Meditation classes on St. Bonaventure's "The Mind's Journey to God" continue.

The Trinity of Powers in the Soul: Meditation Class on St. Bonaventure’s The Mind’s Journey to God


Thursday, December 1
1 a.m.

Tuesday it was over seventy degrees and sunny. Yesterday was rainy and cold, blustery - many of the last leaves came down from trees. Raked the lawns again. Perhaps because of the weather, many of the meditators stayed home and others were late to meditation. They strayed in, and I decided to allow everyone who entered a long meditation. Therefore, I had almost a two hour meditation, which pleased me much ... Because of this, class was shorter than usual. But we did finish the third chapter of St. Bonaventure’s slim volume The Mind’s Journey to God. As in earlier Journal entries, Bonaventure’s words are in italics. (Trans. Lawrence S. Cunningham; Franciscan Herald Press, 1979.)

We had left our last class with the sentence: When the mind reflects on itself, there surges up as in a mirror an image of the Trinity of Father, Word and Love, three coequal, coeternal, and cosubstantial persons, each existing in the other, although the three are one God. The Mystery of the Trinity. When the mind reflects on itself we took to mean meditation, or contemplation. Only when our own thoughts have been put aside can the mind act as a mirror for the Holy Trinity. Chris reread St. Bonaventure’s beautiful sentence: From memory and understanding comes forth love as a link between the two. To review: the trinity of mind, word and love exist in the soul as memory, intellect and will, i.e. the three powers of the soul. Here, memory is linked to Eternity, intellect to Truth and will is linked to the Highest Good, or the Divine Will.

The new passages which we read last night, which end Chapter Three, began with: When the soul meditates on its triple principle through the trinity of its powers through which we arrive at a notion of God, it is helped by the light of the sciences which perfect, inform it, and triply represent the Holy Trinity. By sciences, Saint Bonaventure refers to philosophy. He divides philosophy into the subcategories of natural (being), rational and moral. He says that first philosophy is divided into metaphysics, mathematics and physics. We decided that metaphysics, in this context signified the essence of things, their oneness; mathematics was that unity divided into forms, multiplicity, i.e. the reflection of the One God into manifestation; physics was the physical laws and workings of the physical universe, i.e. a reflection of the Eternal Laws and Ideas that underlie manifestation. These would correspond to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit of the Trinity.

Bonaventure then says that philosophy is further subdivided into grammar, logic and rhetoric and he again compares this trinity to the Holy Trinity. Grammar, according to Bonaventure, produces powerful expression. Logic aids critical argument, and we decided uses the higher Light of Reason. Rhetoric allows us to be movingly persuasive. Being a pianist, I said that rhetoric could be compared to the Holy Spirit coming through the performer, allowing him to perform convincingly and well. Logic would be the mental work the musician does in analyzing the notes and phrases and forms the composer has used. We agreed that grammar, in this analogy, could be the very chord progressions and score notations used by composers, the physical laws upon which music and harmony are based.

The last trinity of the subdivisions of philosophy Bonaventure gives are: individual, domestic and civic ethics. Chris and M. took this to mean an expanding awareness, i.e. first a concern for self, then one’s family and finally the larger world. This reminded me of something the Dalai Lama of Tibet had said in one of his talks, during an American tour; in fact, he used almost the identical words. That at first we care for ourselves, then we extend our love and kindness and compassion to those nearest to us - and finally we apply that compassion and love to the entire earth. It is an expanding circle of awareness and love. Bonaventure again compared this more personal trinity to the Holy Trinity.

In his final paragraph of this third chapter, Bonaventure begins: All these sciences have sure and infallible rules which are like rays of light radiating from the Eternal Law on the mind. We again took these sure and infallible rules of these sciences to be the reflection of the Divine laws and Ideas that run through our physical world and lives. And that the true philosopher would see that these Eternal rays of Light illumine our physical world and selves, would see through the sciences to these rays of the Eternal, Divine Laws. In our meditations, we contemplate this Divine Light which is the very substratum of our material universe. And in our lives we contemplate the Eternal, Higher Laws that govern our existence. In other words, the true Philosopher is not fooled by the material world and its seeming physicality; he sees through the physical world to That which lies behind it, its true Essence. In the same way, the true Philosopher is not fooled by thoughts and words and sentences, but sees through to the Divine rays which underlie all thought and all ideas.

Bonaventure continues: Thus, our minds illumined and charged with such splendors, unless they be blinded, are able to contemplate the Eternal Light through contemplation of itself. Here Bonaventure is speaking of deep meditation, or contemplation, which leads to Illumination.

We decided that unless they are blinded referred to those who were blind to truth, as did the foolish who do not believe of the following sentence. This being blinded would mean being blind to the existence of God, and also blind to the Illumination that is the reward for practicing meditation, i.e. contemplating the mind itself. In contemplating the nature of our individual minds in meditation, we are given new eyes that can see the Eternal Light that is the very Source of all thought.