In beautiful things St. Francis saw Beauty itself, and through His vestiges imprinted on creation he followed his Beloved everywhere, making from all things a ladder by which he could climb up and embrace Him who is utterly desirable.
Interpretation
St. Francis found divine beauty in nature, allowing it to guide him to a deeper spiritual connection with the divine.
In this quote, Bonaventure reflects on St. Francis's profound appreciation for the beauty in the world around him. St. Francis perceives the beauty of creation not just as aesthetic pleasure but as an expression of the divine. He uses this beauty as a pathway or 'ladder' to ascend spiritually and develop a closer relationship with God, whom he sees as the ultimate source of all that is beautiful and desirable. This illustrates the idea that the natural world can inspire spiritual growth and a longing for the divine.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of nature in spiritual practices.
The human person, whose definition serves as the touchstone according to which good must be distinguished from evil, is considered as sacred, in what one might call the ritual sense of the word. It has something of that transcendental majesty which the churches of all times have given to their Gods.
A man speaking sense to himself is no madder than a man speaking nonsense not to himself.
The very purpose of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution is to protect minority rights against majority voters. Every court decision that strikes down discriminatory legislation, including past Supreme Court decisions, affirming the fundamental rights to marry the person you love, overrules a majority decision.
You can't escape the past in Paris, and yet what's so wonderful about it is that the past and present intermingle so intangibly that it doesn't seem to burden.
Live both in the future and the past. Who does not live in the past does not live in the future.
Tragedy is formed 'round ideas it does not expound, and to understand its history is, in some part, to understand those ideas and their place in the society that produced it.
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