Daily Masses - ferial days and Saint Bonaventura

Mass was offered yesterday for the repose of the soul of Carmel Kelly (+), and today for all those who are ill or in some way suffering. May she have eternal rest, with the Saints in light. My new default intention on Wednesdays was originally an intention for the sufferers of the new c-virus, but I've realised from the news reports that, although this new virus is a killer, it compounds existing medical conditions to various degrees. It makes sense then to pray generally for all those who suffer illness or who suffer generally. It also gives me an opportunity to remember the dying, as well. All of this is a serious work of mercy that echoes through the long corridors of the history of the Church. This is one of our primary acts as Christians, to pray for those who often cannot pray for themselves and may have nobody else to pray for them.

Today's Mass honours the great, thirteenth-century Franciscan bishop and scholar, Saint Bonaventura, named a Doctor of the Church for his ability to present his understanding of God and the Church to the rest of us. Once, during my stay at the English College in Rome, the staff there took all the students on a trip to Bagno-regio, where Bonaventura was born. Naturally, he is still remembered there, with a life-sized statue standing in the town. Above all, Bonaventura was a Catholic philosopher, and among the greatest minds of his time. Naturally, his philosophy included God and the Christian life, in a way that we don't expect anymore, because the universities have separated and continue to isolate theology from philosophy at the moment, desperate to insulate the natural sciences from the philosophical and theological sciences. This modern approach would have surprised Augustine of Hippo, Bonaventura, Thomas Aquinas and the other great Catholic philosophers, who tended to integrate faith and reason in their thought, prayer and virtue ethics being important parts of the pursuit of knowledge and illumination and union with God. But Bonaventura was more than a speculative philosopher; he was a bishop, and had to consider the practicalities of theological truth and its impact on the Christian life. Even if his work doesn't work well for modern philosophers, I think the Catholic today would be able to take very much away from it. I shall have more to say about that, when I have gotten to his entry in Pope Benedict's compendium of speeches on the Doctors of the Church.