently use the phrase, “perfect happiness.” Just what do we mean by perfect happiness? When we try to describe it, we frequently use our human frame of reference. We think of what has been our happiest time in this life. We look to the people in our lives who make us happy. However, because our frames of reference come from our human experience, they miss the point. Human happiness is not perfect. It is impossible to describe perfect happiness by referencing our human experience.

In his First Letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul harks back to the sixty-fourth chapter of the prophet Isaiah. Chapters fifty-six through sixty-six were written after the Babylonian captivity or exile. For approximately seventy years, the children of Israel were subjugated by their Assyrian conquerors. This time of slavery is graphically remembered in Psalm 137. “By the streams of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.” Their intense prayer during this time of exile asked God to send the Messiah to free them so they could return to the land which had been given to them by God from the time of the patriarch Abraham. Isaiah writes of this prayer: “While you worked awesome deeds we could not hope for, such as had not been heard of from of old. No ear has ever heard, no eye ever seen, any God but you working such deeds for those who wait for him.” In the final chapters of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, God is called the creator, the father, and the potter. God, the Creator of the world and the Father of the children of Israel, would restore the sacred temple of Jerusalem much the same as a potter would form of vessel.

St. Paul speaks of God’s awesome deeds to refer to God’s mysterious, hidden, and planned history of salvation. God’s plan of salvation finds its culmination in everlasting life with God in heaven. He adapts the words of the Prophet Isaiah when he speaks of that final victory. “Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it so much as dawned on human beings what God has prepared for those who love him.”

The entirety of St. Bonaventure’s life was devoted to bringing an understanding to the depths of God’s love for us. However, St. Bonaventure’s humility was so great that he admitted that it was impossible to adequately describe God’s love for us in human words. The use of human language limits us when it comes to describing the immensity of God and of God’s love for us. We will only realize how much God loves us when we ultimately stand before God. When we see just how much God has loved us, we will also realize how poorly we have loved God in return.

St. Paul goes on to say that God has revealed this wisdom to us through the Spirit. The Holy Spirit we have received is God’s spirit, helping us to recognize the gift of love that God has given us. St. Paul also recognizes the limitations of human language in describing spiritual things and tells us to plumb the depths of the Spirit within us.

As we celebrate the Feast of this great Franciscans Saint, we honor him best when we dwell upon the gift of God’s life, God’s grace, God’s love. That love is expressed every time we celebrate the Eucharist as the incarnate God comes once again to us and feeds us with the Body and Blood of Jesus.