Video – Retreat – 2 of 5 – 1st & 2nd Wings “Journey of the Mind to God”

Ave Maria!

Fr. James Dominic Rooney, O.P. gives the second of five talks for the retreat on St. Bonaventure's "The Journey of the Mind to God" which relates St. Francis' ascent up Mt. Alverna where he encountered the Crucified Christ to our own journey to God. In this talk he covers the first and second wings or steps on the journey to God which are Meditation and Contemplation.

- CONF 390

More notes below.

For the other talks in the conference:

https://airmaria.com/category/air-maria-shows/conferences/journey-to-god-2017/

E-text of "Journey of the Mind to God" (different translation than Fr. Rooney uses):

http://web.sbu.edu/theology/bychkov/itinerarium_oleg.pdf

Mother of Redeemer Retreat Center:

http://www.maryschildren.com/

Rough notes taken during the talk:

Rough notes taken during the talk:

Starting at the bottom of Mt. Alverna

Three things to figure out

Where we are going.

What we are going to need to get there.

Plan how we are actually going to get there.

1:50 The attitude is possession of God and we go directly to our God We Ascent in Body & heart God is totally Beyond us and to get to him is completely beyond our power Need Grace and to get Grace need prayer

5:15 Plan the Journey What do we mean by prayer? prayer verse mental prayer verses vocal prayer Bonaventure gives three main things for prayer First Things that we have around us Second is our own selves Third is revelation in the gospel and tradition from Jesus Christ as a gateway to the invisible God We'll find Jesus in no way not as we thought about him or

7:50 St Bonaventure: The first step is to ask, "Teach me O Lord your way" Created things Things that change and things that don't change Things outside of us and things inside of us Starting at the bottom of Mt. Alverna and focusing on things that are right in front of us material things that we can see

9:05 3 Stages - Purgative, Illuminative, Unitive

Purgative - Purging the bad things out of our lives and approaching God for what he can do for us

Illuminative - Begin to appreciate Divine Life for the good goodness of himself Majority of people are in this stage that are trying to seek God Seeing truth as light and seeing the goodness and light in other people and in God Beginning to turn inward

13:25 Unitive Stage - Hard to conceptualize Begin to see that even in the illuminative stage we were seeing God as what he can do for us and we going to see more that God is good and he should be our goal This includes the Dark Night of the Soul. Has many forms but is kind of living martyrdom Stills is beginning to see that you're still very attached to God's consolation so God takes away the weekend come in to you in with Only the great Saints really Master this entirely We are now starting at the bottom of the mountain

16:50 Each of these stages have two parts or 6 Wings of the Seraph Meditation: to ruminate on something Then contemplation to gaze at to be enraptured in God the Gaze of love Contemplation is a gift from God that God has to raise us to. Meditation is how we ask God for the gift of contemplation Exercises help

19:35 See God in his craftsmanship. Bonaventure sees sets of 3 in everything and God in all creation and Earth is beautiful ordered Science and study of nature should bring us closer to God and see the wonderment of Gods creation Physics - Why can we write a formula that describes how a pen falls with gravity? Hidden order in the world Part of the wonderment of God that you can describe the motion of things by natural law in mathematics

23:32 Know God through Scripture Book of Esther is a good example of this in the Bible where God does everything behind the scenes

25:15 Reason is why we see everything in the patterns and understandable The great artworks of antiquity Even the pagans Greeks and Chinese Beijing Temple of Heaven Blue circular building

Tian Tan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_...

Chinese believed in one God like the Jews but very separated geographically from them

27:50 Had sacrifices in a big temple. God is supreme over all four corners of the world God cannot be detected because he's immaterial

30:15 The Second Wing: Contemplation See God *in* our senses through perception. Carl Sagan the TV show, we are all made of Stardust. He was a big atheist but it was a mystical thing for him. We come to God through our senses we are made of stars in the sense in that we see the stars. They change us Photons from far away long ago enter into our eyes become a part of us

32:50 Bonaventure created things come into us as far as symbols Second stage we see the symbol that symbolizes something and our mind goes to what it symbolizes, the source. All these material things raise our minds to the God from whom they come.

34:35 Morning Exercise - Take a walk outside and see the beauty of the world Contemplate how to be thankful to God for all of these things.

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