Friday, October 15 : Saint Bonaventure

      Take thought now, redeemed man, and consider how great and worthy is he who hangs on the cross for you… Arise, then, beloved of Christ! Imitate the dove ‘that nests in a hole in the cliff’ (Jr 48:28), keeping watch at the entrance ‘like the sparrow that finds a home’(Ps 84:4). 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 Saviour; 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 splendour 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’(Ps 46:5) 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’ (Ps 36:10).

maronite readings – rosary,team