Tag Archives: Bonaventure

Interviews on ESV-CE and Catholic Answers, links

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I just wanted to give you a few links here on a few recent things I’ve been involved with:

First, I did a Q&A Interview over at the Catholic Bible Talk blog about the ESV Catholic Edition. Here’s an excerpt:

  • A: The Translation Oversight Committee of the ESV has been very attentive to scholars’ and leaders’ concerns and suggestions, issuing a few lists of changes over the years since the first publication of the ESV in 2001. As long as Crossway continues to gather this committee, there is always the possibility for minor tweaks to the text. I would imagine the primary area where Catholic input would improve the translation is in the deuterocanonical books.  I think it is important that the ESV text be regarded as stable, so I do not think we’ll see a major revision, but minor corrections and improvements. I think Catholics and Protestants will be pleasantly surprised by the common ground they share when they study this translation together.

Second, I appeared on Catholic Answers radio show a couple weeks ago:

Third, I’ve also appeared on the Formed Now! show at the Augustine Institute a few times recently (sorry! paywall):

Fourth, I put together a Short Course on the Old Testament, which is housed in the Augustine Institute Short Course platform. The link to my particular course is here: https://courses.augustineinstitute.org/courses/old-testament

Fifth, I have had a few posts go up at Faith and Culture, the Augustine Institute’s journal:

It looks like I’ve been busier than I thought I was. I have a lot of other things cooking right now, but nothing ready to serve up just yet. I hope to have some more things to share with you in the not-too-distant future. Until then, happy Bible reading!

The Dish-Washing Saint Bonaventure

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I love the Franciscans. Poverty, simplicity, humility and joy are a few things that we need a heck of a lot more of in our time. St. Bonaventure, one of my inspirations, was considered the “second founder” of the Franciscan order. He’s a doctor of the Church, referred to as the “Seraphic Doctor.” And interestingly, he and St. Thomas Aquinas got their degrees at the same ceremony.

saint_bonaventure

Thanks to the MyHopeBox blog for putting this photo online

Late in life, St. Bonaventure was appointed to be a cardinal by the pope. In those days, the message didn’t come in a phone call. Rather the pope would send out a delegation of Vatican officials to bring the red hat to the appointee. (The red hat, the galero, which back then looked more like a sombrero, was the most important symbol of the cardinal’s office. Since 1965, the galero is no longer in use.)

Anyway, when the delegation showed up at St. Bonaventure’s friary, they found him washing the dishes. He actually sent them outside to wait for him to finish the dishes. Legend has it, he asked them to leave the red hat on a tree outside. So the saint finished washing the dishes and then came to greet the papal delegation.

Doing dishes often feels more like an annoying necessity than the substance of holiness. I think most of us would be tempted to put the dishes down gratefully for someone else to do if a papal messenger were knocking on the door. But St. Bonaventure’s commitment to his task in the life of his community, even in the face of honors from the pope, shows something very simple and yet very deep: The path to sainthood does not lie in showy ostentation, in external honors and achievements, but in the mundane, humdrum tasks of daily living. It’s the way we do these things, the level of commitment to our personal missions, that changes us. No amount of external recognition can bring about that kind of holiness. St. Bonaventure was not disrespecting the papal messengers, but deeply respecting the calling God had placed on his life at that moment: Wash the dishes!

Maybe you could think of the Seraphic Doctor next time you wash the dishes and realize that doing the dishes can be your path to holiness!

(Oh, by the way, today, July 15, is St. Bonaventure’s feast day.)

Great Site on St. Bonaventure

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I just found a fantastic site on all things Franciscan, which has an extensive collection of material by and about St. Bonaventure including Latin, English and French editions of a great number of his works publicly available for free. The site even includes a lot of original English translations released into the public domain. It is called the Franciscan Archive. Take a look!

Bonaventure’s Complete Works Online

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You may know from viewing the persons in my blog’s sidebar that I am a fan of the Seraphic Doctor, St. Bonaventure. You may not know that his complete works (his opera omnia, if you will) has been scanned by Google and placed online in Google books and on the new Hathi Trust Digital Library where you can download PDF’s of the full non-critical Quaracchi Latin edition of his works. These books are very expensive and hard to find and it is an absolute joy to me that they are now online and freely available to all. Of course, if you don’t read Latin, you’ll still have to buy a translation, but perhaps, Google translate will come out with a Latin-English function. 🙂 We can all hope.

Bonaventure published several commentaries on Scripture. Recently, the very diligent friars at St. Bonaventure College in Pennsylvania, the Franciscan Institute of St. Bonaventure University have been translating Bonaventure’s scripture commentaries and his other works into English. They are up to 14 volumes now!

[Updated 9/1/14]