Monday, June 10 : Saint Bonaventure

Among the gifts of grace which Francis received from God the generous Giver, he merited as a special privilege to grow in the riches of simplicity through his love of the highest poverty. The holy man saw that poverty was the close companion of the Son of God, and now that it was rejected by the whole world, he was eager to espouse it in everlasting love. For the sake of poverty he not only left his father and “mother, but also gave away everything he had. No one was so greedy for gold as he was for poverty; nor was anyone so anxious to guard his treasure as he was in guarding this pearl of the Gospel. In this especially would his sight be offended if he saw in the friars anything which did not accord completely with poverty. Indeed, from the beginning of his religious life until his death, his only riches were a tunic, a cord and underclothes; and with this much he was content. He used to frequently call to mind with tears the poverty of Jesus Christ and his mother, claiming that it was the queen of the virtues because it shone forth so preeminently in the King of kings (1Tm 6:15) and in the Queen, his mother. When the friars asked him at a gathering what virtue does more to make one a friend of Christ, he replied as if opening the hidden depths of his heart: “Know, brothers, that poverty is the special way to salvation, as the stimulus of humility and the root of perfection, whose fruit is manifold but hidden. This is the Gospel’s treasure “hidden in a field” (Mt 13:44); to buy this we should sell everything, and in comparison to this we should spurn everything we cannot sell.”

Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine) Daily Readings – rosary,team