Bonaventure combined a brilliant mind with a tender devotion. His best-known spiritual book, The Soul’s Journey into God, treats thinking itself as a road to prayer.
Historical Context
Bonaventure died during the Second Council of Lyon, which he had helped to organise. He was a close contemporary of St Thomas Aquinas; the two taught in Paris at the same time and died in the same year.
A Prayer After Communion
A thanksgiving prayer attributed to Bonaventure has been printed in Catholic missals for centuries. It begins, “Pierce, O most sweet Lord Jesus, my inmost soul with the most joyous and healthful wound of thy love.” Here is a short prayer in the same spirit:
Lord Jesus, you have come to me.
Wound my heart with love for you,
so that it longs for you more than for anything else.
Let me never be satisfied with less than you.
Amen.
A Prayer for Wisdom
St Bonaventure, you used your mind to climb toward God.
Pray that my studying and thinking lead me to him,
not away from him.
Give me a clear head and a humble heart.
Amen.
For Bowel and Stomach Ailments
St Bonaventure, healed as a child through St Francis’s prayer,
pray for me in this illness.
Ask the Lord to ease my pain and restore my health,
and give my doctors wisdom.
Amen.
Best Times for This Prayer
- After receiving Communion.
- Before study, especially theology or philosophy.
- With digestive or bowel illness.
- On 15 July, his feast.
Scripture Connection
“O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him.” — Psalm 34:8
For Bonaventure, knowing God was never only an idea. “Taste and see” describes the kind of knowing he wanted: experience, not just argument, which is why his theology so often ends in prayer.
Related prayers
For more Franciscan prayers, see the Franciscan Prayer. For the Eucharist, the Sacrament Prayer, and for stomach pain, the Saint Erasmus Prayer.