Saturday, February 29, 2020

Lent IV

On the sixth day the power and wisdom of the divine Hand created man out of clay. Similarly, it was at the beginning of the sixth age of mankind--when came the fullness of time--that the archangel Gabriel was sent to the Virgin. After she consented to his word, the Holy Spirit descended upon her in the form of a divine fire that inflamed her soul and sanctified her body in perfect purity, and the power of the Most High overshadowed her, to enable her to bear such fire. Instantly, by the operation of that power, a body was formed, a soul created, and both were united to the Godhead in the Person of the Son; that this same Person was God and man, with the properties of each nature unimpaired.

Bonaventure, The Tree of Life I.3.

[Bonaventure, The Works of Bonaventure I: Mystical Opuscula, José de Vinck, tr., Martino Pulbishing (Mansfield Centre, CT: 2016), p. 105.]